A play has been rehearsed and mounted: the musical Urinetown, which the venerable but currently homeless Interact Theatre Company is performing at the Matrix Theatre. John Rubinstein -- the company's former president and frequent creative "john"-of-all-trades -- is serving as music director and performing the despotic corporate magnate Caldwell B. Cladwell. It's a great role in a clever, edgy play. Rubinstein, who saw his good friend John Cullum originate the role on Broadway, knows he's got a plum, and he is utterly delighted to sink his teeth into it. "My Cladwell would eat people alive if he could get away with it. He would chew on their legs," Rubinstein says. "I do love the character. He's so completely horrible."
Even with film- and television-acting credits numbering in the hundreds, even with the numerous film and TV projects he has written musical scores for, the fact that the Tony Award-winning Rubinstein is back performing live with Interact -- in a musical, no less -- means all is right in his world. "It's like butter for him to get up on a stage," says Rob Kahn, a Urinetown cast member and Interact's current president and artistic chair. "He's been doing this so long and has such an incredible knowledge of theatre and musical theatre; things come so naturally to him that others would have to work at."
"I just basically love being in the theatre," says the Los Angeles-born Rubinstein, who turns 60 in December. "Give me a mop and a broom, and I'll sweep the stage." The Acting Imperative
This might not have been the path chosen by the son of renowned concert pianist Artur Rubinstein. John Rubinstein began studying piano at age 4, traveled with his father, and contemplated a career as a symphony conductor. The joy of communicating a waltz by Chopin or a concerto by Rachmaninoff was, Rubinstein affirms, on par artistically with putting on a great play.
"My dad always said, and he was truthful, that he would have paid people to listen to him," says Rubinstein. "I watched him throw himself into each piece with his full heart and soul and mind and intellect and showmanship, not to display how amazing or brilliant he was but to give the audience an emotion, to make them feel that piece of music. "Having witnessed my father doing his work, and with all the great conductors and violinists he worked with, I saw what music was at its best," continues Rubinstein, who has conducted the Lodz Philharmonic Orchestra in Poland. "And I guess I didn't see that I was going to be able to do it as well."
Acting, on the other hand, was something he couldn't stay away from. Growing up in New York and attending St. Bernard's School -- where he would perform the works of Shakespeare, uncut, before eighth grade -- the young Rubinstein found his delight onstage and in the audience, seeing musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof or Stop the World -- I Want To Get Off upward of eight times apiece.
"I would see pretty much every single thing that opened," he recalls. "People would give me one ticket as a birthday or Christmas gift, back when tickets weren't $100. When something was sold out, I'd sneak in at intermission or go to the top of the balcony. And if I loved something, I'd see it over and over again, like a cartoon today."
He studied theatre at UCLA and made his Broadway debut in 1972, originating the title role in the Stephen Schwartz musical Pippin at age 25. He returned to Broadway in 1980 -- via the Mark Taper Forum -- to win best actor Tony and Drama Desk awards playing James Leeds, the teacher who falls in love with a deaf woman in Mark Medoff's Children of a Lesser God.
But performing itself would not be sufficient. In 1987, Williamstown Theatre Festival Artistic Director Nikos Psacharopoulos was looking to cast Rubinstein in the ensemble of Aphra Behn's swashbuckling Restoration comedy The Rover. Rubinstein read the play and didn't entirely "get it," but was intrigued enough to want to study the play from the sidelines. Upon learning that the production's original director had dropped out, Rubinstein told Psacharopoulos he would take the part if he could also direct the production.
"I expected him to say, 'No, no, that's impossible,' but he said, 'Okay,'" recalls Rubinstein, with a laugh. "He was a dear, dear man. But after the first day of rehearsal, with this huge cast and fencing matches and God knows what, I thought, 'No, this is my first professional directing job. I better get out of acting.'"
Rubinstein directed Les Liaisons Dangereuses the following summer at Williamstown. Shortly after joining Interact in 1993, Rubinstein directed himself for the first time in Elmer Rice's Counsellor-at-Law, first as a staged reading and later in full production. Double and in some cases triple dramatic duty followed, as Rubinstein directed himself and provided music direction in productions of Into the Woods (1996) and A Little Night Music (2001).
Nonglamorous Life
Mopping the stage floor? At Interact, he's done practically everything else. He has acted, directed, composed, and coordinated. He's been part of workshops and performances, Shakespeare through Mamet. He spent three years as the company's president and artistic chair. "With my influence, we started doing musicals," he says. "I made them do 110 in the Shade. Every single member of the company was in it. Even those who couldn't sing, I made them sing. It was great."
He quickly refutes, however, the idea that Interact projects are developed by Rubinstein with Rubinstein in mind. "I'm always worried that there's this notion that it's my company, that other members are part of the John Rubinstein company. That's not the case at all," he says. "I'm sort of a pusher. I get in there and say, 'Let's put on a play,' and whoever says that the loudest gets to put on a play."
Interact, as its members will confirm, is the type of theatre company that often slots a production based on the passion/sponsorship of one of its members. With Urinetown, it was company member Rona Benson who -- eyeing the role of Little Sally -- motivated the company to perform it, first as a benefit, then as a full production. Calvin Remsberg is directing, and Rubinstein declares himself more than pleased to simply be handling Cladwell and the music arrangements.
Rubinstein returned to Broadway on numerous occasions after Children of a Lesser God, earning a Drama Desk nomination for The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and stepping into productions of M. Butterfly and Ragtime. At one point, Rubinstein was shuttling between L.A. and New York to fulfill weekly duties on the series Crazy Like a Fox and weekend obligations on Broadway's Hurlyburly.
His TV credits include recurring roles on Family, Angel, and The Guardian. His films include 21 Grams, Red Dragon, and Mrs. Harris. He has also scored the movies The Candidate and Jeremiah Johnson, and the series Family and China Beach.
Despite his work on Broadway and at several regional theatres, if Rubinstein's going to act onstage in L.A., it will most likely be with Interact, no matter where the nomadic company happens to be putting on a show.
"It's sort of my family and my home, and I've been working with them so much that I have not been able to do much else," he says. "I'm an actor. I'll work for anybody who really wants me to work for them, and I do love Interact. But since it's nonpaying work, and since I do have three young children and two older ones, I have to make a living. So I put a lot of time and passion into Interact which, once done, I really don't have a lot of other time to do work for no money. I sort of have to hit the sitcoms."