Red Hot Pimpernel
Los Angeles Daily News
When Douglas Sills was hired to rescue people from the guillotine, he didn't realize that the neck he was saving might one day be his own.
His mission? To star on Broadway in "The Scarlet Pimpernel," a splashy, big-budget musical based on Baroness Orczy's 1905 novel about a mysterious do-gooder, who spares innocent victims from France's Reign of Terror.
The risks? The musical's composer was Frank Wildhorn, a Broadway outsider who'd already scored a monster hit with the pop-flavored "Jekyll & Hyde," making him something of a marked man in the byzantine New York theater world.
Furthermore, "The Scarlet Pimpernel's" $10 million budget put it in a league of messianic expectation usually reserved for blockbusters like "Ragtime" ($12 million) and "The Lion King" ($15 million).
Enter Sills, a strapping, multitalented Michigander with more top-flight theater credits to his name (South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum) than Marie Antoinette had corsets.
Although "Pimpernel's" producers initially had hoped to land a big-name Hollywood or Broadway star for the challenging lead role, Sills' versatility, charisma and technical finesse won them over.
"I always call him Danny Kaye, because he reminds me of that kind of a talent who can also sing," says Wildhorn, comparing Sills to the late great comic actor.
Sure enough, the New York critics skewered "The Scarlet Pimpernel" when it opened at the Minskoff Theater in the fall of 1997. Yet Sills emerged unscathed. He was praised for his dual-edged portrayal of the title character, who masquerades by day as the English fop Percy Blakeney but changes at night into the dashing, elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, whose true identity is hidden even from his wife, Marguerite. (A pimpernel, as if you didn't know, is a type of primrose whose star-shaped flowers close up in bad weather, suggesting its secretive nature.)
When the ailing show was stripped down and remounted the following November -- this time to generally rousing reviews -- Sills was the only principal actor to return. Revised once more by Wildhorn and bookwriter-lyricist Nan Knighton, and transferred to the smaller Neil Simon Theatre, it ran for a total of 363 performances.
In praising the downsized, revivified musical, The New York Times' Vincent Canby described Sills as "a true singer" who "has great fun with the role."
"Mr. Sills continues to dominate the show," Canby wrote, "though now the show is working with him, instead of ignoring him."
Sills' efforts in helping "Pimpernel" gain a second life were rewarded with Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle award nominations for best actor in a musical.
Next week, Sills will reprise his star-making performance when "The Scarlet Pimpernel" opens an eight-week run at the Ahmanson Theatre in his hometown of Los Angeles. In November, he'll be back in L.A. playing the silent film comedy king Mack Sennett in the Reprise! Broadway's Best in Concert production of the legendary 1974 musical "Mack & Mabel" at UCLA's Freud Playhouse.
If Sills' turn in "Pimpernel" has suddenly put him on the musical theater fast track, you wouldn't guess it from his self-effacing attitude.
"I could never call myself deserving, because I've known so many far more talented actors," he says, speaking by phone from San Francisco, where the show was recently parked during its current national tour.
"It wouldn't be surprising to me if I were back waiting tables some day. The younger people in the cast hear that and they say, 'Are you kidding?' They think it's false modesty."
Show biz's legendary fickleness aside, it seems unlikely Sills will be sponging countertops anytime soon. Having just passed the big 4-0 mark, he's enjoying the type of "overnight success" that sometimes happens to people who've been toiling for years in the regional theater trenches.
For roughly the past decade, Sills has been seen regularly at many of Southern California's top professional stages. He performed in the Los Angeles premiere of "Chess," is a two-time Drama-Logue winner and was a charter member of the Antaeus Theatre Company, the acclaimed North Hollywood-based ensemble that specializes in classic plays.
He also has appeared in recurring TV roles in shows like "Murphy Brown," "Coach" and "Party of Five," and was the original Los Angeles producer of the hit bio-musical "Dinah Was," starring Yvette Freeman as blues legend Dinah Washington.
After decades of such dues-paying persistence, it wasn't until age 35 that Sills made his Broadway debut in "Pimpernel." Kevin Kline was among those originally considered for the role.
"I was thrilled that Kevin Kline had other engagements," Sills jokes.
Though he had to audition six times, Sills has outlasted his original "Pimpernel" co-stars Christine Andreas (Marguerite) and Terrence Mann (as the Pimpernel's arch-rival Chauvelin), as well as their replacements, Rachel York and Rex Smith. The touring production, once again directed and choreographed by Robert Longbottom ("Side Show"), co-stars Amy Bodnar and William Paul Michals.
"Success alighted on my tree, and I'm just glad that my bough was sturdy enough to support it," Sills says with an agreeable laugh.
Sills' theatrical roots reach all the way back to his Ann Arbor, Mich., childhood, where he grew up in a tightly woven Jewish clan.
His adolescent idols weren't brawny American Method actors in torn T-shirts, but silver-tongued classicists like Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Richard Burton and John Gielgud. He remembers that after telling his mother he wanted to be an actor, she made him watch the 1935 film version of "The Scarlet Pimpernel," starring that most urbane of Anglo leading men, Leslie Howard.
As a student at Detroit's artsy Cranbrook Academy prep school, Sills gained further high-culture exposure. Even though "everyone in my family got law degrees," Sills' father took him aside one day and encouraged him to try the stage. He made his debut as Matt in a suburban dinner theater production of "The Fantasticks," and moved to San Francisco to pursue acting after graduating from the University of Michigan.
Playing the Pimpernel eight times a week is highly demanding, requiring Sills not only to sing and dance but also parry, thrust and otherwise make like Errol Flynn.
On the road, he follows a strict regimen of workouts, weight training, protein shakes, voice lessons and plenty of sleep. After nearly two years of playing the show in New York, he had to take several weeks off to recharge before starting the current national tour.
"It's not brain surgery," he says, "but it is an exact science."
Sills credits his classical training at San Francisco's vaunted American Conservatory Theater (ACT) with helping him balance the two halves of his Pimpernel persona: the prissy Percy and the suave, butt-kicking Pimpernel.
"It is more fun playing Percy," he acknowledges. "To hear the sound of laughter roll through an audience and know you had a part in building that is the greatest feeling you can have. It just fills your chest to bursting."
Sills also has proven adept at handling Wildhorn's voluble, r&b-influenced show numbers. In his other life as a pop-rock composer, Wildhorn has written songs recorded and performed by Whitney Houston, Hootie & the Blowfish, Liza Minnelli and Trisha Yearwood.
"They're songs that drift in your mind, not songs you take apart with tweezers," Sills says in praising Wildhorn's commercially oriented, accessible tunes, which have propelled shows like "Jekyll & Hyde" (now in its fifth year on Broadway) and "The Civil War."
Now that Sills has proven he can buckle his swashes with the best of 'em, he has plenty of offers coming his way. He'll be starring opposite Vanessa Williams in an upcoming period musical set in New Orleans' red-light district. And he's mulling over a possible Shakespearean double bill: the title role in "Hamlet" and perhaps "Much Ado About Nothing" with Southern California director Mark Rucker.
Sills' professional fortunes appear to be peaking at an opportune time. For many years, the actor says, a family tragedy had cast a long shadow over his life and those of his relatives.
On Aug. 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed while taking off from Detroit Metro Airport en route to John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Of the 153 people on board, only a 4-year-old girl survived.
Among the passengers that evening was Sills' older brother. He was heading to Arizona and was planning to visit Sills and watch him perform in the Bay Area.
"It really is one of those things where everything in your life divides into before and after," Sills says. "When I look back at that period of my life, there are some really dark colors in my palette."
After so many months in New York, Sills says, having the chance to perform "Pimpernel" in Los Angeles was a big factor in his signing up for the national tour.
Wildhorn applauds that decision.
"First of all, you want to lead with your best, and Doug is our best," Wildhorn says. "But also, Sammy Davis Jr. once had a conversation about roles, and those roles that come once in a lifetime, and you have to be careful because you may never get another one. Yul Brynner never got another 'King and I,' and Rex Harrison never got another 'My Fair Lady.'
"So, if I may say so, I think it was very smart of Doug to continue the journey."
Though he now keeps a second home in New York -- "The house that 'Pimpernel' bought," he calls it -- Sills considers L.A.'s Fairfax District his true nesting place.
"I have a longtime partner and various beasts of the animal kind," he says in a gently amused tone.
So what's his next derring-do mission?
"We're trying to figure out how to steal a baby."
-Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Daily News
May 2, 2000
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