When Artie Gilbert takes the stage on opening night of Neil Simon’s “45 Seconds From Broadway,” he’ll be on familiar turf.
Like Mickey Fox, the fictional comedian he portrays, Gilbert is Jewish. Both are native New Yorkers. Both love a good corned beef on rye from the deli counter. Most importantly, both revere the tradition of the Broadway theater.
“Broadway is one of the last vestiges of our culture,” says Gilbert. “It’s our Stratford-on-Avon.”
“45 Seconds From Broadway” makes its Bay Area premiere Friday, Jan. 14 with the Ross Valley Players at the Barn Theater.
A San Anselmo resident, Gilbert is a veteran of many local productions, both as an actor and director. But he has a particular affinity for Simon, whose work he has admired for decades. He’s co-starred in such Simon classics as “Barefoot in the Park” and “The Odd Couple.” But “45 Seconds From Broadway,” which premiered in New York three years ago, has special resonance for him.
“Simon is lighting a yahrzeit candle for the Broadway theater,” says Gilbert of the play. “It’s about a frail and fragile dinosaur that may go the way of the black-and-white TV.”
Being a Neil Simon comedy, it’s not quite as gloomy as all that.
The play takes place in the Polish Tea Room, a coffee shop loosely patterned after Manhattan’s famed Edison Café. A cast of eclectic characters fills the Tea Room with idle chatter, comic repartee and a wistful respect for the great Broadway tradition. “There’s a black South African playwright,” notes Gilbert, “the shiksa ingenue from Ohio, a 70-year-old dowager, a gentile producer from London: a little of everything and that’s New York.”
All the while, Simon’s trademark humor remains front and center.
Gilbert sees a blurred line between the Jewish and the New York influences on Simon’s wit.
“Neil Simon’s humor is Jewish humor,” he says, “but that shortchanges this giant of American theater. He writes about the New York experience, which includes and is influenced by Jewish humor. To segregate one from the other is impossible.”
“45 Seconds From Broadway” was actually one of Simon’s rare flops, though
many critics blame bad timing: it opened around the time of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Some critics compared Mickey Fox, with his shticky Yiddish-inflected humor, to comedian Jackie Mason, though this, too, rankles Gilbert.
“It has nothing to do with Jackie Mason,” he says. “It could be Rodney Dangerfield, Shecky Green or anyone who came up through New York, worked the Borscht and came back to the small clubs with the hope of making it to the Latin Quarter. They all did that.”
It’s certainly not what Gilbert did. Growing up in Long Island, N.Y., he took advantage of his proximity to the Great White Way, attending first-run performances of shows like “Fiddler on the Roof” and “West Side Story.” Says Gilbert, “To this day I can still hear the little triangle to start the overture in the pit. For me Broadway is magical.”
He also enjoyed the rich Jewish culture of New York. In the summer he attended his aunt’s upstate Orthodox camp where he would “play basketball with a yarmulke on” and get his feet wet with drama. (Tidbit alert: His counselor one summer was a redheaded teenager named Alan Dershowitz.)
Though he always maintained an interest in the arts, Gilbert married, started a family and went into business. After divorcing, he relocated to the Bay Area to be near his kids and eventually built a career in Marin real estate. Today he is the central Marin manager of Avalar Real Estate.
He got the acting bug in his early 30s and began studying theater in earnest. He not only acted, but he also began directing. In 1999 he co-founded the Marin Classic Theater Company, which mounts productions at the San Anselmo Playhouse of the works of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and other American masters.
At 59, Gilbert says he’s at the top of his game professionally and artistically. For now, the play’s the thing and he’s focused primarily on nailing the Mickey Fox role. How will he know he’s got it? Gilbert likes to quote his own character from “45 Seconds from Broadway.”
In the play, Neil Simon draws on the metaphor of “kishkes” to explain how an actor connects with his audience. “It’s the stomach,” notes Gilbert, “the pit of the stomach. It’s what you aim for as an actor. I’m the foremost kishke man in the country.”
Ross Valley Players’ “45 Seconds From Broadway” runs 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 14-Feb. 20, at the Barn Theater, Marin Art and Garden Center, Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross. Tickets: $15-$19. Information: (415) 456-4995.