Sitcom Face of Harry Groener Also Familiar on Stage

Nobody can accuse Harry Groener of hiding one of his flops.

The slim, red-haired star of “Sunday in the Park With George” at South Coast Repertory turned up for this interview at the Costa Mesa theater in a crimson jacket with the words, “Sleight of Hand,” emblazoned across the back.

That stage thriller by John Pielmeier, in which Groener played a vile magician bent on murder, managed to last eight performances after opening on Broadway a couple of seasons ago. (“It had a great first act,” he said.)

Perhaps Groener can afford to advertise this flop because he’s had so much success. He drew instant critical acclaim and a Tony nomination for his first Broadway outing as Will Parker in the 1980 revival of “Oklahoma!” He followed that with another Tony nomination in 1982 as Munkustrap in the original Broadway staging of “Cats.”

West Coast theatergoers may remember him from a string of non-musical hits: “Ghetto” at the Mark Taper Forum; “Eastern Standard” and “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Seattle Rep; “Scapino” and “Billy Bishop Goes to War” at San Diego’s Old Globe.

And while his name may not yet be a household word, Groener’s face has become a living-room joke Thursdays on NBC’s “Dear John,” the highly rated sitcom slotted between “Cheers” and “L.A. Law.” He plays Ralph, a brilliant, perpetually befuddled nerd in Judd Hirsch’s therapy group.

“He looks very different from me,” Groener said, ticking off Ralph’s attributes. “He’s introverted, socially inept, very sensitive and really not quite with it.”

If you didn’t know who Groener was describing, you might have thought he was sizing up his role as post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat in the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical being revived on South Coast’s Mainstage.

“Well, George is introverted to a point,” the actor said. “That’s because he’s so involved in his art. If you play him as too self-involved, the audience loses interest.”

In fact, George is something of a reincarnation. For four months in 1985, Groener portrayed him in the Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Sunday in the Park” as a replacement for Mandy Patinkin, who originated the role. It was, Groener said, the deep-water mark of his career.

“I knew I was playing with the big boys,” he said. “ Oklahoma!’ was terrific. I got to work with Agnes DeMille. ‘Cats’ was fine. I love all that singing and dancing. But it wasn’t a difficult show. This one was. It has so much more meat to it. Sondheim’s songs are scenes. His characters have substance. And the music is not easy.”

Sondheim first scouted Groener in “Harrigan ‘n’ Hart” on the recommendation of the Shubert Organization’s Bernard Jacobs. That show closed in a week. But it led to an audition for “Sunday.”

Groener, 38, says he was shocked to land the role because he believed he lacked the vocal training to handle the score. At the end of his first week, he recalled, “I thought I might not make it.” It took a month before he felt confident that his voice--a lyric baritone--wouldn’t give out. “I’d never had that feeling before,” he said.

Nevertheless, Groener got the impression that both Sondheim and Lapine (who wrote the book and the directed production) were pleased with his work. “I felt so privileged just to be in the show I would have done the role any way they wanted, but they never forced me to be Mandy,” he recalled.

That meant playing Seurat as a somewhat warmer, more conflicted character than Patinkin had created--no less self-contained but temperamentally less aloof. “I don’t see George as cold as others have,” he said. “You have to care about the relationship between George and Dot, (his model and mistress, played here by Sally Spencer). You have to see that George does indeed love Dot.”

Groener said his interpretation at South Coast aims for warmth by underscoring the painter’s conflict between commitment to his art and love for Dot. “George has had other women before, but Dot is the first one who is special,” he explained. “We must see him going through a struggle. At the moment of the play, of course, George has discovered a new technique--pointillism--and he does make the work his choice. It’s a sad thing, but that’s what he does.”

A native of Augsberg, West Germany , Groener arrived in the United States in 1953 when he was 2. His father had been a concert pianist and his mother an opera singer, but both gave up pursuing their artistic ambitions, he said, after settling in San Francisco.

Groener recalled that he first appeared on stage in school as a ballet dancer, at one point touring California in a production of “Nutcracker.” He studied drama at San Francisco City College and acting at the University of Washington. Then he began making the rounds of the regional theaters.

He met his wife, actress Dawn Didawick, at the Actors Theater of Louisville in 1976, where he was choreographing a production of “Vanities.” They were married in New York in 1978. Today, with a loft in Manhattan and a condo in Century City, they are the epitome of the bi-coastal couple.

“What’s ironic,” said Groener, “is that I’m known for glitz in serious New York and serious theater in glitzy Los Angeles. That’s because I’ve done so many musicals back there. I haven’t done one out here since ‘Oklahoma!’ at the Pantages 10 years ago.”

Worse, he laments, except for a small role in the 1979 “Brubaker,” nobody has cast him in a movie.

“I’ve gone up for a lot of movies. I just never get them,” he said, smiling the smile of an actor who could afford to advertise. “One in 10 years is kind of silly.”