Our Town's James McMenamin Gets Used to Playing the Good Guy
Age: “The same age as George at the end of the play.”
Hometown: Danville, Pennsylvania
Currently: Charming audiences (and onstage neighbor Emily Webb) as George Gibbs, the pride of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, in the hit off-Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.
Acting & Dating: Growing up in a small town in central Pennsylvania, McMenamin drifted into the Drama Club to attract the attention of a girl he wanted to go out with. “I got cast in some parts, she quit the club, and I stuck around,” he recalls. As a theater major at local Bloomsburg University, he met his future wife, Erin McMonagle, and got a boost from an alum named Jimmi Simpson (later the star of The Farnsworth Invention on Broadway). “He wrote me a resume and letter of recommendation to the apprentice program at Williamstown,” McMenamin says of the celebrated theater festival. Soon the young actor was on his way to the Berkshires for the first of four happy summers.
The World's a Stage: “When I was 20 years old, Williamstown was like the Disney World of theater,” McMenamin fondly remembers. “You’d be in rehearsal during the day, do a show at night, and you and your buddies would also be rehearsing or doing a late show. That was the first time I realized that people actually do this for a living!” One summer, he and then-girlfriend Erin shared the stage in Goldoni’s A Servant of Two Masters; they married in September 2008 amid jokes about the bride hyphenating her name to become McMonagle-McMenamin (she wisely chose not to).
If I Had a Hammer: How many actors are also experienced roofers? McMenamin’s survival jobs have centered on construction skills he developed while still in high school. “In Danville, Pennsylvania, your summer job is either going to be a labor job or a fast food job, and McDonald’s didn’t work for me, so when I was 16, I started roofing houses,” he says. “I had long hair and I was pretty big and strong, and these older guys, ex-rock ‘n’ rollers, put a hammer in my hand. I’ve done a little bit of everything: I’ve framed houses; I’m always painting something. I’ve got a tool belt that pays the rent when things get slow.” Recently, in fact, McMenamin was startled to discover that the Our Town set was built by a company he’s worked for several times.
Escape from the Dark Side: Before tackling ultimate good guy George Gibbs, McMenamin played a string of losers or, he prefers to call it, “guys who are dealing with issues.” He did two out-of-town stints as a young heartbreaker in Craig Lucas’ Prayer for My Enemy, played Crook-Finger Jake (“essentially a rapist”) in a Connecticut production of Threepenny Opera, a drug dealer in low-budget film and “a guy who beats up homeless people” on Law & Order: SVU. “Some of my buddies were giving me a hard time about all these guys who are bad or weird, and I said, ‘I may never play George in Our Town, but at least I’m getting to sink my teeth into stuff.’ Literally, that week, my agent called and said, ‘Do you want to go in for Our Town?’”
Deconstructing George: McMenamin has no illusions about the beloved character he plays in director/star David Cromer’s stripped-down production of the Thornton Wilder classic. “George is a little conceited,” he admits, “and he’s not the brightest candle on the cake. He’s like a big bumbling kid who doesn’t really know how to present himself. That’s all textually there—all you have to do is follow the guideline of the character Wilder has written.” Cromer, as the Stage Manager, and his cast deliver the famous text in a modern, matter-of-fact way. “David’s main push was to remove artifice,” McMenamin explains. “These scenes are slices of life, and he would say, ‘If we just have the conversations, it will be enough. The sum will be greater than the parts.’”
Isn’t It Romantic? One of the pleasures in this production of Our Town is McMenamin’s shy wooing of Jennifer Grace as Emily Webb. “The soda shop scene [in which George and Emily come to an understanding about their future] is one of the more romantic scenes ever written by an American playwright,” he declares. “I don’t think George realizes at the beginning of the scene that he’s basically going to ask Emily to marry him. There’s actually a fight before they make up in the soda shop, so it’s truthful and awkward and very romantic.” Four months into the run (amid rumors of a Broadway transfer), McMenamin adds that portraying George remains a joy. “I had no idea the audience response would be like this,” he says. “I hope we run for a year!”