The American actor Bronson Pinchot plays half of the 15 characters in Irish playwright Marie Jones’s comedy Stones in His Pockets, a theatrical tour de force he shares on tour with Irish actor Tim Ruddy. Jones wrote the play, which won London’s Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best Comedy and three Tony nominations for its 2001 Broadway run, to spoof the American film companies that have descended on Ireland over the decades to shoot their skewed versions of the local culture. One of the characters is described as "the last living extra from The Quiet Man," the John Ford classic filmed in Galway in the early ’50s.
"What’s good about Marie," says Pinchot, "is that she takes the mickey out of everyone: how the Irish sell the Irish cliché, the Americans who are desperate to connect to their Irish background, and the Dubliners who talk down to the rural types." The California-born, Yale-educated actor is speaking by phone from London, where he’s finishing brush-up rehearsals for the tour that will bring him to the Shubert Theatre for two weeks beginning this Tuesday.
Turning from one person to another on stage, sometimes in the course of a single breath or gesture, is nothing new for Pinchot, who’s best known for his role as Balki Bartokomous, the Myposian immigrant he played on the 1986-1992 TV sit-com Perfect Strangers. A veteran of Fully Committed, the Becky Mode comedy set in a posh New York restaurant where a single actor plays 37 parts, Pinchot says, "It’s easy, once you get rolling. After a short period of time, you get the characters in your body. You just pop into it without thinking."
Assuming the proper accent for Stones, in which two extras play everyone on the set of the movie, was also no challenge because Pinchot went to the source. His primary character in the play is Charlie Conlon, an out-of-work bloke from Ballycastle, which is in the far north of Ireland, on the Antrim coast. Charlie has traveled cross-country to County Kerry, where he snares the three-week gig as an extra on the American film, complete with catered meals and £40 a day.
Before his initial rehearsal period, Pinchot moved into the real Ballycastle to perfect the accent of a northern Irishman. He lived in the small village ("about as big as your thumb") for two weeks and made the hour-and-a-half commute to Belfast for rehearsals. "First I made friends in the village for a week, and then I asked them if I could carry a tape recorder, pin on a body mike, and listen. They got into it and tried to help me. I picked a specific person whom I liked for the timbre of the voice and modeled myself after him. There’s dozens and dozens of Irish accents, just as there are dozens of American accents."
An actor who comes trailing a string of film and TV credits, along with his stage experience, Pinchot is committed to the Stones tour through mid March, when he goes into a film. He says he likes "theater for the sheer camaraderie and excitement, film for the intimacy of the camera, and television for the opportunity to come into millions of people’s living rooms. They are all about connecting." Stones in His Pockets will be at the Shubert, 265 Tremont Street in the Theater District, December 3 through 15. Tickets are $35 to $65; call (800) 447-7400.
NOT THE NUTCRACKER. As a family-friendly holiday alternative, check out Beauty and the Beast, which also opens this Tuesday (December 3), for a six-week run at the Colonial Theatre. Its visit marks the third time the hit Broadway show based on the Disney animated film has played Boston, complete with its dancing tea cups, charming but hairy Beast, and bookworm heroine Belle, whose kindness is matched by her courage. The producers assure us that this touring production comes with all of the spectacle and the special effects that have kept the show running on Broadway for eight years. The Colonial is at 106 Boylston Street in the Theater District, and Beauty and the Beast will be there through January 4. Tickets are $25 to $72; call (617) 931-2787.
