'Scarlet' Letter: 'A' for Adventure;
As Broadway's Scarlet Pimpernel, Douglas Sills
finds the hero an icon of Jewish traits
This is a matinee idyll: Wrapped in a white terrycloth
robe. Douglas Sills leaves his dressing room at "The Scarlet Pimpernel"
nearly two hours after a matinee performance has elicited thunderous
applause, to meet relatives downstairs. But first, his sister points --
like a compassionate compass -- toward two doors leading to the street.
"They're waiting for you," she says.
The doors swing out and the robed star is bathed in the spotlight of
street lights, mobbed by fans whose cheers and chatter acclaim Sills
as Broadway's newest matinee idol.
It is a swashbuckling success that buckles the knees of the teen girls
teeming around him.
Is the "Scarlet Pimpernel" turning red, blushing from brushing with fame?
Like other actors with good looks playing disguised characters -- think
of Sills as a blonder, Jewish Antonio Banderas -- those looks can't
mask an inner talent.
As the suave swordsman Pimpernel, Sills skewers that notion with
saber-rattling success. Sills' talents are further on display in the
show in dual roles: He plays the Pimpernel's pampered alter ego, Percy.
Percy is a foppish far cry from the hero, who serves as savior to those
whose rights have been trampled by the Reign of Terror during the
French Revolution.
Based on the 1905 novel of intrigue and romance by Baroness Emmuska
Orczy, "The Scarlet Pimpernel" is shaded with adventure, comedy and
the camaraderie that comes from musical characters fighting on the
side of the angels.
For Sills, it was a battle of auditions that finally won him the role --
and ultimately a Tony Award nomination for leading actor in a musical.
With a string of impressive regional and national touring shows to his
credit, as well as turns on a variety of TV shows, including "Murphy
Brown" and "Party of Five," the actor needed panache aplenty to nab
the part of Pimpernel, his Broadway debut.
He has discovered the `Scarlet' letter: `A' for adventure.
Playing a hero is not limited to the stage. Sills plays Pimpernel as a
nightly tribute to those day-to-day actors who work long and hard,
inching their way out of the shadows to the sunshine of the spotlight.
After nearly two decades of acting, Sills has left a generic career
behind for the brand-name status that comes with starring on Broadway.
There is no substitute for success.
Now, as "Pimpernel" gets its second wind on Broadway, Sills gets wind
of what it feels like to engage in idol chatter.
Pimpernel, says Sills, is a hero for the '90s, a character "who finds
a path through the trauma of everyday life for something larger than himself.
"At the risk of his own self, he is interested in securing the rights
of others, many of them strangers. He realized you can't isolate yourself
in the world.
"In his journey to find out who he is, he is willing to take enormous risks."
Much as the actor did, turning to directing and producing when acting
wasn't fulfilling his needs pre-Pimpernel.
But quite possibly, with this role on Broadway, Sills has found his
place on the talent totem -- right at the top.
As he describes Pimpernel, Sills is painting a portrait of perseverance.
It is more than a self-portrait; it seems an illustration of Jewish history.
"Pimpernel does have a Jewish core," says the actor, "because I created him."
Sharing his own history lends credence to this role-playing. "I come
from a very progressive Jewish suburban upbringing," stressing such
character traits as the need for using "brain over brawn, the understanding
that image is not important, the need for generosity, humor -- all Jewish traits."
The gifted performer claims these are gifts of the Jews, which also
happens to be the title of a Thomas Cahill book he has read and admired,
a '90s retelling of the Bible.
Truth be told, Sills' silhouette is not one just etched in theater.
He could have done a number of things; indeed, this graduate of the
University of Michigan and the American Conservatory Theatre briefly
pondered a legal career.
"If you know you are capable of doing many things and you choose to do
something very difficult, well, that takes a lot of guts."
Guts he's got. "I always used to hear actors say that they couldn't
do anything else, that they had to act, that they never had any doubts
about what they wanted.
"Well, I had doubts. And I know there are other things I could do.
I could be a cantor, run a restaurant. I could do many things."
No doubt he could. But at this acclaimed stage of his life, he'll ply
and play his talents in theater and take the advice someone in the
business once gave him about straying too far from his mission:
"Stay in your own lane."
The drive needed to assay the heroic Pimpernel can take its toll. In
the beginning of the run, the actor was drained from the strenuous
performance. He has learned how to pace himself.
He has also learned some invaluable lessons from the stage hero. "The
character tests my courage both on and off the stage, testing my mettle
in lots of ways."
The gold standard is something to which Sills aspires. Yet, there is
something inside that still makes him marvel at his newfound fame.
"I was being interviewed on CNN and told the reporter what I'd like
to do next is Terrence McNally's new play, `Corpus Christi,' and I said,
`If you're listening, Terrence, here I am.'"
The playwright was paying attention and paid the actor the ultimate
compliment. "He called me and said that he was going to use unknowns."
Sills knows the feeling. "I've been an unknown all my life," he laughs.
Not anymore. What has helped him bridge the path from anonymity to fame
is the rite stuff he gets from his religion. "Judaism has always been
the well from which I draw," he says. "I'm hungry for knowledge. I want
it now. But things take time. You can't cram for spiritualism."
As crowded as his life is now, Sills still has time to reflect on the
ongoing odyssey that has landed him at the feet of fame.
It all started with one step -- walking over to the TV set and turning
it on when he was a kid.
"There it was, `The Scarlet Pimpernel,' wonderful. And Leslie Howard,
of course, was the actor playing him."
And then Sills' mom, watching the movie with him, nodded at the TV set
and told her young son something to realize the film's importance.
"He's Jewish, you know," said his mother knowingly about Leslie Howard.
Now, decades later, so is the actor playing him on stage. Maybe, muses
Sills, it's more than talent, and opportunity and timing.
Maybe, he says of the swashbuckling swagger it takes to take on
Pimpernel, it's all bashert.
-Michael Elkin, Jewish Exponent
August 20, 1998
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