John Rubinstein has had a life since his Broadway debut in “Pippin” in 1972. He won the Tony for “Children of a Lesser God,” played Tateh in “Ragtime,” among numerous other stage roles, and is recognizable from many movie and TV credits, including shows like “This is Us,” “Angel,” “Crazy Like A Fox,” “Desperate Housewives,” and more. He’s also a director, a professor, a composer, the son of the famed pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and the father of five, including actor Michael Weston.
And now he’ll be appearing in Jeff Cohen’s “The Soap Myth” at the Southampton Cultural Center, directed by Harris Yulin and with twice-Tony-nominated actor Bob Gunton. The play, about a Holocaust survivor who enlists the help of a young journalist in a crusade about a particular Nazi atrocity, is at the SCC for a three-week run, August 10 to 28.
But in our house Rubinstein is simply known as “Johnny Rubes,” a moniker dispensed by my stepfather, Tony Walton, who designed the sets for “Pippin” and snagged a Tony for it.
When my stepsister, Emma Walton Hamilton, and I decided it would be a good idea to lip-sync the entire album — playing all parts — for Rubinstein, he watched, he reacted, he applauded, and then went home and wrote up a review — pages and pages long — of the production he dubbed “Pip.”
It takes a special man to do something like that for a pair of pre-teen girls. It was a pleasure — it always is, actually — to catch up with Johnny Rubes.
“Pippin” was your Broadway debut. Here you are, the star of a Bob Fosse musical. Looking back on the 25-year-old Johnny, what are some of your thoughts on it now?
I am one of the rare individuals who got his dream to come true as a relatively young man. I wanted to be an actor. I lived in New York. I went to every Broadway show I could possibly go to, all the musicals and all the plays and the dramas from Europe, the British companies. I saw everything because in those days you could afford it on your allowance if you were just a kid.
So what did it feel like for you at that time?
I got sent the script. And then Bob came to my house and we read the script together, sitting on the couch. I had met him because there was a moment where Michael York wasn’t going to be able to do “Cabaret.”
And?
And, I had just done a movie for ABC pictures, which did “Cabaret.” They did only those two pictures, my movie, “Zachariah,” which was a Western with me and Don Johnson, and then “Cabaret.” And so the boss of ABC Pictures called me up and said, “Can you do an English accent?” I said, “Sure, no problem.” He said, “Because we’ve lost Michael York. And I want you to do a screen test for Bob Fosse.” So that’s where I met him. I had long curly hair and I tied it all back so that I looked more 1930s.
I did two scenes for Bob, and I think he was going to give me the part. And then Michael York fixed his schedule, and that was the end of that.
But…
But about nine months later, my phone rings. I’m sitting around with my wife at the time, Judi, who was very pregnant, and it’s Bob Fosse. “Can I come over and show you a script?” Judi had danced in his production of “Pal Joey” at City Center years before, so she knew Bob. We had a lovely dinner together.
Oh no, no — the first thing he said on the phone was, “Can you sing?” And I said, “Nah, well, I’ve done musicals and I do sing. But I would never say, yes, I’m a singer.”
And so then after dinner, he asked me to sing something, and I went to the piano and I loved Laura Nyro. She was my idol, still is. So I sang to him, two Laura Nyro songs. And then he had the script and we sat on our couch and I read the part of Pippin, and he read all the other parts. From beginning to end, the whole play. And then he left and Judi and I went to bed.
So we’re just about to turn out the light. We were watching this great program about the discovery of the Nile. And the door knocks, right there in our bedroom. I get up and I open it. It’s Bob. He hands me a cassette tape. And he says, “Learn the second song and come to New York in three days.”
The second song. That was “Corner of the Sky.”
“Corner of the Sky,” yeah. So I played the tape, and it was Steve Schwartz playing and singing all the songs in the show one after the other. Bob didn’t give me any sheet music or anything. So I learned it off the tape. I played it on the piano. I got it in my brain. And I flew to New York three days later.
I showed up at the Majestic and there was a line around the block, a wild consortium of aspirants and a few of us had appointments. I went in and there, shook hands with everyone, Bob, Stu Ostrow, Steve, Roger Hirson, then I went down into the pit, and I played my two Laura Nyro songs, looking up at them as they leaned over the pit. And then I went up onto the stage and they had an accompanist and I sang “Corner of the Sky” and the guy played. I don’t remember reading a scene with anybody. They all talked to each other and then Bob came running down the aisle and said, “Part’s yours if you want it.” Just like that. No agent, no nothing. I said, “Okay, I want it.” And he said, “All right, well then go to a gym and work out, would you?”
Hah! I remember little bits of things. I remember you losing a contact lens and it getting crushed in the set.
Opening night! Annie Reinking went berserk because she was sort of an overachiever. And there was a moment after the sex ballet thing where the whole cast is doing all this sort of gyration with their hands. Annie was overdoing her gestures and she poked my contact lens out of my eye. And I did the whole opening night show from that moment on with one eye that I could see through and the other one fuzzy, and it made me dizzy. But I never got off the stage, so that’s how it remained.
Do you feel like “The Soap Myth” resonates even more now in 2022? The whole idea of truth not necessarily being accepted as truth.
I don’t know if it’s more resonant. It’s never not been resonant because there have been Holocaust deniers since day one. It’s never changed. After the war, when all the atrocities were revealed, you still had your country clubs and golf clubs and men’s clubs and whatever the fuck places all over this country, which didn’t allow Jews.
I found this out on Wikipedia — your family was one of the first families to get stuff back from the Berlin Library, things that were taken during World War II.
The square where my parents’ house was in Paris — they left in 1939 because they knew what was coming — it was the headquarters of the Gestapo during the occupation. There were Picasso oil paintings of my dad. And there were manuscripts by Brahms and Beethoven and all of it is gone, gone, gone. And then the Berlin Library found a couple of things, but they were documents. They weren’t things great value. All the real stuff is gone.
I’m jumping around a lot, but getting to your father, the great pianist, Arthur Rubinstein. He got to see you in quite a few things. What was his opinion? He must have seen “Pippin.”
He did. He didn’t offer much of an opinion. I think he liked the fact that, hey, Johnny’s doing okay because he’s on the stage the whole time. And the name of the show is the character he’s playing. My mother said one thing when she came backstage after opening night. She said, “You really can jump high.” I said, “Yep.”
Do you know that while you are doing “The Soap Myth” at Southampton Cultural Center, they’re doing “Ragtime” at Bay Street? And you were Tateh. And Scott Schwartz, Stephen’s son, is artistic director. And Edgar Doctorow, who wrote the book of course, lived in Sag Harbor. And so did Terrence McNally! I don’t even have a question. I just find it so interesting that the older you get, the more connected everything seems.
Yeah. It is such a small world. It really, really is.
Tell me a little bit about your experience with “Ragtime.” What an amazing musical.
That has almost everything to do with Terrence McNally and Steve Flaherty and Lynn Aarons. Because that’s an impossible book to make a musical out of. And they did.
But anyway, “Ragtime” is one of the very few plays I did, where during the day I would look at my watch. “I wish this day would get done so I could get to that theater and start that show again.” I did it for a full year in L.A. at the Schubert then for five months in Vancouver and then another whole year on Broadway. And I couldn’t wait to do it again every single day. And I was so happy on Wednesdays and Saturdays, because we’d get to do it twice.
That’s so wonderful.
There aren’t a lot of plays that are like that, including “Pippin,” including “Children of a Lesser God.” I love them, I was grateful for them, but I would go, “Uh-oh, here we go. Got to pull this out of my ass one more time.” Not “Ragtime.”
And to me “Ragtime” is the musical, not “Phantom of the Opera,” not whatever else, that should be running in perpetuity on Broadway. That tourists go to see before they even check into their hotel. But no, it isn’t, because it was too difficult. Why? Because it deals with race and prejudice. We don’t like to deal with those things except every now and then in sort of protected circumstances.
Have you worked with Bob Gunton before?
I’ve known Bob for years. Around the quad, just meeting him at whatever. I’m not a big social Broadway guy, but every now and then I’ve been at a thing or an award ceremony or something. And there’s Bobby. He’s always there. The night I won the Tony for “Children of a Lesser God,” that was “Evita” night too. He was nominated. Mandy [Patinkin] won over him. I’ve seen him at things over the years, but I’ve never gotten to work with him. So that was one of the main things that made me decide to do this soap thing, because he was in it.
Have you worked with Harris Yulin before?
No, I’ve never met him and I’ve always loved him. So those were the main draws for me. It’s a weird play. I’m looking forward to it.
For more information about “The Soap Myth,” visit scc-arts.org.
