Anyone who saw Mark Jacoby play Guido in ”Nine” at Candlelight Dinner Playhouse five years ago knows that he`s tall, swarthy and elegantly handsome- exactly like the playboy character he played in that musical.
But a lot of his current fans-and there are more local ones every day-have no idea what he looks like. Jacoby is on stage for nearly 2 1/2 hours as the title character in ”The Phantom of the Opera” at the Auditorium Theatre, but all of that time, even throughout the wild ovation he usually gets during his bow, he`s hidden behind a sensational make-up job and the Phantom`s famous white mask.
There he is in the most famous male role in modern musical theater-and never once is he really seen. Isn`t that a little frustrating?
”I haven`t really given it much thought, to tell you the truth,” he says. ”I kind of enjoy it, really, dressing up and remaining incognito. Maybe it`s a part of what makes the character and show such a phenomenon, something that accounts for the public`s passionate interest-the fact that you never get to see him. He`s always an enigma, even in his curtain call. He`s a secret. I like that idea.
”And in a way I`ve never cared for curtain calls. You work hard in a show to create an illusion, and then you come out to bow, as if to say, `Oh, well, it was really just fun and games.` I prefer the idea of the curtain coming down and that`s it, as if it were a movie. I know Hal Prince (the show`s director) originally argued against curtain calls for `Phantom,` to preserve the mystique and mystery of the ending, but other forces prevailed.” Most musical roles involve only slightly more than the hours actually spent on stage. But for Jacoby, whose character is hideously deformed, and whose ugliness is only glimpsed in a dramatic moment of revelation, the job is much longer. He arrives extremely early before each curtain so that his make- up can be applied.
”Tonight is the first time we`re trying to keep it to two hours,” he says. ”We`re getting better. It took three hours during the first
performances.” On days when there are two shows, Jacoby is hidden for something like a 12-hour period, managing to eat his meals through layers of make-up that cover about a half of his face. ”You wouldn`t want to attack a Big Mac or bite into an apple. You eat little things. You even learn how to touch the stuff gracefully when you get an itch. Frankly, the thing I most worry about is catching a cold. I have no idea how I would blow my nose.”
Curiously, the ordeal has helped Jacoby get a handle on the part. ”My experience with the whole make-up thing is a lot more emotional than I expected,” he says. ”I`m not really one of those people who are into the senses that much, but I find when I sit in that chair for two hours that the layers of make-up take on a kind of physical weight. It`s not uncomfortable, just weighty, but it creates an illusion of being under, which I think is a little like what the phantom experiences.
”My personality slowly changes during the application,” he continues.
”I find that I don`t feel like talking to people, not in the sense of pre-show or mid-show banter. The experience is very enervating, and I
personally withdraw, just as the Phantom did from life. Once I make my entrance, I find I tend not to want to speak to people, the backstage crew and other actors, and I sense from them a desire not to speak to me. I spend the show quite isolated.”
That dehumanization makes a lot of sense: ”Phantom” is musical drama, and much of what happens is horrific, most of it at the hands of the Phantom himself. As with any horror story, the Phantom is quite the creep. ”He`s not a nice person, let`s face it,” Jacoby says. ”He goes around murdering people, sometimes in large groups. He`s a terrorist, literally, and he can be quite cruel and vicious. But what`s interesting is the way, in spite of all that, Christine (the young diva in the story that the Phantom hypnotizes and pursues) is irresistibly drawn to him. There`s something about him, his life and his personality, that is fantastic.”
No one should be surprised to learn that the Phantom is a difficult role to play. His singing range covers well over two octaves, Jacoby says, where normally in musicals a vocalist can expect only an octave and a half. He downplays the challenge. ”It`s a show and a role that have become a phenomenon, and in that sense there`s a responsibility. But in all frankness, I think you could have a good production of the show with a so-so Phantom-there`s so much else going on. That`s unlike `Funny Girl` or `Song and Dance` (another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical), and in that regard I don`t think the show is made or broken on my work alone. But it`s the highest pressure I`ve undergone in my career, simply because of the size of the part and the anticipation that goes with this production.”
It`s somewhat ironic that Jacoby is playing such a Satanic figure-”
pitiful creature of darkness,” is one lyric describing the Phantom-since he himself grew up the son of a minister. His father preached for the Christian Church, a Protestant denomination Jacoby describes as
”fundamentalist, but fire and brimstone would be going too far.” He was born in Johnson City, Tenn., but moved around a lot, ”sort of like being a military brat,” including a 10-year stint in nearby Crown Point, Ind.
But for the last 20 years New York City has been his home. Despite a graduate degree in international relations and a law degree (he passed the New York Bar exam), Jacoby ended up a singer. He toured with choirs, went from there to operettas and opera, and eventually found his way to musical comedy. His last long-term job came as the Italian movie star in the Broadway revival of ”Sweet Charity.” His only other jobs in Chicago were in ”Nine” and then as Che in ”Evita,” both at Candlelight in 1985.
The 43-year-old actor has won plaudits here for the emotional intensity he brings to his character. In a key final scene, wherein Christine helps steer the Phantom toward something of a redemption, giving him an inkling of genuine human love, Jacoby`s reactions are intense and grippingly real. He says that the actors weren`t forced to copy any of the earlier productions, but given a chance to find the emotions in the story on their own. ”We were left to discover the material ourselves.”
Prince, the show`s original London director, was on hand for the early direction chores with this company, left the work for a time to assistants and then returned in the final days of Chicago rehearsal-fairly standard road show practice. ”With so many of the big musicals now starting in London,” Jacoby adds wryly, ”I think you can say that`s become fairly standard Broadway practice as well.”
