It’s Not Just Another Broadway Hit for Harry Groener
by Sarah Sarai
The “challenge of getting it right” drives Harry Groener.
Given that he and I are talking in his dressing room at the Schubert Theatre in New York, a few hours before he goes on stage as King Arthur in Monty Python’s Spamalot, the 55-year old alum of the University of Washington Theatre Professional Actor Training Program (1976), has been getting it right for quite a while. He was nominated for a Tony three times; as Best Actor (Featured Role - Musical), in 1980 for a revival of Oklahoma!, in 1983 for Cats; and as Best Actor (Musical), in 1992 for Crazy for You. He won the Theatre World Award for Oklahoma!.
For an artist, “getting it right” may be both definable and ineffable. Groener, a tall man, easy in his body and with more character on his face than seems American, refines his definition. “The challenge of pleasing an audience. I love that.” His face is alight. There is no mistaking Harry’s affection for the craft’s end result, the odd fourth-wall interaction implicit between actor and audience.
As we talk his expressions reveal a subtle range of tragic, comic and blessedly lunatic.
Groener’s enthusiasm is hard-won, not through rejection after rejection, but repeated application of his talents, even when, as a young man, he felt he misgauged his portrayal of a character.
At the UW he observed some theatre classmates resist that experience of emotional depth associated with solid, convincing performances. The department chair, Robert Hobbs, urged students to get to the “nitty gritty” (Groener’s words) of acting. Many resisted, Groener says, but he felt he was “finally getting something tangible” from his schooling.
Some actors, according to Groener, aren’t able to experience depth of emotion, which at least in part accounts for varying qualities of acting on screen and stage. He says he was graced with good parts, and adds, “That’s the place to fail---on the university stage.” The velocity of his enthusiasm far outstrips a common fear of making mistakes. Granted, failing, whatever that really means, was something he could risk when studying acting.
Prior to UW, and summers between semesters, Groener was in the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA), a summer theatre in Santa Maria, CA, where he came under the wing of “my theatre father” Donovan Marley. Marley tutored students not just in technique, but ethics: What does it mean to work in the theatre?
For one, “It’s more about that [the script] than it is about you,” Groener maintains. Marley instilled that precept in him, as well as encouraging Groener to recognize that affecting even one audience member makes the struggle worth it. He says being cast in so many good roles has been a matter of luck. When challenged on that answer (“Luck, Harry?”) he responds, “I don’t know what luck is. I do the work and try to be as real as I can be.”
With PCPA’s rotating productions of two musicals and three plays a season, in addition to having actors learn carpentry, sewing and lighting, there was no let-up. At least until the company realized seams on costumes weren’t quite right, multitasking being the challenge it is. Groener is multi-talented, which provides opportunity. He appeared in comedies and tragedies. He sings, he dances (tap and ballet), and choreographs. But he doesn’t teach. “The idea scares me.”
His first taste of the stage was through dance, as a young member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Ballet. It was in a school play, however, that he realized acting had claimed him.
Born in Augsburg, Germany, to a mother who sang opera and father who was a pianist, Groener and family emigrated to San Francisco when he was two. Money was tight for years, and Harry seems to wince, or shudder--actually what flashes across his face is far more subtle than either, but palpable--at the memory of financial struggle. Simplistic though it may sound, that memory drives him.
On the large mirror in his dressing room, an aged photograph of Maude Adams (1873-1953), the American actress who gained fame with the play (not musical) Peter Pan, from 1905 to 1915 takes center stage. Where Harry Groener goes, that postcard goes; its been his constant companion since 1976, and something of an historian, as on its back Harry recorded the name of every theatre he performed in that year. Big theatres, small handwriting.
Television audiences will remember Groener from his three-year stint on the series, Dear John starring Judd Hirsch, or as Sunnydale’s sinister Mayor Wilkins in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He is among the contemporary string of actors who finds any perceived difference between stage and television acting false. Harry lauds the quality of television acting these days, and says the challenge of TV is to “recreate human behavior as believably as you can.” He adds that television doesn’t necessitate the same suspension of disbelief as does theatre.
He and his wife, the actress Dawn Didawick, live in the Hollywood Hills, near the sign, and enjoy the vast art and theatre network L.A. provides. (It does, really.) He met Miss Didawick at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1976. “What if I hadn’t made the decision to go to Louisville [and not New York]?” Harry asks. It’s an anxious moment. “It scares me to death.” The couple is founding members of The Antaeus Company in North Hollywood; the theatre stages classics.
Of Mike Nichols, Spamalot’s director, Groener says, “he gave me four or five notes,” adding with a tinge of inevitability, “and of course he was right every time.”
And of Stephen Sondheim, Groener is particularly laudatory. “He affects me like no other composer.” When rehearsing for Sunday in the Park With George, Groener, who played George, as a replacement, says he struggled with the role during rehearsal. Sondheim advised him, “Of course I want you to sing it right but if you don’t think it’s going to work out vocally, just act it.” That helped immensely. As Sondheim coached, “Just say the words. Sing it as written. Sing.” And of course Harry Groener sang it just right.
For more information on Harry Groener, go to: www.HarryGroener.com. For more information on The Antaeus Company go to: www.antaeus.org.
Sarah Sarai lives in New York City. She writes fiction and poetry.
