Date: Fri 12-Apr-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-11

Quick Words:

Matt-McQuail-actor-Two-Rooms

Full Text:

(feature on Newtown actor Matt McQuail, 4/12/96)

On Stage, This Actor Lives In Another World

(with photo, dropquote)

By Shannon Hicks

In an quiet, unassuming home on Main Street in Newtown, somewhere between the

Monument and the flagpole, near the landmark Edmond Town Hall and the General

Store, lives quite a character - a writer, a former hostage, a doctor, an

obnoxious best friend, a mentally handicapped man and a caretaker. All in the

same body.

Actually it isn't as bad as it sounds, because the body belongs to Matt

McQuail - a father, a husband... and an actor. Matt McQuail lives in a

comfortable home with his wife, Patty, and two daughters, Mallory and Keilly,

and he divides much of his time between a full-time job as an account

executive and acting. The theatre bug bit Matt McQuail at a young age, and the

love for the stage has stayed with this talented thespian since.

Born in New York City and then raised in Newtown, Matt's father introduced

Matt to the theatre at an early age, taking his young son on special outings

the two shared. Matt's first Broadway show was I Do, I Do , which he saw when

he was around the age of ten.

"It was just the two of us, and I fell in love with the magic of Broadway,"

Matt recalled recently, sitting for an interview in the bright front-room of

his Newtown home.

Since those days of seeing others create characters on the stage, the young

impressionable Matt has matured into the adult actor that has all the

credentials: He has gone through life studying drama (he graduated Holy Cross

with a degree in English and a minor in drama) and honing his craft in

everything from regional theatre - including Country Players in Brookfield,

Danbury's D'ART group and TheatreWorks New Milford - and going on the road for

nine months in 1985 on the national tour of Doubles , with Robert Reed and

Gabe Kaplan.

He was nominated for a Carbonell Award after a compelling performance in the

role of Lenny - one of Matt's all-time favorite roles - at the Caldwell

Playhouse in Boca Raton, Fla. (but lost to Hume Cronyn, who was touring at the

time with The Gin Game ), and he gave an Emmy Award-nominated performance as

an alcoholic father in the television special, "Numb - Children of

Alcoholics."

Matt has also done a number of commercials and industrial films. He also

played a doctor on the NBC-TV daytime soap opera "Another World" in the late

1970s, when another up-and-comer was in the cast: feature film star Ray

Liotta.

"That was an experience. I used to look at Ray Liotta, and even then he'd be

signing autographs in front of the studios. I remember thinking `He's got

great eyes, but with that pock-marked face he'll never make it,'" Matt recalls

with a laugh. Liotta has since starred in a number of movies, with his "big

break" coming after he starred in the 1990 Martin Scorsese mobster drama,

Goodfellas .

"Needless to say, Ray made it," Matt said. "He did real well."

Matt hasn't done too badly, either.

Because he enjoys doing non-traditional plays, Matt finds he enjoys working

with TheatreWorks, a group based in New Milford. The group has been praised

through the years for taking on demanding, chancy plays like McKay's Toyer , a

two-character psychological thriller about a serial attacker (he does not kill

his victims, but leaves them paralyzed and unable to speak) nicknamed "Toyer";

Finn and Lapine's operetta Falsettos , a composite of two operettas exploring

the themes of Jewish neurotic anxiety, a young boy's approaching manhood and

the boy's attempts to cope with his father's quest for sexual identity; or

Harvey Fierstein's On Tidy Endings , which takes place in the apartment of a

man who has just died of AIDS.

These definitely are not your typical Neil Simon,

everybody-sing-and-the-world-will-be-beautiful fare. Then there was David

Mamet's take on the singles scene of the late 1970s, Sexual Perversity in

Chicago , which Theatre Works produced as a pair of one-act plays, coupled

with On Tidy Endings , in May 1994. Playing Bernie, the obnoxious, know-it-all

friend of the male lead, Matt McQuail had his first experience working with

the New Milford group, and with producer Richard Pettibone.

"I like doing different plays," Matt said. "I get tired of the Neil Simon

shtick, the farces many theatres can pigeonhole themselves with.

[TheatreWorks] is very professional, without being professional. It's a very

professionally-run group.

"They pick good plays; they're interesting plays," the actor continued.

"They're not necessarily audience-draw plays, but they're always well done.

You get so sick of the Neil Simon, the farce, the `Let's pull in an audience

kind of play.'"

For his TheatreWorks debut, Matt was rewarded by being called "dominating...

[giving a] self-assured performance... [with] aggressive cynicism..." in local

reviews.

Richard Pettibone directed Matt in Sexual Perversity , a role, Mr Pettibone

jokes, he thinks "Matt may have relished a little too much."

The most recent project Matt has undertaken is a double bill of Lee Blessing

plays with TheatreWorks. Performances wrapped up March 30 for Blessing's Two

Rooms , an emotionally-charged drama about a man who has been kidnapped and

held in Beirut. Matt was the lead male, Michael Wells, the kidnapped man. The

man's wife, Lainie, attempts to duplicate her husband's captivity by isolating

herself in a room in their home in the United States.

Matt's principal dialogue in this taut drama came in the form of monologues,

rather than the usual give-and-take between characters in most plays. For the

male lead the play is very interesting from an acting standpoint: In depicting

a hostage, a lot of the play for Matt's character is done blindfolded, which,

Matt says, "is an experience.

"I'm used to relating to the audience, which is difficult to do with a

blindfold on. As an actor," he continued, "it's a phenomenal exercise for me

because although I talk to my wife, there are some surrealistic scenes where

it looks like we're together but we're not, obviously, we're in each other's

minds."

Local critics gave the production a round of thumbs-up, with The Newtown Bee

declaring, "...the acting is uniformly excellent..." and "McQuail and

[Marilyn] Despres [in the role of the wife] are positively luminous in the

intensity of their feeling for one another."

Kristi Petersen played a reporter who sees an opportunity for a

career-building story and so befriends Lainie Wells during the crisis in Two

Rooms . This was her first time working with Matt.

"I have a great deal of respect for him," said the actress, who resides in

Bethel. "He's very easy to work with.

"I have watched him from the audience," she continued. "You can really see in

his eyes what he - his character - is going through. That's the sign of a good

actor. That's what's most interesting: when you can look at someone and know

what's going through their heads."

Matt does put a lot of work into becoming his characters, regardless of the

play he is working in. Being able to escape from real life, to take on the

form and life of another person for two hours, has always been one of the

biggest draws for Matt to acting.

"If I had my druthers," Matt says, "theatre is the media I'd always like to

perform in. Being able to vent my emotions and not be responsible for it,

because it's somebody else's writing... I can be in character and whether the

play is good or bad is irrelevant, because I didn't write it, it's just my

interpretation of how this character would be. That's kind of a release for

me.

"It's a hobby," Matt says. "It's an adrenaline. I love performing, I always

have.

"Unfortunately, it doesn't really pay the bills until you make it really big."

Which is why, like so many other actors, Matt devotes his weekday hours to a

full-time job before heading off to rehearsals at night. Particularly tricky

the last few months was rehearsing for one production, then presenting that

production while rehearsals began for the next at TheatreWorkr.

Direftor Richars Pettibone admits it was a lot to ask for on the part of the

crew who would be involved in the productions, especially those, like himself,

working on both plays.

"It calls for a lot of concentration," the director said early this week, "but

I wanted to keep the two Blessing works fresh in our audiences' minds."

Opening this weekend at TheatreWorks is the second of the back-to-back

Blessing dramas. Down The Road deals with a husband-wife writing team who goes

into the mind of a serial killer by conducting numerous interviews with an

inmate. As the writers, Iris and Dan Henniman, delve deeper into this project

- when ethics become involved - the couple begins to question themselves: Are

they simply relating terrifying events or are they asking readers to consume

rape, murder and mutilation as if they were consuming any other product of

society?

Matt McQuail plays Dan Henniman in the Blessing drama.

"They're really there to do a story and make a lot of money," Matt describes

the play. "The `road' is an imagery of how a serial killer's mind works."

" Down The Road is a frightening counterpoint to Blessing's Two Rooms ," says

the show's director. "Whereas Two Rooms portrayed the strength of the human

spirit through love and devotion, Down The Road provides a glimpse into the

depravity to which an individual can sink. Blessing's script also takes us a

step further by illuminating society's dark desire to be entertained by these

monsters."

The killer in Down The Road is being portrayed by Kevin Sosbe, an actor from

Danbury and a professional set designer. A graduate of WestConn, Mr Sosbe

first saw Matt McQuail when Matt played the son in Country Players'

presentation of Driving Miss Daisy three years ago.

"I found him very believable," Mr Sosbe says. The two actors met when they

were both cast in the D'ART production of Boys Next Door two years ago, and

were reunited when casting was announced for Down The Road .

"Really, I find he's a natural actor," Mr Sosbe added. "He's an actor who

tends to put audiences at ease. He's natural in a conversational environment,

and he tends to be very believable in the contemporary works I've seen him

in."

"He's a pretty good actor to work with," Richard Pettibone offered. "He comes

in with some of his own ideas, he listens to mine... Every once in a while we

clash... but he's a solid professional."

Kristi Petersen echoed some of Mr Pettibone's sentiments when she said,

"[Matt] gets along very well with people. He has his own way of sort of

interacting that's sort of interesting. He'll make lots of comments, but he's

never nasty.

"What's fun, too, about Matt is he can take a joke. He's good-natured. You can

tease him and he'll laugh right along with you, and I think that's why the

rapport with the cast [for Two Rooms ] was so good: You can horse around with

him and he's very good with it."

"Matt is very serious about what he does, and he immediately commands respect

because of that," Ms Petersen concluded.

While the idea of directing a play or two has certainly crossed Matt's mind,

he is content to remain the actor these days. He has "entertained the idea,"

he says, but knows it would ultimately leave him too frustrated to be

effective.

"There's enough work being in a play," said Matt. "It's very time-consuming.

And I'm there for the adrenaline.

"I guess an actor is someone who depicts life as a character, making the

audience understand what a character is like through your eyes. I like making

the audience laugh or cry."