How Darling Grenadine's Adam Kantor Got So Good at Playing Heartthrobs

Adam Kantor just might be Broadway’s go-to typecast for the dreamy hopeless romantic. In Next to Normal, he played Henry, the loner love interest who dotes over Natalie. In Fiddler on the Roof, he played Motel, the kind, humble tailor who falls in love with Tzeitel. And in The Band’s Visit, Kantor stood forever at a payphone, playing a dedicated romantic who waits longingly for his girlfriend to call him. “I think people just love to see me suffer through heartbreaking,” he laughed in a recent #LiveAtFive interview with Broadway.com's Ryan Lee Gilbert. “They love to see me suffer musically with a broken heart!”

Kantor isn’t going to shrug off that label anytime soon, though. In Darling Grenadine, Roundabout Theatre Company’s new off-Broadway musical, he plays Harry, a charming composer who meets a chorus girl and strikes up a complicated, unexpected love story. “It’s a very intimate love letter to New York,” he says of the show, which is written by Daniel Zaitchik with direction by Tony nominee Michael Berresse. “It has sort of an old-fashioned flair. Daniel has this affinity toward old movie musicals, so it has that flair to it. But then it sort of breaks through this veneer and gets at something really honest and raw. I think audiences are wanting that in musical theater more and more.”

Harry may come across initially as stoic but there's turmoil inside of him, said Kantor. “There’s a lot about Darling Grenadine that has to do with the ways in which we are stuck in ourselves,” he added, noting that the role has forced him to be similarly introspective.  “The greatest part and also the greatest tragedy of humanity is that we are only ourselves. We’re in our body and in our mindscape. I think approaching Harry really allowed me to do some of that work in myself, to think about the ways in which I feel sometimes stuck and the ways in which I feel blessed to be me.”

Kantor said he learned how best to approach a character from six-time Tony nominee Danny Burstein, who played Tevye in the 2015 revival of Fiddler on the Roof. “He didn’t come in with, ‘This is my Tevye! And these are the choices I’m gonna make!’ He felt what other actors were giving him, staying so open," Kantor said. "Growing up and training and acting, you hear, ‘Make strong choices’ a lot, and that is true to a certain degree. But then the other part is coming in with the mindset of, ‘I don’t know. I have no idea, and we’re going to figure it out!’—allowing yourself to not know what this performance will be. That’s the essence of what makes live theater so special.”

Watch the rest of Kantor's #LiveAtFive interview below.