INTERVIEW: After ‘Dead Outlaw,’ Andrew Durand is alive and well on Skid Row
Photo: Andrew Durand portrays Orin the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. Photo courtesy of YellowBelly Photo / Provided by Vivacity Media Group with permission.
NEW YORK — Andrew Durand is a prolific actor of the New York stage, having appeared in a huge number of Broadway and off-Broadway shows over the years. Audiences will certainly remember his star turn in Shucked, and he was recently Tony nominated for his performance in Dead Outlaw. Now he’s back in Midtown Manhattan, performing multiple roles, including Orin the dentist, in the hit off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors, continuing to gather laughs and frights at the Westside Theatre.
“After Dead Outlaw finished its off-Broadway run, which was a couple years ago now, I knew that it was going to be some time before we had a Broadway transfer,” Durand said in a recent phone interview. “So a couple years ago, I reached out to Austin Regan, who is the [resident] director on Little Shop, because we went to college together actually. I did his student-directed production of Floyd Collins, but I texted him because he worked with Michael Mayer on Head Over Heels, which I did with Michael. So I just floated my interest. I texted him, and I said, ‘You know, Seymour or Dentist, nothing specific, just letting you know I’m interested, and I think it would be fun.’ And that was a couple years ago.”
When Durand became available after Dead Outlaw’s too-short run on Broadway, he and Regan had another chat, and now he’s appearing eight shows per week at the Westside Theatre. Truth be told, Durand has been an uber-fan of Little Shop of Horrors, featuring music by Alan Menken and book and lyrics by Howard Ashman, ever since he caught the well-known movie adaptation when he was a child.
“I watched the VHS once a week for a good stretch of years growing up,” he said with a laugh. “In some ways, it’s a disservice because I have the whole movie memorized. It’s different than the stage version, but, yeah, I love the show. I really love getting to play this character and working with this team. This version of the show is such a great accomplishment, so I’m really excited.”
Little Shop of Horrors, which at this point has been playing for years at the Westside Theatre, has welcomed many theater stars over its run, everyone from Jeremy Jordan to Tammy Blanchard to Jonathan Groff to Joy Woods, who is returning the show in the role of Audrey on Friday, Dec. 19. For Durand, this experience of “replacing” has been a unique and challenging one.
“It was hard-going at the start because I haven’t replaced that many times,” the actor said. “The times that I have replaced in … Spring Awakening or War Horse, I came in with basically a full cast of other people, so it felt like a regular rehearsal process. This is the first time I walked in, and it was just me for the first week and a half or so with stage management and Austin.”
Durand added: “The process I’m used to is you walk in, and you sit around the table for a week. And you read it a bunch of times, and you talk about what the characters are like and all these things. But on day one, we got on our feet and started blocking. I haven’t even decided who these people are yet, how can I put them in my body already? That was intimidating for the first couple days, but then I sort of reframed my mindset. That’s your homework. Come to rehearsal, get your blocking, and then go home and do your own table work. And so here we are. I feel really good about it and prepared now.”
In the show, Durand plays Orin, a dentist who is a nasty villain, someone who abuses his girlfriend, Audrey, and is addicted to laughing gas. But throughout the two-hour evening, the actor gets to portray five or six other characters as well, and it’s great fun to see him walking on stage with a beard in one scene and then in the next scene with a different wig and hat.
“There’s nothing more delightful than going off stage and coming back on with that twinkle in your eye because you know and the audience knows that you’re the same actor, but you get to show off your chops by trying to be somebody different every time you go on stage,” he said. “I think if you start working too hard, you’re not going to get the laugh because the audience is smart enough to see you trying to get the laugh, so you have to surprise people in order to get the laugh. I think the way to be funny is to try to be really true to yourself and who you are and figure out what’s funny to you and what’s shocking to you. That’s sort of how you get that reaction out of the audience, and that’s what first drew me to theater when I was a kid, 12 years old, and went and saw a community theater production. In Atlanta, Georgia, I saw all these adults on stage acting like fools with each other, smacking each other with fake boards over the head and things like that. I’ve loved comedy from the start, so I’m really happy to get to do this.”
Durand will be able to add Little Shop of Horrors to his impressive résumé and its ever-growing list of accomplishments. One of the best and boldest entries on that list is his time in Dead Outlaw, which was seen by many theater insiders and audiences as the best musical of the year. Its tragically short run on Broadway was a tough reality, but the actor looks back with great fondness on the experience.
In the musical, Durand played the title character, performing the first half as a wannabe outlaw, bounding across the stage and singing energetic songs, and then in the second half, he was dead, relegated to a standup coffin and paraded around as a sideshow amusement. It was a physically demanding role: Being dead ain’t easy.
“It was such an intense, short amount of time between opening a show and everything that comes with that, all the morning shows and press that comes with that, alongside the Tony Awards season, being fortunate enough to be nominated,” he said. “It was so, so much in such a concentrated, little amount of time that now it almost feels like it didn’t happen at all. I was sad to see it go, but I think I also felt a little bit of relief in my body because it was such a hard show for me. Every time I walked off stage, I sort of said to myself, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do that again,’ but I somehow kept doing it. It was bittersweet. Mainly I just wish it was still around so more people got to see it because it really was such a unique and special piece of theater.”
Luckily, Durand landed in another unique and special piece of theater — on Skid Row, in Little Shop of Horrors.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Little Shop of Horrors, featuring Andrew Durand as Orin and other characters, continues at the Westside Theatre in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
