A Well-Traveled ‘Tenor’

Gary Beach tends to put a lot of mileage on his characters.

On Broadway, he played Rooster in “Annie”--in more than 1,000 performances. He logged a similar number of performances playing the wicked innkeeper Thernardier in “Les Miserables,” both in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now, the actor is reprising a role he played last year in La Mirada, as ‘30s opera star Tito Merelli in Ken Ludwig’s comic farce “Lend Me a Tenor” at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Born in Virginia, Beach spent a year in a liberal arts college majoring in history and political science (“in case I needed something to fall back on”) before bolting for acting studies at North Carolina School of the Arts. In his senior year, he read about auditions for “1776” in New York and promptly embarked on the 10-hour drive. Two callbacks later he got the role, and went to work right after graduation.

Even with successful shows, Beach says he’s not immune to stage fright: “There’s always that feeling--that yearning for acceptance. You know in three seconds if it’s working, if the characters click, if the audience is enjoying it. There’s a lot of fear in that immediacy. But it’s also why I love doing live theater. The audience knows we’re doing it just for them.”