Actor who collapsed onstage dies

Gregory Mitchell, the actor who suffered a heart attack Nov. 11 during a performance at the Kennedy Center, died Thursday at Washington Hospital Center.

Luis Perez, a dancer and choreographer who had known Mitchell for nearly 30 years, called him a “true theater warrior.”

Mitchell was an intense, reliable actor and dancer who appeared in 15 New York plays, including two revivals of “Man of La Mancha,” a revival of “Chicago” and the original “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” He had also appeared in popular daytime soap operas and in television commercials.

Mitchell, 52, collapsed while onstage with Mikhail Baryshnikov in the drama “Forbidden Christmas, or the Doctor and the Patient” during the second of its six-performance run. After a doctor in the audience attended to him, Mitchell was taken to George Washington University Hospital and later transferred to Washington Hospital Center.

His friend Perez, the show’s choreographer, replaced Mitchell and finished the short run at the Kennedy Center. The company then canceled the rest of its tour, including December dates at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse.

The play by Rezo Gabriadze about a doctor and his patient, who thinks he is a car, was the first time Mitchell and Baryshnikov had worked together. “I remembered him from his early days with the Eliot Feld company,” Baryshnikov said. “He had a bright and lively personality, very outgoing. Then I saw him occasionally on Broadway and in commercials.”

In “Forbidden Christmas,” Mitchell played an angel. He was performing a scene in which the angel is trying to rescue the Baryshnikov character, a retired sailor who has thrown himself into the sea. Suddenly, Mitchell fell backward, his wings making a crunching sound as he fell, according to a member of the audience.

“I thought he had tripped. I thought it was a joke. I couldn’t believe that it would happen that way,” said Baryshnikov, who said the dancer never regained consciousness.

Mitchell’s friends remembered a snappy dresser who was intensely proud of his two sons, Garrett, 16, and Chase, 10. “He lived life to its fullest,” Perez said.

A memorial service will be held in New York soon, Perez said.