By Harry Haun, Playbill, 1993
After a milestone performance in Crazy for You, Harry Groener proclaims that it’s “Nice Work if You Can Get It”.
A couple of hours before his “Child” turned 1,000, Harry Groener confessed to feeling a tad tuckered. “I’ve been stripping paint madly at home, and I got only six hours sleep last night, six the night before, so I’m a little tired,” he admitted, “but you know what?”—his energy level shifted into second and suddenly accelerated—“That’s okay. I find that I like being a little tired because you don’t think as much. Your instincts take over, and you make the right choices. You just do it—you don’t think about it. It’s a great lesson.”
Groener could speak with some authority on this subject, since yawning before him (no pun intended, exactly) was his thousandth time out as Bobby Child, the all-singing, all dancing banker-by-birth who sprints gracefully and engagingly through the vintage Gershwin in Crazy for You, the 1992 Tony winner entrenched at the Shubert. You gotta be crazy for a show to do it that many times, and—well, Groener would plead guilty as charged (blissfully so, since he has just signed up for continue it through New Year’s Eve). It is—he’ll tell you (he’ll even sing you) – “Nice Work If You Can Get It” and Groener’s glad he’s got it.
“You do not—you honestly do not – get tired of listening to the music. It’s beautiful music. I sit back and get myself ready for the next scene, drying myself off and listening to Karen (Ziemba) now—but Jodi (Benson) before—singing “Someone to Watch over Me” every single night. They’re gorgeous songs, and we’re so lucky to have that as a solid foundation. The Gershwin estate was very generous in letting us use any song we wanted.”
“Bidin’ My Time” “Embraceable You” “Slap that Bass” “I Got Rhythm” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” “But Not For Me” –hardly the Chinese water-torture test.
Keeping a performance fresh is the constant curse of the long-distance runner, but, for Groener, the song is “It All Depends On You” Audiences keep him on his toes: “You can’t let yourself get bored. You have to concentrate all the time—or else it’s not fair to the rest of the people in the cast, and it’s not to fair to the audience.”
Above and beyond the sprightly pace he sets for the show, Groener has other chores: scale theatre marquees, tap up a storm on his mother’s limo, speak in early Transylvanian, execute a staircase stumble on the backs of his heels—there’s no end to the feats the actor performs effortlessly eight times a week. “At one point, I think they came to me and said, ‘What else can you do?’”
The physical demands of the comedy are considerable for Groener, who is called upon not only to impersonate a middle-European impresario but, in one song (“What Causes That?”), to play a perfectly synchronized drunk scene with said impresario. Having an old friend opposite him in that role is a real blessing.
“This is my fourth Broadway show with Bruce Adler,” said Groener, “We did Oklahoma! Oh Brother! And Sunday in the Park With George, now this and we really enjoy working together. Putting that number together was like a married couple where you don’t have to say anything to each other; it’s all shorthand. You can finish each other’s sentences, each other’s jokes.”
The teamwork earned them both Tony nominations. This is Groener’s third nomination. He earned one for his first Broadway show—coming out to the chute from up-to-date Kansas City as Will Parker in the 1980 revival of Oklahoma! —and the other as one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats (Munkustrap); both roles he gave a respectable ride for the money—16 months in Oklahoma! and 14 months in Cats.
His other Broadway appearances have been briefer, if not downright abbreviated: Slight of Hand, Harrigan N’ Hart, Is There Life After High School? and Oh Brother! were fast to fold, and Backcountry (a 1978 musical version of Playboy of the Western World) didn’t get past its Boston tryouts.
But he got a bride out of the latter—actress Dawn Didawick, whom he met two years earlier at the Actors Theatre of Louisville when he choreographed her in Vanities. The two have done Shakespeare together in a California rep company.
Groener’s stage persona varies from coast to coast. “In New York I’m known for the musicals, but in Los Angeles they see me as a dramatic actor because of all the plays I’ve done at the Taper and the Old Globe. It usually surprises people here to find out that I’ve done more plays than I have done musicals.” Then there’s a whole other faction, from television, who know him as the hapless, flaky Ralph from Judd Hirsch’s now-defunct “Dear John”.
These days Groener is exclusively Broadway’s long-running Boy Wonder, and this month the Boy Wonder rounds the bend to 43. “Kate Burton and I have the same birth date. Whenever we see each other, no matter where it is, we say Happy Birthday to each other”—but the Child in him is very much alive and kicking.
“Bobby’s incredibly optimistic. He’s the glass-is-half-full kind of guy—very idealistic, upbeat, very much in love, all those great things. There’s a lot of Bobby Child in me. I find that I’m still very idealistic, I’m still energetic and positive about most types of things, ‘everything will work out, don’t worry about it.’ And I’m in love with a great lady, and it just gets better all the time—it really does—so there’s a lot of similarities.”
All that, and a long Broadway run—who, indeed, could ask for anything more?
Originally appeared in 1993 Playbill. No copyright infringement is intended.Back to Archives
