Grammer, Morrison find bromance on Broadway
NEW YORK — "Give us a few months, and we'll be best friends," says Matthew Morrison, nodding across a table at Kelsey Grammer, his co-star in the new Broadway musical Finding Neverland.
The production is based on the 2004 film of the same title and the play that inspired it, The Man Who Was Peter Pan, by Allan Knee. Neverland casts Matthew Morrison as J.M. Barrie, the author and playwright who gave the world that timeless, ageless character. Grammer plays theater producer Charles Frohman, who championed Barrie and his boy hero.
The show began previews March 15 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, in preparation for an April 15 opening. Chatting the morning of their second performance, Grammer, 60, explains that he and his co-star have "only had a few days to really play together" — given the demands of their schedules.
For Morrison, 36, who made his name in musical theater before coming to the attention of TV fans via Glee, Neverland is a sort of homecoming: His last Broadway production was the acclaimed 2008 revival of South Pacific.
Grammer, best known for his television work in the title role of Frasier, is a stage veteran himself: His musical experience includes playing a gay nightclub owner in a 2010 production of La Cage aux Folles.
Grammer imagines that Frohman, in contrast, "fancies himself a ladies' man — at least, that's my characterization of him. ... He's bigger than life." In the course of Neverland he morphs into an even larger presence, Captain Hook, whom Grammer portrays as "a bon vivant and a cutthroat. It's a deadly combination — and he's got a great entrance."
Barrie is less colorful on the surface, at least initially. Suffering from writer's block when the musical opens, he is, Morrison notes, "inspired by a widow and her four boys" — Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (played by Laura Michelle Kelly) and her sons. Eventually, he "kind of finds the child he lost a long time ago in himself."
For all their differences, Grammer says, the real-life Frohman "was loyal to the end" to Barrie. "It was a great relationship, and that's really paying off onstage. You can see there's a love there. A guy love."
Morrison was drawn to the score, by British singer/songwriter and Take That frontman Gary Barlow and pop songwriter/producer Eliot Kennedy. "I feel like there hasn't been an original musical in a while where you actually walk out and you can sing the songs," Morrison says.
Grammer's wife, Kayte Walsh, and their children, ages 2½ and 7 months, are cases in point. "At my house, they're singing every song we've got. My wife and the girl who helps us sing them all day long."
With Glee, Morrison helped make show tunes more fashionable. "When I left Broadway in 2008, it was in a good place. But to see what it's become — the box office is at the highest it's ever been. And I think that is a testament, a little bit, to what Glee has done in bringing theater into people's rooms."
Even "more importantly than what it's done for Broadway," Morrison adds, is what that TV series "has done for schools," in terms of promoting choir participation. "Kids are seeking that out, and just thriving."
Grammer, who sang in his school choir as a teenager, agrees. "I look at us on stage now, and I think, 'What a glorious bunch of nerds we are.' We were all nerds at one point, and now we're on Broadway, singing our hearts out. It's fantastic."