Vibrator in Hand, Michael Cerveris Reflects on His Stellar Career

Playing the man who invented the vibrator might sound like the set-up for a comedy routine, but Michael Cerveris is seriously excited to be starring in the Broadway premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play. And, really, why should anyone be surprised that Cerveris would accept the rather daring role of a Victorian doctor who treats “hysteria” in women (and men!) with a certain hand-held electrical device? This is the actor who has shifted with ease between musicals and plays, Sondheim and Shakespeare. With one Tony (Assassins) and three more nominations that could deservedly have been wins (Tommy, Sweeney Todd, Love/Musik,), Cerveris is at the top of his game—and he’s finding mainstream fame, to boot, in TV’s Fringe and the new movie Cirque du Freak. A week into previews of Lincoln Center Theater’s production of In the Next Room, the actor settled down in his tiny Lyceum Theatre dressing room for a wide-ranging chat.

This play is so unusual, and it really packs a punch when you read it. [LCT hadn’t let press see the show at the time of this interview.]
I’ve loved the play from the moment I read it. I found myself in tears at the end. The writing is so smart, but it’s also so heartfelt. It’s the poetry of simplicity—finding unexpected beauty in mundane things. Everything about this experience has been blissful. I love every single person in the cast, and we have great chemistry and respect for one another.

What’s the play been like to perform?
It’s much more laugh-out-loud funny than I realized. But it also turns on a dime—you think you know where it’s headed, and it suddenly takes a different direction entirely. There’s a constant sense of surprise and delight, and you can feel the audience relax and trust that the play is going to take them somewhere meaningful. It sneaks up on you, and once you’ve got your defenses down through laughter, it starts to work on you emotionally.

So, you’re onstage at the Lyceum Theatre with a vibrator in your hand…
I spend a fair amount of time with vibrators, yes I do.

Is that weird?
Well, it’s become less weird, with practice, as I think women and men around the world probably know.

You also have a nude scene.
I hesitate to talk about it, because it’s just part of the storytelling. But I have felt all along that the vulnerability I experience is nothing compared to the vulnerability that the women in the cast and Chandler [Williams] go through in the vibrator scenes. That, to me, is a much more personal thing to share with an audience of strangers.

Your career has gone in so many different directions. For instance, I didn’t realize how many plays you’d done before starring in Tommy 15 years ago.
I never expected to do musicals. It was really a fluke. When I got out of college [at Yale], I immediately went into off-off-Broadway and regional theaters doing nothing but plays.

How did it not come out when you were doing King Lear with Kevin Kline that you starred in Romeo and Juliet with [Kline’s wife] Phoebe Cates 20 years ago?
Well, Kevin certainly knew, because that’s when I met him. They were about to get engaged when we started working on the play, and Kevin coached me during rehearsals when the director fell ill for a while. The three of us used to go out to dinner.

And [New York Times critic] Frank Rich gave you a rave!
Frank Rich gave me my first really big review, for a play I was doing in Chicago. What were the chances of that? And I got to meet [Public Theater founder] Joe Papp, because Kevin brought him out to see Phoebe, and that was a thrill.

It’s striking to realize that you were 32 when you did Tommy. Young actors today like Zac Efron think they have to be super-famous by the time they’re 22.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know who Zac Efron is [laughs] unless he’s related to Nora Ephron. But yeah, if I had gotten some of the things I auditioned for [early on], it would have been very difficult to end up having the career I’ve had. Different doors would have opened—certainly doors that could have paid me a lot more!—but I pursued things that were meaningful to me. Somehow, in spite of myself, I ended up in things like Tommy, which could have been a disaster artistically and financially but was entirely the opposite. Likewise, Sweeney Todd could have closed after the first preview, but I still would have felt it was one of the best experiences of my life. I feel the same way about this play. I’m kind of proud to have the label “stage actor.” There aren’t many people who get to a position in our business purely by working onstage.

At this point, can you pretty much have your choice of roles in the theater?
Not completely, because there are people from movies and TV shows who want to do things [onstage], and producers enjoy that. In fact, part of the reason I felt compelled to explore more work in TV and film is to maintain the place in the food chain I have now.

What are the three most challenging parts you’ve ever played onstage?
Hedwig [in Hedwig and the Angry Inch] was extremely challenging because it was such an outrageous, extroverted character, and I haven’t played many of those. But once the shell of the persona was created, it freed me up and felt like a very personal performance. Sweeney was incredibly challenging for a number of reasons. One, it was the first Broadway show I ever saw. I saw it seven times with Len Cariou and George Hearn, and it was indelibly etched on my mind. Thankfully, our production was so different, it helped me feel like I could start from scratch. But it’s a big, big, big sing, and keeping that dark place available for a year was really taxing emotionally. And Road Show was a challenge because, again, that character [Wilson Mizner] was so extroverted. It was also very enjoyable, because he had no qualms about the chaos he created.

What is Stephen Sondheim really like?
I don’t know who in the world could actually answer that question [laughs]. I’m pretty sure Steve would say he couldn’t tell you either. It’s funny—I’ve worked with him an enormous amount, I’ve been to his house and all of that, but I still think I know him best through what he’s written.

Can you relax around him?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It’s mostly my fault; he doesn’t do anything to make you feel small. It’s a combination of low self-esteem and heightened esteem of the other person that makes you think, “I don’t know what to say that he won’t think is stupid.”

Okay, let’s do a few “boxers or briefs” type questions, but a little more highbrow. First, new show or revival?
New show. But if it’s a revival that is done in a way that feels like a new show, that could be okay too.

Play or musical?
Oy. Actually, this is an easier question. I would say play. I have loved the musicals I’ve done. I will do musicals again, especially if Steve writes one, but they’re really hard and require a monastic existence that becomes difficult to maintain. But if it’s a musical that feels like a play…!

Hero or villain?
Hmm. Well, looking at my career, it would be a bad idea to say I don’t want to play villains [laughs]. I play a lot of them, and I try not to take personally that that’s how people see me. But I do enjoy trying to find the humanity in seemingly irredeemable characters. The truth is, I’ve always felt like an outsider and a freak in lots of ways, and so I connect with people on the fringes of the society.

Why did you feel like a freak? You’re from what sounds like a close family; you had a great education.
All of that’s true, but we moved around a lot when I was little. My dad would teach at different universities, so the first school I went through four years with my class was college. I was usually arriving or leaving mid-year, and I never belonged to any particular clique or group. I could be friends with the brains, the stoners, the jocks and the arty kids, but when the groups closed ranks, I wouldn’t be invited because I didn’t belong completely. Also my interests were so varied, and that’s still true today. I’m the guy doing a play and when the curtain comes down, I will rush downtown to some club to catch the last three songs of one of my favorite bands. At the same time, I’ll be the guy at the [rock]gig who’s also doing Shakespeare someplace. It’s the way my life has always been, but it means I’m always a bit of an oddball and a bit of an outsider.

Speaking of outsiders, has playing the Observer on Fringe been fun?
Fringe has been a blast. Talk about being a freak! In the episode where you really got to meet and know the character, there was very little information about whether I was a good guy, bad guy, human, alien—they hadn’t decided. At my first meeting with the wardrobe people, they said, “So, what does your character wear?” and I said “Don’t you know?” We came up with this timeless but stylish blue suit and fedora. His title, the Observer, gave me a starting point, and I based a lot of the physicality on watching [my dog] Gibson observe things; there’s a slight tilt to the head. The first director said, “You’re doing this dog listening thing. Let’s go with that!”

Your new movie, Cirque du Freak, opened strongly.
It was a blast for me to play this enormously fat character with all the prosthetics. I think that’s why [director] Paul Weitz wanted a stage actor, someone who could get a character through all those layers of silicone. Amazingly, I got the movie because Lauren Shuler Donner, one of the producers, knew Kevin Kline and came to see King Lear. She called my agents and said, “I think Michael should be doing films.” It’s the kind of thing you want to believe can happen—that you can be discovered for a movie by doing great work in classical theater—but you never think it will.

Did you think you’d get to this age [Cerveris turns 49 on November 6] and not be married?
No. I assumed when I was a kid that I would be married by 35, which I imagined would be ancient. And I thought I knew how that was going to happen. It’s turned out not to be the case, and it’s a little…[long pause] But I’ve figured out that I really want it to happen now. So hopefully it will.

You’re one of the most eligible bachelors in New York, unless there’s something I don’t know about.
No, there’s nothing happening at all. It’s me and my dog.

You must have girls throwing themselves at you.
Well, when you look at the characters I play, girls who would be throwing themselves at me based on what I do may not be the kind of girls I want to spend a lot of time with!

See Michael Cerveris in In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play at the Lyceum Theatre.