The day before the arrival of Bea Arthur in Chicago, Marc Robin is looking very nervous.
”She hasn’t actually ever seen me yet,” Robin says, swirling the ice in his glass of morning orange juice at the Artists Cafe. ”Television stars are used to someone much older running their shows. They have a tendency to take one look at me and say, `OK, now where’s the real director?’ ”
His relative youth (he’s 38) and craggy, boyish face may not look like the thickest security blanket in show business to a visiting star, but there is nothing counterfeit about Robin’s remarkable list of achievements in the Chicago theater.
In relatively short order, he has progressed from playing the back end of the cow in a suburban production of ”Gypsy” to a stint revitalizing the Drury Lane Theatre in Evergreen Park to taking full artistic charge of the inaugural production of the new Ovations series, ”Strike Up the Band.”
Opening Thursday night at the Auditorium Theatre with Arthur’s name featured above the title, this concert-style performance has a budget in excess of $300,000.
At the last two Joseph Jefferson Awards ceremonies honoring the best Equity productions of the year in Chicago, Robin skipped back and forward to the podium with such regularity that weary-sounding presenters began attaching tones of wry irony to the inevitable reading of his winning name. Not only has Robin won seven Jeff awards to date, but in the 1998 category for best choreography he had choreographed each of the five nominated shows.
Ask people who have worked with Robin why he has been so successful, and they don’t declare him to be a master auteur so much as point to his practical knowledge of all sides of his art form. One of the very few Chicago directors who can serve as his own choreographer (thus saving producers money), Robin is also known around town as the kind of director who can deal with any kind of actor. He is, after all, an actor himself.
“Marc always comes at the rehearsal process from the performer’s perspective,” says Michael Weber, artistic director of the Theatre at the Center in Munster, Ind. “Because he is so well prepared and has what he wants down on paper, he gives people freedom to improvise from that point onward.”
In other words, Chicago’s theatrical Renaissance man has a personal grasp of so many of the sub-disciplines that make up the theater, he tends to know the needs of his fellow artists. Although he lacks formal training as a director, he makes up for it with practical experience and a deep knowledge of his repertoire of choice — classic Broadway musicals. And he knows how to make insecure artists feel comfortable.
“He brings an astute directorial vision but he also has an excellent working relationship with the actors,” says Jan Kallish, executive director of the Auditorium Theatre. “And when that happens, you get the best out of everyone.”
All of this acclaim has landed Robin a feverish directing schedule that makes him look like the Frank Galati of Chicago-area musicals. Following “Ovations,” Robin immediately starts rehearsals for “The Pirates of Penzance” at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. As is typical with Robin, he will serve as both director and choreographer.
Then, in order, it’s “Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?” at the Drury Lane Evergreen Park, “Sideshow” at the Northlight Theatre, the WaaMu Show at Northwestern University, “Babes in Arms” for Ovations, “Cinderella” back in Evergreen Park, “Once Upon a Mattress” at the Fireside Dinner Theatre in Ft. Atkinson, Wis., and “Gigi” for the Theatre at the Center.
When you add “The World Goes Around,” at the Drury Lane, “Grease” back at Northwestern and “The Nutcracker on Ice” next Christmas also in Evergreen Park, that fills Robin’s dance card with musicals until 2001.
“Marc Robin,” says Kallish, “is always on everyone’s list.”
Without benefit of notes or assistance, Robin can rattle off his upcoming assignments without missing a beat. And therein, say many of the people with whom he works, lies one of his great strengths.
“Marc Robin is the most organized person I’ve ever seen,” says Weber. “How else do you think he’s able to juggle 12 shows at one time?”
He certainly did not inherit his skills through a traditional show-biz pedigree. Born Marc Rabinowitz in Middletown, N.Y., to parents in the wholesale produce business, Robin left home at 16 to study acting in a special program in Tennessee. (He graduated from Chattanooga High School).
“I was the only Jew and the only openly gay person in the entire school,” he says. “They all viewed me as a walking enigma.”
Since his parents had now moved to south Florida, Robin returned home and took classes at a local community college, where he started to dance seriously.
“They told me I wasn’t good-looking enough to play the acting roles I wanted to play,” Robin says, “but that I would work all the time in the chorus.”
Although he never graduated from college, Robin landed in various non-Equity tours (including the Yiddish opera “Shulamith”), suffered a brief and unhappy stint in New York, appeared with the Rockford Ballet, and ended up as that bovine in the Marriott’s production of “Gypsy” in the 1983.
Almost immediately after deciding to stay on in Chicago, Robin landed the national tour of Bob Fosse’s “Dancin’,” which he regards as his biggest break. After more than five years on the road (another tour of “42nd Street” followed immediately), Robin again returned to Chicago where he waited tables by day and performed in a variety of chorus roles in suburban venues by night, including several stints at the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse.
“Nothing ever fell into Marc’s lap,” says Weber, who first encountered Robin at the Candlelight. “He paid his dues and worked his way up through the ranks.” Through a lucky personal connection, Robin snagged a gig directing the long-running production of “Nunsense” at Chicago’s Wellington Theatre and he thus came to the attention of John R. Lazzara, owner of Drury Lane Evergreen Park. After hiring Robin to direct “Sophisticated Ladies” in 1996, Lazzara eventually offered him the job of artistic director in 1998.
At the point when Robin took over, Lazzara’s stucco-and-pink theater was in bad artistic shape. Largely ignored by the press and the first rank of Chicago talent, the longtime banquet hall and theater was showing its age.
“We’ve been a forgotten theater, the armpit of the community,” Robin said at the time.
But a loyal group of some 9,000 subscribers had stuck with the theater for years. And Robin’s widespread reputation for working well with actors helped attract bigger-name talent (the demise of Candlelight was also a factor). Standards began to rise. And good reviews and numerous awards followed for Robin’s memorable productions of “Hot Mikado,” “A Grand Night for Singing” and “All Night Strut.”
Although performing and choreographing has long been his primary focus, Robin wrote music in his youth. And so he created some original musicals for the Drury Lane’s children’s series, including a 1998 version of “Treasure Island” that featured some 20 musical numbers, an exciting plot and a proudly swashbuckling sensibility. It had clear potential to become a major, full-length work.
No one has plucked that treasure yet, but a personal contact led to Robin’s being commissioned last year by a London production company known as Stadivarios Productions to write a musical version of “The Addams Family.” After writing the first act, Robin was told that the rights to the property had been pulled, so it appears unlikely his work on the show will ever be seen. Still, he got paid and expects further commissions.
So will Lazzara and Chicago hang on to Robin in the future?
“I know he’ll always be loyal to this theater, but I’ve recently been trying to give him a little nudge,” says Lazzara. “He’s destined for Broadway and he should go and give himself a shot.”
But then Robin seems perfectly happy living in Berwyn with his longtime partner, Chicago-based actor Curt Dale Clark, and their four dogs. “It’s easy to work in a community in which you feel supported,” Robin says. “Besides, I don’t think my work is special enough for Broadway. All I can do is make tried-and-true material look fresh and new.”
If Robin manages to do precisely that with “Strike Up the Band” this weekend, he’ll have delighted his employer. And with Broadway revivals of classic musicals more popular than ever, his may be a more exportable set of talents than he thinks.
