Singer-Dancer Borrows ‘Time’

“Musical theater is not a direct route to television and film,” warns actress Leilani Jones. “If people know you can sing and dance, they often assume you can’t act.”

Jones, a 1985 Tony winner for her role in the musical “Grind,” hopes to dispel those notions in Paul Osborn’s non-musical drama “On Borrowed Time” (1938), now running at the Pasadena Playhouse.

The premise is a mite unconventional. Jones’ character, Marcia, plays helper to Conrad Bain’s Gramps, who “traps Death in a tree, and because of that, there’s no more death in the world.” Says the actress: “You’re in and out of reality. It’s a whimsical, surreal, sweet, beautiful story.”

A native of Oahu, Hawaii, Jones followed college graduation with a move to New York, where she landed a role in the original production of the Ashman/Menken cult hit “Little Shop of Horrors”--and soon after that, “Grind,” which was her Broadway debut. “How do you top that?” she says rhetorically of the Tony win. “So I decided to move to a new frontier, try something completely different.”

Having lived in Los Angeles since 1990, Jones fills her extracurricular time singing with the St. Charles Choir (they did the soundtrack for the film “Flatliners”) and volunteering at an Arleta grade school.

Although she still keeps her tax man and doctors in New York (and recently returned there for a five-shows-in-four-days theater marathon), Jones is happy to call L.A. home: “First of all, it’s closer to my family. Instead of a 13-hour flight, it’s four hours.” As for New York, itself, “It’s a nice place to visit,” she says wryly, “but a hard place to live. Also, when I was there, I got maybe one film audition a year. Here, I audition all the time.”