A late Broadway musical debut
Southland stage actor Dakin Matthews will play trainer Mickey in ‘Rocky the Musical.’
Dakin Matthews, one of Southern California’s most admired stage actors, is headed to Broadway as Mickey, the crusty trainer played by Burgess Meredith in the first three “Rocky” movies, in “Rocky the Musical.”
“I’m making my Broadway musical debut at the age of 73 — it’s a kind of interesting career arc,” Matthews said in an amused tone from his home in North Hollywood.
Matthews said he’ll be reporting to the gym — make that the Winter Garden Theatre — on Dec. 18 to begin rehearsals. The show begins previews Feb. 11 and opens March 13.
Matthews is accustomed to carrying plays by Shakespeare, Shaw and Molière, and he once played Alfred Hitchcock at South Coast Repertory. He co-founded the Antaeus Company, the North Hollywood classical ensemble, in 1991. But singing roles? There have been a few, Matthews said, but none he could recall in Southern California. “I’m an OK singer,” Matthews said.
He admits he was beyond skeptical two years ago when director Alex Timbers, for whom he’d previously done a reading of another play in New York, invited him to play Mickey in a twoweek workshop of “Rocky.”
“I thought, ‘That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, how can you make a musical about that?’ ” Matthews recalled. “Then I did the workshop, and it worked.”
Primarily backed by Stage Entertainment, a European theater production company, “Rocky” was originally written in English, then translated into German for its initial stage iteration. “Rocky: Das Musical” opened a year ago in Hamburg and is still running, having knocked out critics as well as audiences.
Andy Karl and Margo Seibert had previously been announced as Rocky and Adrian. Along with Matthews, Danny Mastrogiorgio, playing Adrian’s brother, Paulie, and Terrence Archie as Apollo Creed were announced Tuesday in the other principal roles.