Mitchell Jarvis makes Broadway Debut in ROCK OF AGES

Mitchell Jarvis on Opening Night

Running The Bourbon Room (and, to a large measure, the show) is a character named Lonny — think the Our Town Stage Manager-on-speed — and he is played with humor and energy to spare by a Broadway-bowing Mitchell Jarvis, who did the part when the show switched coasts and opened at New World Stages five months ago.

"Lonny's like a post-modern master of ceremonies," Jarvis offered by way of an explanation. "He's an outside eye looking in and commenting on the piece while it's going on. That allows us not to take the piece too seriously, but, at the same time, we don't make fun of ourselves, either. We chose a very fine line, and I think it reaches both the audiences that are theatregoers primarily and the more bridge-and-tunnel crowd that don't come to see a lot of Broadway theatre. It tows a really nice line, and I think we can reach both sides. You really have to feel out your audience from night to night, and it's different every night. That's what's fun about it. It's just really cleverly put together. It's a well-constructed satire."

For a new kid on the Broadway block, Jarvis makes a lot of surprising physical-comedy moves. "I got into all this very late in the game. I was a basketball player growing up, so I bring a lot of my athleticism to my work in the theatre, which is a lot of fun — especially with a role like this. There are really no rules. I create him from the ground floor and kinda really make him me. He's kind of a concoction of all of my favorite pop-culture icons growing up — Will Ferrell, Chris Farley, Jack Black — I bring all my favorites to the table. It's sort of a hot fudge of all those guys."

There have been, he can attest, changes going the two blocks from Off-Broadway to Broadway — "a few more bells and whistles, a little more money, a little better sound design, a larger house" — and, most tellingly, the show kids itself about where it now finds itself: At one point, trying to wrap up Act One, Jarvis steps center stage and consults a book: "Broadway Musical Theatre for Dummies." "That's very much the experience of putting this show together," he admitted, "the blind leading the blind, just a lot of really funny people in a room trying to figure out what this story is. The show doesn't take itself too seriously. It knows what it is. It knows what its place is."

-- from Playbill.com