Brian d’Arcy James received a hero’s welcome when he returned from Hollywood to the St. James Theatre on March 1. The actor, who is currently starring in the musical “Something Rotten!” at the theater was among the acting ensemble of “Spotlight” who clambered onstage at the Oscars on Sunday night when the movie was announced as the Best Picture winner. There was cake, a banner, a tiny imitation Oscar, and cheesy Hollywood decorations on the dressing room door of the actor, a three-time Tony Award nominee who is one of Broadway’s most popular performers. The St. James Theatre appears to be star-kissed. After all, the theater was the prime location for the film “Birdman,” last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, which starred Michael Keaton, who was also featured in “Spotlight.” Both Keaton and James were also among those included in the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Cast in a Motion Picture, which went to the cast of “Spotlight.”The 47-year-old actor is a protean and acclaimed talent, equally adept at musicals and drama, film and stage, contemporary plays and Shakespeare. His many roles include the title role in “Shrek, the Musical,” Bick in Michael John LaChiusa’s stage adaptation of the movie classic “Giant,” Banquo in a Lincoln Center Theater production of “Macbeth,” and Frank, Debra Messing’s husband in the TV series, “Smash.”James may be returning to series television since CBS has green lit a comedy pilot, “Superior Donuts,” based on the 2009 Broadway play by Tracy Letts. The actor stars as Arthur Przybyszewski, the disillusioned and taciturn proprietor of a Chicago donut shop struggling against gentrification. Coming to his aid is Franco, a young and troubled African-American whose ideas for upgrading the café are at first met skepticism and then resignation. When the play opened to mixed reviews, Charles Isherwood, writing in the New York Times, called it “…a gentle comedy that unfolds like an extended episode of a 1970s sitcom.”That may well have perked up the ears of Bob Dailey — the executive producer of Matthew Perry’s new series, “The Odd Couple” — who is writing and producing the pilot of “Superior Donuts” for CBS. Filming will commence later this month with an airdate presumably over the summer. Also starring will be Jermaine Fowler as Franco, and the comedian Maz Jobrani as Maz, a Iraqi-born and over-caffeinated entrepreneur who is pressuring Arthur to sell him the donut shop so he can develop high-priced real estate.Letts, the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “August: Osage County,” appears to have no involvement in the pilot or the potential series. He apparently stands to make quite a lot of money from the project if the series is picked up and is a hit — unlike Neil Simon, who sold the television and film rights of “The Odd Couple” for a flat fee in 1967, thereby sacrificing tens of millions of dollars. Little wonder that he told the press at the time how much he hated the show.Meanwhile, Brian D’Arcy James continues as Nick Bottom, the hapless competitor of “that hack,” William Shakespeare, in “Something Rotten!”, the musical that is anything but. When it opened last Spring, David Cote, writing in Time Out, opined, “If you didn’t already know what a smashing actor and singer Brian d’Arcy James is … here is a chance to see him carry a show with wit, fire and some impressive tap moves.”If “Superior Donuts” is a hit, the rest of the world will soon find out.
↧