to Theatre and Stayed

Adam Pascal and Olivia Valli in Pretty Woman The Musical. Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade.

ADAM PASCAL

The Rock Star Who Came to Theatre and Stayed

STORY BY

Keith Loria

Having spent the past 25 years appearing on Broadway stages and in theatres around the country—half his life!—Adam Pascal has come to grips with what once would have been a sad reality—“My days of wanting to be the front man for a rock band are over!” he said.

That declaration was hard for the 50-year-old to admit, considering becoming a rock star was all he aspired to in his younger days. Pascal began playing in bands when he was as young as 12. He remembers playing at the now-defunct Rumrunner club in Oyster Bay, NY, at just 13.

“Being out there with a band is not something that I have any real interest in now,” he said. “Writing original music is not something that has been at the forefront of my career for a while and as my career has progressed, the desire to write songs has waned. I don’t see myself back with a band…however, if Stone Temple Pilots called me up and said they needed a singer, I would do that in a heartbeat.”

Without You

That realization was not the only life change Pascal has made recently. During the pandemic, he and his wife of 22 years decided to split, and the oldest of his two sons went off to college. So, Pascal found himself alone for the first time in decades. He also retreated from Los Angeles back to Long Island where he grew up and started making plans for the future.

“That added a whole other level of unpleasantness with dealing with the pandemic, but I just tried to get by day to day and figuring out what I could do to make any kind of money and the skills I could use to pivot during this time,” he explained. “I started doing a lot more teaching, I did a ton of Cameo shout-outs, and I tried to do as much as I could remotely.”

What he didn’t do was obsess about trying to be creative or maintain a level of artistic expression. Pascal wasn’t interested in writing a “COVID album” and doesn’t really want to hear anyone else’s either, because he really just wants to erase this time period from his memory.

Hot Stuff

Pascal currently stars in the national tour of the Broadway musical adaptation of Pretty Woman, playing rich businessman Edward Lewis, a role he briefly played on Broadway in 2019 during Andy Karl’s vacation. Based on the hit 1990 romantic comedy that starred Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman follows a star-crossed meeting between a sex worker and a disillusioned businessman. While the beloved film made a star out of Roberts, some in the theatre community didn’t feel its message really worked for a 21st century audience at the height of the Me-Too Movement and women empowerment.

“The subject matter is tricky and certainly in the times we are living in now and where our culture is, it’s a very delicate tightrope to walk and tell this story in 2021 as it was then when things were not nearly as PC as they are today,” Pascal said. “People know what Pretty Woman is and know what to expect. No one is coming to see the show that doesn’t know the movie. I would hope no one would come to the show and be offended. If it was made today, it would be different, but this is the movie and it’s what people want and it’s what they are getting.”

The musical was co-written by the film’s director, the late Garry Marshall, and screenwriter J.F. Lawton, with music by Grammy winner Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance.

This is Pascal’s third national tour, following successful showings as William Shakespeare in Something Rotten! and of course, Roger, the role that made him famous, when Rent toured in 2009.

Although in his past experiences on tour, he’s found time to do some solo concerts here and there, he’s not sure that’s in the cards this time around. “Eight shows a week is very taxing on the voice, and this is the lead role, so

Adam Pascal (center) as William Shakespeare in Something Rotten! (2015).

it’s a lot on my voice, so I’m really going to need those nights off,” he said. “I can’t imagine wanting to do any singing on my days off.”

Acting Through Song

Teaching has been a blessing for him, and he first started his “acting through song” classes at UCLA and he’s been doing master classes and original coaching over the last couple of years. “I love teaching,” Pascal said. “It’s actually given me a bit of a directing bug and I would like to think that directing something on stage is sometimes in my future.”

In 2021, Pascal performed a series of virtual shows and toured a bit with an acoustic retrospective about his life—appearing weekly at New York City’s famed 54 Below nightclub for a few months. “I play a lot of stuff from the shows I’ve been in and I like to tell stories of things that have happened to me that tie into the song I am about to play,” Pascal said. “It’s a great post-pandemic type of show because venues are looking to have content, and because the show is just me, it’s certainly safe. I just show up, plug in my guitar and go.”

The show includes songs from most of the Broadway shows of which he’s been a part, with stories about how he became involved in each, and the audition songs he sang for most, including Billy Joel’s “Vienna” for Aida and U2’s “Red Mill Mining Town” for his original audition for Rent.

One Song Glory

Most fans know the story about his being cast in the 1996 Tony Award-winning musical Rent, the show that would forever change the direction of his life. Pascal grew up down the street from Idina Menzel and she recommended her longtime friend when they were holding open auditions for Jonathan Larson’s masterpiece.

And Pascal admitted, he almost blew his shot at becoming Roger, a role that would earn him a Tony Award nomination. Having never auditioned for any sort of musical theatre before, he went in, sang, and was asked to learn a song from the show and come back the next day. This happened to him three more days in a row, and finally, frustrated about the process, he told them that if they didn’t know enough about him by now, he wasn’t coming back for more.

A phone call from Menzel, who was already cast as Maureen, straightened him out. Pascal describes the call as his being “chewed out” and “yelled at” by his friend, who told him the part was as good as his—but he needed to do one more thing.

“Turns out, when I sang, my eyes were closed,” Pascal recalled. “So, they wanted to see me do it with my eyes open, and see if I could act.”

He nailed it, obviously, and became part of one of Broadway’s biggest juggernauts of all-time.

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega in the original Broadway production of Rent (1996).

Fortune Favors the Brave

“I’m so grateful to be part of this thing that people are still inspired by and is still done all over the world, with people singing these songs,” Pascal said. “Am I sick of talking about it? Of course, in the sense that anyone would be sick of talking about the same subject for so long. But I am so fortunate that this subject I do talk about all the time is something so lovely. I’m so grateful to have this as part of my legacy.”

After Rent, Pascal was torn between going back to fronting his band or continuing on a musical theatre track. The Broadway offers kept coming, so that’s the direction he took. First it was Aida, then Cabaret, followed by shows like Memphis, Chicago and Disaster!

“I look for things that I think I can do—I need to know the character is in me somewhere,” Pascal said. “How I determine that is not necessarily the same process. Sometimes, it’s through the music and I’ll just sing it to see if it sounds good; sometimes it’s more a character thing, like with Huey in

Memphis, I felt I had that guy in me and that was even before I sang any of the music.”

Sometimes, he admits, he’s wrong. Not with the jobs he’s gotten, but with the ones that he didn’t get where he tried and wasn’t cast. For example, he points to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. “I sing the [expletive] out of that music, and I thought that character was in me, and maybe it is, but at the time I auditioned, I just couldn’t find her well enough to nail it,” Pascal said. “Sometimes you want something a certain way, and it just isn’t. But then again isn’t that life?”

Having originated both Roger in Rent and Radames in Aida, Pascal said that it’s not important at all for him to be in another new musical; he just wants the security of having a job and to be out on stage performing, and quite frankly, that comes more from taking over a role in a show that’s already successful.

“There’s certainly something artistically exciting about creating a new character and being a template for something that could theoretically go on for a long time, like Rent did, but it’s a lot of pressure,” he said. “I don’t do well with worrying about whether I’m going to get a Tony nomination or if the show is going to succeed. Of course, I would love to win a Tony, but it gives me so much anxiety.”

Second Act

Pascal also is currently recording demos for a prominent Broadway composer on a new musical, and while he can’t reveal details yet, he does hint that the role will allow him to live out those early rock dreams, as the show has something of an Almost Famous vibe, looking at a rock band from the ’70s.

He’d love nothing more for this to come to Broadway one day. But Pascal’s got other roles he’s hoping to take a shot at some day as well. “I’d certainly love to play Jean Valjean and I’m sure it’s in my future at some point; I’ve certainly said it out loud enough,” he said. “I’m interested in exploring all sorts of roles—someone like Max from The Producers, Sweeney Todd or the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. I like roles where people might say, ‘really, he’s doing that?’ and then they come see me and they go, ‘he’s so good in that.’ That excites me.”

Being in a transitional phase in his life, Pascal isn’t quite sure what the next few years will bring, but he is excited about what he considers his “second act” of life.

“I’ll certainly be performing Broadway always, that’s a mainstay of my life now until I can’t sing anymore,” he said. “I never know what direction things are going to go. My whole career has been such a wonderful surprise to me, and I’m open to any and all possibilities.”