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Chatting with the Cast of MCC's THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE!
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Nov 7, 2022
Dave Thomas Brown, recently of Heathers: The Musical at New World Stages, leads a cast that also includes Wayne Duvall (O Brother Where Art Thou?, Leatherheads), Matt McGrath (Cabaret, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Keith Nobbs(Lombardi, 'The Black Donnellys') and Afton C. Williamson ('Nashville,' 'Homeland') will star in Matthew Lopez's The Legend of Georgia McBride, the first production of MCC's 2015-16 Main Stage Season.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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MCC Theatre kicks off their 2015-2016 main stage season with the new Matthew Lopez play, The Legend of Georgia McBride
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which begins performances on August 20th. And we're here at Therapy where we caught up with the company
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How excited are you to be in New York with your new play? I am incredibly excited to be here
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I'm excited to be at MCC and to be bringing this play to New York
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especially on Christopher Street, which is just where it all began, you know
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And so I'm looking forward to a lot of fun. I think hopefully if we've done our jobs correctly
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everyone on stage, off stage, in the audience, is just going to have a blast
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We're having a blast so far working on this play. I heard already the first day the read-through was incredible
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You guys were up on your feet the second day, heels and everything. We were in heels on day two
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As a matter of fact, we were. We cannot lie. Yeah, we have this amazing cast who is just a bunch of thoroughbreds
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thoroughbreds. And I think they were just already on day one. They wanted to get up. They wanted to
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play. And so we just decided to just go crazy and just let them do that. So we started staging the
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play on the second day, which is unheard of. And I don't know, why not? Let's just get in those
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heels and let her rip. Take me back to the beginning. How did you come about to write the play
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So when I was a teenager, I used to sneak into the local gay bar in my hometown of Panama City
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Florida and I was taken under the wing of the drag queens there and I would hang out with them
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in their dressing rooms and watch them get ready and so my introduction to drag was always
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from the inside out. My understanding of drag came from walking in with no makeup on
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walking in with no padding on and begin that process of becoming a drag queen and then I would
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scurry around to the front and watch them perform. And so my understanding of drag has always been about the doing of it
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And so I wanted to honor that experience and that memory of watching drag queens in their dressing room get ready for a show
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And I wanted to create the world's unlikeliest drag queen, which in my play is a straight redneck Elvis impersonator
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The first time we read it we fell in love with it It was just so funny but had such a heart to it And really like surprisingly dealt with some real issues about authenticity and family and how you create a family
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And, you know, what it means to step into someone else's world
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And it was very powerful. And this cast you've assembled. Well, they're a dream, aren't they
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They're so ugly, I mean, but, right? No, I got to tell you, we went through a real process
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especially finding Dave Thomas Brown, who I adore. He's so amazing. And we put him through the ringer on this, including a major dance call
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I think he probably lost six pounds just doing the dance call
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but he nailed it, and he's just a dream to work with. He's so beautiful and so charismatic
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and wait till you see him in a wig. I first fell in love with Matthew
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because of a play of his called Reverberation. When I first moved to New York and signed with my agents
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they gave me a stack of plays to read and one of those plays was Reverberation
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And I was like, this guy, this is the guy, this play is incredible, I want to know him
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It took another three years before I got to meet him, but I, from that moment, was like
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this is a writer I know I love. And this play, The Legend of George McBride
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But it's an incredibly joyous piece of theatre. It's incredibly open-hearted and fun
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And I feel like it's rare you get to work on something or be in the room with something
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that is really grappling with a gritty, real, bleak world, but that is so joyous in how it deals with that world
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Dynamite cast. Incredible cast. We're three days in right now, and it's been like the three best days of my life
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I'm having a great time. When you started to read the play, what attracted you to Matthew's writing
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Just the humor of it. Juxtaposition with really the heart. He's really good at driving the story, but taking detours that are hilarious
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And working with his cast so far, they're like in heels already, right? Yes, honey, they're already in heels
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We had a two drag workshop a couple of weeks ago and we started to get them in their bodies and you know the shoulders and the back and all that stuff pulling from their mom or their sister or you know rock icons that they love
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Talk about the role that you play. So I play Ms. Tracy Mills. Bobby is my character's real name. My persona is Tracy Mills
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And I end up teaching the lead character how to do drag, how to perfect his act when he's kind of thrust into it
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He enters into his foray into the Technicolor world of drag is kind of impromptu
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and it's a surprise to him and to all of us, but he has to go on and the show has to go on
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and it's really kind of funny how it happens, how it unfolds
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It's so much fun. Who do you play? I play Eddie, who owns the club, who's this dilapidated club
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I have an Elvis impersonator, it's my only thing, and it's going down the tubes
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I bring in my cousin Bobby, who says he's got a drag act
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and from there the legend of Georgia McBride is built and my club flourishes and it's a beautiful thing
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Tell me what you love about Matthew's writing, what you love about this play. The writing of Matthew, he's so truthful about the situation
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He's from Panama City, but he's so funny and it just comes from a natural place
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And this world that nobody really knows a whole lot about unless you're in it already is opened up for everyone
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to like embrace and it's such a beautiful piece. So when you read the play what did you admire the
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most about his writing and what attracted you to the role you're getting ready to play? It's an interesting thing it's like the play is about you know I play a drag queen whose name is
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Rexy and getting to do that and I feel like at different points in my life I might have been like
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oh that sounds fun I don't know heels sequins and this time doing it I was like let's do this like
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let's tell the story of these people. But what's interesting about it is it's not necessarily like
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New York drag queens. This is a story that takes place in Florida. These are people with not a lot
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of money. So it's a lot of those people in the Midwest or the South who don't necessarily have
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a lot of options trying to find their greatest self trying to discover themselves Who do you play I play Joe My husband is the infamous Casey And he is this well I a little biased but he is this super talented charismatic
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young guy who is finding his way. And that's what always happens
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They don't know you're finding your way when you're finding your way. So it's a coming of age story for every character because I think everybody evolves
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It's not just a story of Casey fingering it out. They all figure out how they work in this together and how life is affecting them
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And they grow from that. And it's so cool. He's an Elvis impersonator who is this amazing musician at heart first
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I mean, this is one of those roles that comes by and you're just like, how did I get so lucky
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It's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of gig, and I'm so desperately excited about this show
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Okay, so you got the script. Tell me when you read it, what went through your mind
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What went through my mind was making sure I reread it and made sure I was playing the character that was playing the straight guy in drag
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And I was. And I was very excited about that. And I told my girlfriend about it
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And she was like, oh, that sounds interesting. And it has just gotten better since then
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I mean, it's just gotten more and more exciting as I've gotten to dig into this script
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And it ever evolves as we're working on it. And like I said, there's no greater part than getting to sort of play like a bumbling kid who becomes this elegant woman
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So it's really exciting. Tell me who he is and who she is
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Great. So Casey is just one of those guys who's got a lot of energy and a lot of excitement for what he does
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He does this Elvis impersonation at this dive bar in Florida. And it's just not working
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and he's trying so hard. And after a series of crazy events
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he becomes the greatest straight drag queen in Florida. And this journey for him is about sort of discovering
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things he never thought he'd do and the artist he never thought he was going to be or was
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In addition to being this straight guy with a pregnant wife with no money and this is the only thing he can do
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And so when you're faced with extreme circumstances, sometimes you end up in a dress on stage in a wig
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