By all appearances, he lives a charmed life. He’s insanely talented and versatile. He’s been happily married for more than 25 years and has three grown kids. He’s wealthy and well-known. He’s surrounded by celebrity friends. So why then does Martin Short, in his new Broadway show FAME BECOMES ME, feel compelled to fabricate his life experiences for audiences every night?
“I’m trying to make my life more dramatic because I feel it’s too bland so I have to make up tragedy, pain, angst, childhood, drugs, rehabilitation,” says Short. “But instead of just talking about it, it’s all acted out in vignettes and songs.”
It should be said that his original production is decidedly not a confessional, soul-baring one-man-show. Rather, Short’s show is a full musical comedy featuring a supporting cast complete with production numbers recalling personal highs and lows that may – or may not have – actually occurred. Credit Short for at least making that much clear from the outset.
“I even say at the beginning ‘A lot of it will be true, a lot of it I will be making up. See if you can tell the difference. It will give you something to do,’” he states.
Collaborating with Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the gifted writing duo behind the bubbly, Tony-winning musical HAIRSPRAY, the idea for the show evolved from their collective desire to have fun and showcase the singing, dancing and comedic wit that have made Short a formidable stage performer.
“Marc, Scott and I have been friends for over 20 years,” Short says. “We just started off with ‘What would this show be? What’s the kind of show we would do? Wouldn’t it be fun to do a celebratory variety-type show?’ I have these Christmas parties in my home in Los Angeles every year, my wife and I, and people get up and perform. And we kind of thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to have a show like that?’ At one point I actually said to the guys, ‘Maybe I can’t do this because I don’t have any pain to talk about.’ And then we thought ‘A-ha! Maybe that’s the show.’”
Scores of eccentric and larger-than-life characters from his colorful career inhabit his diminutive frame, only to be unleashed for all-too-brief moments during FAME BECOMES ME. Mining creations from his years on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘SCTV,’ among other places, we meet the excitable, consummate nerd, Ed Grimley, zany lounge act Jackie Rogers Jr. as well as the corpulent and crass celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick. Short savors all of these, his best known roles, but you get the sense that Glick holds a special place in his heart.
“I’ve done so many characters over the years and for some of them, you really have to write them out in detail,” he says. “And some you can almost channel. Jiminy is a character that, for me, I kind of channel. I don’t really particularly know what I’m saying or plan much.” To illustrate Jiminy’s knack for the absurd, Short says that “If Jiminy was interviewing Bill Clinton, he wouldn’t ask him about Monica Lewinsky, he would ask him ‘Why doesn’t Shannen Doherty work more?’”
Behind the character parade and impersonations, the real Martin Short resides. It’s just unclear who that person is. Perhaps it’s safer to say that Short embodies a little of everything on display.
He claims that “There’s lots of real Marty there but at the same time I keep morphing into other forms of Marty, shall we say.”
There aren’t many people that could play so many roles for laughs and make it seem so effortless and natural. Perhaps that’s why, after all these years, Martin Short is destined for fame.
MARTIN SHORT: FAME BECOMES ME is currently playing the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. More information available online at www.martinshortthemusical.com.
By: Kirk Wingerson
