Thomas stars in CLO’s ‘A Musical Christmas Carol’
He’ll always be known as JohnBoy, the role he played in “The Waltons” for nearly a decade in his 20s. But ever since, Richard Thomas has had a full career on both large screen and small. And more than that, first and last, he’s always been a creature of the stage.
“Theater is wonderful,” he says, “because there are these great roles — terrifying and satisfying — that others have played. … There’s something for you at every age.”
He laughs.
“It’ll carry you right into a pine box, right into Firs!” (the ancient servant who dies at the end of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”).
“It’s the mother art, the first, out of which all of them come. And it’s the ground, for me,” he says.
It’s how he started, as the son of ballet dancer/teacher parents, with whom he was often on tour and whose connections led him to childhood stage work.
“I was born in a trunk — almost literally,” he says.
That informs a big part of what he loves about theater, where the culture of the company of actors is like nothing else, “a kind of family. You all do it together.”
He was talking during a break in rehearsals for Pittsburgh CLO’s “A Musical Christmas Carol,” opening Friday, in which he plays the central role, Ebenezer Scrooge. If you wonder how John-Boy can play Scrooge — yes, he does still have that sweet, familiar look, if maybe several decades older — he is, in fact, actually old enough for Scrooge, and then there’s a wig and makeup.
For Mr. Thomas, playing Scrooge is no simple case of bringing TV and film fame to bear on a classic stage role. He has been a real stage pro ever since he made his pre-“Waltons” Broadway debut at age 7. And a surprising amount of his stage work has been in the classics, for which he clearly has an affinity, just as they seem to have an affinity for him.
Indeed, Mr. Thomas has now logged six decades of returning regularly to the stage, much of that in the work of classic playwrights such as O’Neill, Chekhov, Shaw, Beckett and especially Shakespeare, and in classic plays such as “Danton’s Death,” “The Front Page” and “The Little Foxes” — the last, his most recent of a dozen Broadway roles, for which he was nominated for a Tony.
More specifically, his passion for the tradition of theater has led him to play such classic roles as Peer Gynt, the Count of Monte Cristo, Richard II and Richard III, Iago and, of course, Hamlet — nothing’s classier than that. In seeking out the great roles, he’s gone far beyond Broadway to do national tours, such as the Henry Fonda role in “12 Angry Men,” which played Pittsburgh in 2007, and to regional theaters, from the Hartford Stage in Connecticut to the Old Globe in San Diego and, now, Pittsburgh CLO.
Scrooge himself is a classic role, one played by a long roster of greats, wielding the rich language of a classic author. And “Christmas Carol” is special fun for Mr. Thomas, he says, because of its child actors: “Being a recovering child actor myself, seeing them work, their avidity is so moving to me. I see myself in these rehearsal rooms.”
That Broadway debut at age 7 was in “Sunrise at Campobello,” playing the youngest Roosevelt. He made his TV debut a year later in a heavy-duty classic, Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” with Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer. He never had any theater schooling, but he had intense apprenticeships in the presence of great actors.
In fact, he points out that back then, when TV drama was mainly live, it was “fabulous training,” not so different from the stage. Even soap operas contributed some training: “You had to learn to learn it fast.”
He realizes, of course, that the great success of “The Waltons” opened many doors for him. He watches with interest as Daniel Radcliffe navigates a similar career. Mr. Radcliffe will always be Harry Potter, but he’s working hard and successfully to build a solid stage resume.
Does Mr. Thomas have a bucket list of classical roles he’d still like to play? “More Chekhov,” he says. Maybe some day, he says with surprise at his own temerity, Falstaff. What about King Lear? “Lear is the whole bucket,” he laughs.
He considers himself lucky to be in the theater, “a world where people love what they’re doing.”
So he intends to keep doing it, “one brick on top of another brick,” he says.