Begging for Percy

As a boy in Cincinnati, Ron Bohmer dreamed of being a rock star or a superhero like Superman or Batman.

His path instead led him to Broadway and, in what he calls “a great wish fulfillment,” he became a legendary hero after all.

During 1999, he served a half-year hitch playing the title role in “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” the musical that composer Frank Wildhorn and lyricist-librettist Nan Knighton based on the oft-told story of a heroic, swashbuckling swordsman.

Like Superman or Batman, the Pimpernel works incognito. His mission: saving persecuted nobles from the Revolution’s guillotine during the Reign of Terror in 1790s France. He is really Sir Percival Blakeney, a dandified English aristocrat who by all appearances lacks the steel to steal unfortunates from the jaws of death. Percy and his loyal band pose as comically effete fops and twits, fashion-drunk members of the upper crust who sing merrily at one point about the Pimpernel’s exploits:

They seek him here, they seek him there

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.

Is he in heaven or is he in hell?

That demned elusive Pimpernel.

Less than a month ago, Bohmer was an ex-Pimpernel with no plans to revisit the role. But the producers of the touring company of “Pimpernel” knew whom to seek when an emergency came up in mid-December. The road show’s leading man, Robert Patteri, had to quit after a fungal infection affected his voice. The call to arms went out to Bohmer at his home in Millburn, N.J. He did not elude it--at least not after determining that the pay was good and the tour of duty limited to four months.

He reported for rehearsals on a Tuesday, and that Friday he was mincing and swashbuckling again as Percy and the Pimpernel.

During the year since he had last portrayed Percy, Bohmer, 39, had tried to make headway in television. Recently he landed an occasional role as Dr. Randall Forbes, a psychiatrist aiding the team of prosecutors in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” He also pushed ahead as a pop-rock singer-songwriter. His independent label release, “Another Life,” is a Kenny Loggins-like effort that applies his tenor voice to earnest, philosophical songs inspired by the end of his nine-year marriage and the dawning of a new romance. His fiancee is actress Sandra Joseph, whom he met in Los Angeles three years ago while playing the Phantom opposite her ingenue Christine in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera.”

Bohmer says he had been working out with a trainer--scared back into fitness by a 20-pound weight gain after his Broadway run in “Pimpernel”--and therefore was in fighting shape to return.

“The Phantom only appears through 30 minutes of that show, but they’re intense. It’s more of a sprinter role. Percy is a marathon runner. You put on the drag and your big hair and get out there and run for three hours. The challenge was: ‘Can I still get across the finish line on this sucker after a year [away]?’ ”

Bohmer, who also has appeared in prominent roles in “Aspects of Love,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “Les Miserables,” had been turning down touring offers. He had been turned down when he auditioned earlier this year as Judas in what proved a short-lived Broadway revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” That role would have been another wish-fulfillment: Bohmer traces his interest in musical theater to the Sunday in 1973 when his parents decided to skip church and see the film “Jesus Christ Superstar” instead.

“I said, “Oh my god, it’s rock ‘n’ roll and it’s theater.’ That determined the kind of work I wanted to do in theater,” he says.

There is a potential pitfall in revisiting a past role, he says.

“When you do [parts] for months and months or for years in some instances, they stay in your blood, and they close you from opening yourself up to play a new character.”

But he decided a return as the Scarlet Pimpernel could be “a jaunt. . . . I can go have a ball, and come back a little richer and maybe a little wiser.”

Bohmer has absorbed a small but important change: The choreography of the climactic sword fight between the Pimpernel and his nemesis, the revolutionary leader Chauvelin, has changed locales from a wharf to an abandoned theater. During rehearsals for his Broadway run, Bohmer says, he fell off the wharf but luckily his frilly shirt caught on a spar, enabling him to have a reasonably soft landing from a 12-foot fall.

Part of the “Pimpernel” routine is a daily rehearsal of the sword fight during the hour before curtain time, just to make sure nothing goes amiss in the potentially dangerous sequence. The weapons are real for the proper clanging effect, although the points and edges are rounded. For his return, Bohmer says, he spontaneously came up with “one of my favorite moments”--a comical gesture during the sword fight that sounds perfect in its Pimpernalian insouciance. We won’t give it away.

Finding his path into the role was Bohmer’s biggest challenge when he took over as the Pimpernel on Broadway. Douglas Sills had been acclaimed for his frothy work as the original Percy.

“He is a master at the physical comedy, his strength in the role is the humor. That was the hardest part of Douglas’ shadow to come out of. I thought, ‘What can I do that hasn’t been done?’ ”

Bohmer decided to emphasize the love story--in which Percy marries a French actress, Marguerite St. Just, only to believe (mistakenly) that she has sold out one of his friends in the French aristocracy to the executioners. Bohmer decided to seize on Percy as a disillusioned lover who throws himself into heroics “to block out what’s going on in his personal life.”

Early in his Broadway run, he said, “I found I was hitting those [serious] things too hard. You have to know how much the vehicle you’re driving can sustain. If you overfill it with stuff it’s not intended to hold, it’s not going to work. This is meant to be funny and light. It’s a comic book and an adventure.”

Bohmer downshifted the drama and moved to what he sees as an effective middle ground between Sills’ over-the-top humor and his initial inclination to bring out the Pimpernel’s more serious possibilities.

To be a demned effective Pimpernel, Bohmer says, “It’s important that the audience believes and cares about you, but also that they see you’re completely lighthearted about it and willing to take it to that extreme for their entertainment.”

SHOW TIMES

“The Scarlet Pimpernel,” Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Matinees Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. Through Sunday. $20 to $55. (714) 556-2787.