The Return of the Pimpernel

While performing “The Scarlet Pimpernel” on Broadway, Douglas Sills often found 200 fans waiting for him at the stage door. After years of working in touring companies and Southern California theaters, the 6-foot-2, dark-blond actor had finally landed on Broadway, to become an instant matinee idol.

Sills didn’t see himself in those terms, however. Matinee idol? The description causes him to roll his eyes and make a face.

“It was like walking into a fun house,” Sills says of the adulation. “It was very much a distortion of reality. And as long as you understood that, you were fine.”

If ever he felt himself floating into the clouds, the work quickly brought him down to earth. The title role pushed Sills’ voice and body to their limits, requiring him to virtually sign his life over to “Pimpernel” from mid-1997 through mid-1999.

Since his departure from the show after its national tour stop at the Ahmanson Theatre last spring, the 40-year-old Sills has returned to basics: the people he loves and the work that sustains him. That means quality time at home in Los Angeles’ Fairfax District with Todd Murray, his partner of 7 1/2 years. And it means exercising different sets of acting muscles in the Reprise! concert series’ presentation of the Jerry Herman musical “Mack & Mabel” last November and in South Coast Repertory’s staging of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” now in previews for a Friday opening.

“Much Ado” reconnects Sills to his roots in classical theater--specifically, his graduate studies at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, where he and Nike Doukas, who plays Beatrice to his Benedick at SCR, performed the roles in a scene study class. Murray, whom Sills met when they performed in the national tour of “The Secret Garden,” has a small part as the balladeer Balthasar.

The production is directed by Mark Rucker, whose SCR credits include a 1996 “Taming of the Shrew” transferred to a cartoon-colored, “Guys and Dolls” fantasy of the 1950s. His staging of “Much Ado” will retain the Italian setting but will infuse the story with the look and style of Hollywood’s 1930s screwball comedies.

“I miss this process-oriented work,” Sills says one evening at home, after rehearsal.

“You’re dealing with such strong linguistic issues. So much of what is joyous about ‘Much Ado’ has to do with a sort of ‘Seinfeld’-esque or ‘Will & Grace’ quality of 400 years ago.” Many of the jokes involve topical references that have long since been forgotten, he explains, so the actors must dig in and “archeologically” uncover the meanings.

Written in the middle of Shakespeare’s career, circa 1598, “Much Ado” is a dark-tinged comedy about appearance versus reality. In the main story, Claudio, a young lord, rejects his bride, Hero, at the altar because he has been duped into believing she is unchaste. Benedick and Beatrice, another young lord and lady, serve as a sort of case study in attraction-repulsion. Though drawn to one another, they fight the impulse by engaging in a war of words--until, gradually, they argue themselves into a more reasoned, intellectual love.

A tangle of contradictions, Benedick is prone to “very quick turns in mood, in tempo, in personality,” Sills says. An effective portrayal of him is “like a Napoleon--not the person, the pastry. If one layer is too heavy, you’re going to crush all the others. And if it’s too light, it falls apart in your hand.”

Doukas says her co-star brings “phenomenal charisma” to the role. “Part of it is, he’s very handsome,” she says. But what makes him truly riveting, she explains, is the stuff going on inside his head. “He’s really smart; he’s thinking a lot of things at the same time. He can be very, very funny but very moving.”

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Certainly, a lot is going on in that head as Sills sits in front of a crackling fire in his 1930s Spanish-revival-style home, talking about his career. He analyzes every issue frontward, backward and sideways, pondering for a few moments before he speaks. When the sentences begin to flow, they’re colored with similes, metaphors and layers of detail. He’ll begin an anecdote by saying, “The short version is”--then talk nonstop for 10 or 15 minutes.

Checking in, Murray jokingly observes: “He doesn’t like to talk, does he?”

Looking back on his early adventures in acting in suburban Detroit, Sills talks about making 16-millimeter films with buddy Sam Raimi (now a director of films including “The Gift”) and another future actor, Bruce Campbell (star of syndicated television’s “Jack of All Trades”). Grinning, Sills recalls that they used ample amounts of fake blood made of Karo syrup and red dye No. 2.

At the University of Michigan, Sills had law school in mind as he sampled psychology, math, economics, literature and music. He felt a tug in his heart, however, as friends auditioned for graduate acting programs.

After much soul-searching and with his family’s encouragement, he headed to San Francisco to study acting, then moved to Los Angeles to look for work.

Though he landed guest spots here and there, his television career never really took off.

In theater, however, he found steady work. With Berkeley Shakespeare Festival (now California Shakespeare Festival), he had the chance to play a variety of Shakespearean roles. But it was in musical theater that he really began to distinguish himself. By the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, he was performing in the national tours of “Into the Woods,” as Rapunzel’s prince, and “The Secret Garden,” as Dr. Neville Craven. Both tours played L.A.

He also lent his ringing tenor to the small Blank Theatre Company’s 1995 staging of “Chess,” as Freddie. In nonmusical roles, he performed at SCR as C.K. Dexter Haven in “The Philadelphia Story” in 1992, and as Ned Thornhill in “She Stoops to Folly” in 1995.

Then, Sills took an abrupt break from acting.

“It wasn’t making me happy, and I was looking for some more fulfillment,” he says. So, he closed that door, “put a Do Not Disturb sign on it” and opened others.

Meanwhile, at the request of playwriting friend Oliver Goldstick, he tried his hand at producing. The result was the award-winning 1996 Los Angeles production of Goldstick’s “Dinah Was,” with “ER” regular Yvette Freeman (nurse Haleh Adams) portraying singer Dinah Washington.

Producing involved “a lot more left-brain, sequential, logical thinking” than acting, Sills says. “I was scared to death to do it, and that’s how I knew it was probably the right thing to do. It gave me a new musculature, in terms of confidence and risk-taking and understanding the larger picture.”

About a year into the break, Sills got a call from one of his agents. Casting was underway for a Broadway production of the Frank Wildhorn-Nan Knighton musical “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” The agent sent Sills a script and suggested he try out.

The idea touched off some of Sills’ deep-seated fears. “I had been heartbroken so many times,” he says, “by being close to things that would have been life-changing, that would have made that childhood dream come true: of being a big star.” The parts always went to actors who were already established in New York theater or had higher-profile credits. “I felt like I was getting gun-shy.”

Still, “Pimpernel” intrigued him, in part because it would allow him to use both his classical training and his musical skills in one role. Based on the Baroness Orczy’s 1905 novel and set during the French Revolution, “The Scarlet Pimpernel” is the tale of an English aristocrat who assembles a small band of followers and, under an assumed identity, crusades against the revolution’s murderous excesses. To divert suspicion, he pretends to be vain and superfluous in everyday life.

To land the title role, Sills had to persevere through six auditions--a process fraught with as much drama as the musical itself. And that was just the beginning. The show opened in November 1997 to reviews that dismissed almost everything except Sills’ performance. The curtain kept going up, however, due in part to a fan base that talked up the show on the Internet.

Nearly a year into the run, new producers stepped in and announced they were revamping the show. Sills continued to perform during the evening while rehearsing the new staging by day. The show reopened to more favorable reviews.

Even then, many critics and theatergoers were jarred by “Pimpernel’s” juxtaposition of styles, as scenes at the bloody guillotine alternated with comic displays of the Pimpernel gang’s pretend foppishness.

“Certainly, I was aware that it was to some people’s taste and not to others,” Sills says. “But I couldn’t spend a lot of time on that, or I would have trouble going to the theater every night, and sometimes twice a day. Each show was monumental. It was a 24-7 job.”

Wildhorn became a fan, along with his audiences. Sills is a “Danny Kaye for the new millennium,” says the “Pimpernel” and “Jekyll & Hyde” songwriter, “someone who can deliver a song and a lyric in a very unique way, someone who has a wonderful, light touch with the comedy.”

Sills performed on Broadway for 19 months, earning a Tony nomination, then spent another four months with the national tour, through its stop at the Ahmanson Theatre. In all, he played the role about 700 times.

The hard work seems to be paying off, though, as he discovers that among the benefits of Broadway success is “to have work come to you, to have your work speak for itself, to not have to hype yourself.”

Among the standing offers is one that would return him to Broadway as Hollywood pioneer Mack Sennett in “Mack & Mabel,” in a production inspired by last fall’s Reprise! presentation. Plans haven’t been finalized, however.

Options abound in Sills’ offstage life, as well. A couple of times during the evening, he mentions the possibility of raising a child with Murray.

“When a dream comes true,” Sills says, “it is like hitting the lottery--joyous, exuberant, tearful, but frightening, because you are now without a dream. So, you either go on with no dream--or seek out a new one.”

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“MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Dates: Opens Friday. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ends April 1. Prices: $28-$49. Phone: (714) 708-5555.