INTERVIEW: Justin Keyes welcomes audiences to ‘The Streets of New York’
Photo: From left, Justin Keyes and David Hess star in The Streets of New York at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Photo courtesy of Carol Rosegg / Provided by official site.
The Irish Repertory Theatre’s production of The Streets of New York has returned to the Big Apple with all of its melodramatic sentiments intact. The show, which runs through the end of the month, is a classic by Dion Boucicault, adapted and directed by Charlotte Moore, co-founder of the Irish Rep. Bookending the musical are two “panics” in New York City history, one in 1837 and the other in 1857. This was a time when banks were failing, the rich got richer, while the poor got poorer, and the Irish Rep leans into the contemporary resonances of the piece and the sadly enduring theme of inequality.
Justin Keyes is one of the performers in the show, playing Brendan Badger, a villain who often breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience.
“They reached out to me, and I was traveling,” Keyes said in a recent phone interview. “Ironically enough I was on my way to Dublin, Ireland, when the Irish Rep called me. … I told them that I loved the idea of doing something by Boucicault, so I was definitely interested. I just wasn’t going to do an audition because I was leaving the country … but luckily it all worked out.”
Keyes, who has appeared at the York Theatre Company and Classic Stage Company, said he likes how his role is varied in the musical. The character starts at one place in the show, and then he transitions throughout the story and ends up at a completely different place by the final curtain.
“I like that literary technique of having someone that’s not so bad that they can’t be made good by the end of the story, so I kind of like that about him,” he said. “I also like dramaturgically how he’s the character that kind of talks in the most asides and talks directly to the audience the most. He is kind of the outsider among the characters in the show, and the relationship he kind of fosters the most is the one he has with the rest of the audience. I think that’s sort of welcomed in a melodrama setting. He has a lot of written asides, and I like that about him. I like that I get to have a dialogue directly with the audience, and I get to let them know what’s happening. I get to speak directly to them. I think that’s an important dramaturgical device that is cool, and I get to be the one to do it. Everybody does it, but I do it the most.”
Keyes said he appreciated how open Moore was to the company’s interpretation of the piece. Joining the actor on the stage are Amy Bodnar, Kerry Conte, Amanda Jane Cooper, Richard Henry, David Hess, Ben Jacoby, Daniel J. Maldonado, Polly McKie, Ryan Vona, Price Waldman and DeLaney Westfall. When the cast sat down for a table read of the show, Moore wanted to hear what they had to say about the themes from the 19th century.
“For someone who has done the show over such a long stretch of time, you’d think that she would really have a pretty strict idea of what she saw with it, but she was really not intrusive about our creation of it,” Keyes said. “She really let it play, especially with me. She was just like, ‘Keep finding the right energy.’ It’s important to me, even though it’s a small house, to find the right muscularity for this period of drama.”
Keyes, an alumnus of Broadway’s How to Succeed… and The Apple Tree, also has a model for his interpretation of the role. In a previous iteration of the show, Irish Rep’s other co-founder, Ciarán O’Reilly, played the part, so the two would often talk and joke about how to play the character on stage.
“I would sometimes just defer to him, the feedback he was giving,” Keyes said. “They let us have our process. They didn’t really intrude, and I would go to Charlotte when I really needed guidance. Is that too much there? Am I staying in the melodrama style there? Is it traveling too much to farce? Can we get away with a bit of musical comedy energy right here? How are we going to tailor and craft these little bits so that we’re still in the style, and it’s clear what we’re doing? She was really helpful. It’s impossible that she wouldn’t be helpful with the career she’s had, Ciarán as well. The longevity they’ve had, you always want people there to ask who have been around for a while, and so I think that was helpful having them and them having confidence in me to do my thing and expand it in previews and add in some tracks as we got it up on its feet. I think that was really helpful to have them as guideposts to keep working on it.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Streets of New York, featuring Justin Keyes, continues at the Irish Repertory Theatre’s Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage through Jan. 30. Click here for more information and tickets.
