Comedic stage debut for TV actor
John Ross Bowie, best known as Sheldon’s arch nemesis Barry on “The Big Bang Theory” and superdad Jimmy DiMeo on “Speechless,” isn’t a big fan of downtime. A few days after wrapping Season 2 of “Speechless,” he was in rehearsals for a revival of Neil Simon’s “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” running through April 22 at the Garry Marshall Theatre in Burbank.
Bowie described theater as “multicamera sitcom acting without a net,” and “Laughter” is Simon’s look back on his stint as a writer on the 1950s variety series “Your Show of Shows.” Bowie spoke by phone for this edited conversation. You’re a few weeks into “Laughter.” How’s it going?
The play was written in 1993, set in 1953, so a lot of the references are not exactly of the zeitgeist right now. We have a Jack Benny joke. There’s a line about how foxy Lana Turner is. And it’s the only time in my career that I’ve ever peeked out at the audience and gone, “Oh, good, we got an old crowd.” The matinees have been phenomenal. So the demographics of theater is working for you.
There’s such a sweet nostalgia running through the play — and also kind of a dark nostalgia, because there’s a lot of talk about [Joseph] McCarthy and the blacklist, and it makes it both a wonderful time capsule and a cautionary tale for 2018. McCarthy was going after the entertainment industry and segments of the mainstream media that he felt were a threat to the republic. And that doesn’t appear to go out of style. This is your professional stage debut? That’s correct. Neil Simon is sort of the Rosetta Stone for sitcom acting. He didn’t create those rhythms, but it can be argued that he perfected them. You hear his cadence in “Big Bang Theory.” Did you research “Your Show of Shows” writer Tony Webster, the real-life model for your character?
I did. He went out to California and wrote some of the less impressive work that TV was putting out in the ’60s, like “Car 54, Where Are You?” His last credit was “Love Boat.” Instead of taking a massive chance on his own work the way Reiner or Brooks did, he just glommed on to whatever sitcom would pay him. I’ve been a journeyman actor for 16 to 17 years now, and I understand the urgency.