Yahoo News Rob McClure of ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ is a rare Broadway star who has gone on tour. Family attached.
The touring cast of the Broadway show “Mrs. Doubtfire” has arrived in Chicago this week for a two-week run at the Nederlander Theatre. It comes with a rarity: The original Broadway star in the lead role.
In 2021, Rob McClure originated the lead role of Daniel Hillard in the musical adaptation of the 1993 Robin Williams movie about a recently divorced but creative actor who disguises himself as a female housekeeper (a Scot, to boot) to be able to hang out with his three kids. Although the ill-timed show itself was forced to close down in New York after just three preview performances in March 2020, and then could not recover at the box office when it finally opened a whopping 18 months later, McClure’s performance under the direction of the legendary Jerry Zaks still earned him his second Tony nomination.
Time was, original stars were expected to take their celebrated Broadway performances on the road. Chicago audiences of a certain age can recall seeing the likes of Carol Channing, Robert Goulet, Angela Lansbury and Zero Mostel in the Loop.
But that’s now a rarity. Original stars generally eschew full-blown national touring (at least beyond a couple of major cities), which typically requires a commitment of a year or more, making them unavailable for the next big Broadway or Hollywood project. Not to mention it means a wearying succession of dull hotel rooms, sound checks and delayed flights. This is especially acute when a show has not been a big hit (although “Mrs. Doubtfire” subsequently did far better in London’s West End) and when the actor is an in-demand figure like McClure, a 41-year-old actor whose career-making lead performance in the title role of the 2012 musical “Chaplin” was justly acclaimed.
We are not seeing Beanie Feldstein (or Lea Michele) touring with “Funny Girl,” and nobody expects Daniel Radcliffe to be out on the road in the next year or two with “Merrily We Roll Along,” although some might hold out hope.
So what is McClure still doing in this show, exactly?
“This just felt like unfinished business,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “This show was something of which I was proud, and yet we all never really got to do, thanks to the COVID shutdown. I felt like I had to continue the journey.”
Plus, McClure said, “touring audiences are really thrilling. On Broadway, there is this sense of the curtain going up and the audience saying, you’d better be worth the $4,500 I paid for these tickets to get all my family here. On the road, people tend just to be stoked to be there.”
And, he says, there are more kids in the audience.
“The best kids are the ones who have not seen the movie and don’t know what’s coming,” he says. “There’s nothing better than hearing an 8-year-old laughing.”
There’s one other reason McClure is here: it’s a family affair. In real life.
McClure is part of a theater couple and his wife Maggie Lakis (they met while in the same production of “Grease”) is playing the lead female role of Miranda, Daniel’s ex-wife. And that means the couple’s 5-year-old daughter is along for the whole ride.
“Mrs. Doubtfire,” of course, is about a conflict between a struggling couple who have plenty of love for their kids and maybe even for each other.
In this real-life case, sans divorce, it’s a joint-touring-custody situation. And for both this star, and the cast of “Girl From the North Country,” which just left Chicago, Broadway’s touring circuit has offered a meaningful chance to recover from COVID’s epic destruction.
Feb. 27 to March 10 at the Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St.; www.broadwayinchicago.com
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
