BY STEVE ROTHAUS, srothaus@MiamiHerald.com
Brian Stokes Mitchell is perhaps musical theater's leading leading man, yet he hasn't performed in a long-run Broadway show since his 2003 Tony-nominated turn as Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha.
Stokes (as everyone calls him) "took a sabbatical'' from eight shows a week after the birth of his only child, son Ellington, now 6.
"I'd been doing these great lead roles and they were incredibly demanding. There were times I couldn't communicate with my wife [Broadway actress Allyson Tucker]," says Stokes, 52, who won't speak at all during the day before an evening performance.
"I didn't want to do that [with a child]. I wanted to yell and scream and laugh, rather than `save my voice for tonight.' ''
Stokes is sure to use his big baritone Saturday night, when he sings with a piano, bass and drums at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
"People know me largely from my work on Broadway," says Stokes, who starred in the 1998 production of Ragtime, and won a Tony in 2000 for Kiss Me, Kate. His fame grew when PBS televised a 2006 Carnegie Hall concert of South Pacific, headlined by Stokes and Reba McEntire. "I love singing standards. I was raised on jazz."
Producer-director Richard Jay-Alexander, a frequent Stokes collaborator, says the star can take "an old chestnut like This Nearly Was Mine'' from South Pacific and make it new.
"He reinvents the wheel," Jay-Alexander says. "He deconstructs and reconstructs."
The son of a Tuskegee Airmen radio instructor, Stokes graduated high school in San Diego and moved to Los Angeles. He quickly got TV jobs, including Roots: The Next Generation and a co-starring role in the long-running M*A*S*H sequel, Trapper John, M.D.
Stokes won a 1988 Theatre World Award for his first Broadway show, Mail, and his career was set.
"I've never had to wait tables. I've never had to borrow money from my parents. I call myself the luckiest actor in the world," says Stokes, president of the famed Actor's Fund for the past five years. The 127-year-old organization was formed so that destitute theater people "could be buried with dignity," Stokes says.
Stokes recently released a holiday CD and DVD, Ring Christmas Bells with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and co-wrote an A-to-Z book for middle-school children, Lights on Broadway. His portion of the profits goes to the Actor's Fund.
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Caption: Brian Stokes Mitchell, Phyllis Newman and Alec Baldwin in November 2009 at an event supporting The Actors Fund Special Campaign Responding to Essential and Evolving Needs. (AP Photo/Judy Katz Public Relations, Jay Brady)
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IF YOU GO
Brian Stokes Mitchell appears 8 p.m. Saturday at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Tickets $45 to $75, available at arshtcenter.org, 305-949-6722 or the box office.
I simply love Stokes.. Good to know about Stokes,..
http://www.vivamagonline.com/CoverStories_Cynthia.php
Posted by: Concert | July 10, 2010 at 05:48 AM