Cariou, accompanied by pianist\/music director Mark Janas, stresses that it his show is a an evening of true theater on every level.<\/b>
\n\u201cWords and music by\u201d is a phrase not generally associated with the works of William Shakespeare, but for Tony Award-winning Broadway veteran Len Cariou, it\u2019s a match made in heaven.
The 78-year old actor, currently starring on the small screen in the hit CBS series \u201cBlue Bloods\u201d opposite Tom Selleck and Donnie Wahlberg, has crafted his new one-man show combining selections from Broadway musicals with soliloquies and sonnets by Shakespeare in the aptly titled \u201cBroadway and the Bard: An Evening of Shakespeare & Song.\u201d The production arrives June 6 and Stage 773 for a five-night run.
\u201cIt\u2019s taken me 40-some years to get this show together,\u201d Cariou says with a chuckle. \u201cIt goes all the way back to my playing \u2018Henry V\u2019 in 1969 [his Broadway debut]. Then six months later I did [the Tony Award-winning] \u2018Applause.\u2019 That\u2019s really when I began to realize what a great connection there was between the works of Shakespeare and these great musical numbers.\u201d
The 80-minute show, which debuted Off Broadway in 2016, takes audiences on a journey through Cariou\u2019s love affair with the Bard \u2014 everything from \u201cRichard II\u201d and \u201cJulius Caesar\u201d to \u201cTwelfth Night\u201d and \u201cTaming of the Shrew\u201d \u2014 and musical comedy. (Cariou prefers to keep the roster of work to himself to the extent that programs are handed out when patrons exit the theater).
Len Cariou stars are retired police chief Henry Reagan on the CBS Friday night series \u201cBlue Bloods.\u201d | \u00a92018 CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Same for the musical selections, though he does reveal the show\u2019s opening combo of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cTwelfth Night\u201d paired with \u201cLove, I Hear\u201d from Sondheim\u2019s \u201cA Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum\u201d and \u201cFalling in Love with Love\u201d from Rodgers and Hart\u2019s \u201cThe Boys from Syracuse.\u201d He also admits the inclusion of \u201cIf I Ruled the World,\u201d from the rarely staged \u201cPickwick\u201d (by Wolf Mankowitz, Cyril Ornadel and Leslie Bricusse) and the title song from Sondheim\u2019s \u201cApplause\u201d (the perfect complement for \u201cHenry V,\u201d Cariou explains). What you will not hear is anything from his most critically acclaimed performance, the title role in Sondheim\u2019s 1979 \u201cSweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,\u201d for which Cariou received a best actor Tony Award.
\u201cThat\u2019s too easy, too expected,\u201d Cariou says with a chuckle. \u201cI have Bernstein, Cole Porter, and Sondheim. Just not Sweeney.\u201d He does include a selection from another 1970s Broadway Sondheim triumph, \u201cA Little Night Music\u201d (Cariou also starred in the subsequent film version).
Cariou, accompanied by pianist\/music director Mark Janas, stresses that it his show (directed by Barry Kleinbort) is a an evening of true theater on every level. \u201cThe Shakespeare is acted; this is not just a reading,\u201d he says. \u201cCombined with the music it\u2019s like 17 little one-act plays.\u201d
He eventually met Canadian John Hirsch, the director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre, who would become Cariou\u2019s mentor \u201cand theater father,\u201d the actor says quietly. \u201cHe gave me the best theatrical advice,\u201d Cariou says of the late impressario. \u201cHe told me, \u2018you have to promise me that you will take the high road if you\u2019re truly interested in doing the classics. But never give up on the musicals.\u2019 And that\u2019s what I did.\u201d He credits Hirsch with engineering his entre to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the prestigious Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada.
His theatrical work also extended to Chicago, where he arrived with the national tour of \u201cCopenhagen\u201d in 2002, opposite Mariette Hartley and Hank Stratton. Years earlier, he starred as Iago opposite James Earl Jones\u2019 Othello at the Goodman School of Drama.
\u201cWe became good friends during that run,\u201d Cariou says of Jones. \u201cIn fact, I took him to his first hockey game; Montreal was playing Chicago at the old Stadium. I was the only guy cheering for Montreal, you see, and three or four guys did not take took kindly to that,\u201d he continues with a chuckle.\u201d Amid glares and some not too kind words after the game, Cariou said he and Jones did what anyone would have done: \u201cWe ran like heck outta there,\u201d he says laughing.<\/p>\n

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