Yahoo News In 'Stereophonic,' Tom Pecinka Flexes His Rock Music Muscles On Broadway
As the ruthlessly ambitious Peter in Broadway’s “Stereophonic,” Tom Pecinka gets to live out a 1970s rock star fantasy — replete with the sex, drugs and retro fashion — onstage.
Though the actor describes his Tony-nominated performance as a full-throttle, emotional purge, he’s grateful to leave that experience behind after curtain call.
“There are things I get to do as Peter that I don’t get to do in my life,” Pecinka, who is making his Broadway debut, told HuffPost. “Peter allows himself to blow up, and I’d be lying if I said getting to scream at someone wasn’t cathartic. But I like to keep him at the theater. I do a ritual every night where I take off the necklace I wear and say goodbye to him, because he’s not the most fun person to live with.”
Now playing at New York’s Golden Theatre, “Stereophonic” has been nominated for 13 Tony Awards — the most ever for a Broadway play. On Tuesday, the show’s run was extended through Jan. 5 after originally being slated to close next month.
Written by David Adjmi and directed by Daniel Aukin, the drama follows a Laurel Canyon-era rock band in the throes of recording an album. Peter is the band’s hot-headed guitarist and is involved in a tempestuous, on-and-off relationship with singer-songwriter Diana (Sarah Pidgeon).
Peter and Diana’s bandmates are three Brits: bassist Reg (Will Brill) and keyboardist Holly (Juliana Canfield), who are a married couple, and drummer Simon (Chris Stack). They’re joined in their Sausalito, California, studio by a pair of hapless engineers, Grover (Eli Gelb) and Charlie (Andrew R. Butler).
The band’s recording sessions are, of course, a fiery clash of egos. Over the course of three hours, the characters reveal their inner turmoil in between laying down music, which includes performing original songs by musician Will Butler, formerly of the band Arcade Fire.
“Artists come to the show, and they go: ‘Oh, I know the pain and the joy of that process,’” Pecinka said. “But anyone who’s done a group project in elementary school where they were paired with someone they hate, or maybe they had to do all of the work because no one else did ... can also relate.”
Watch the video for “Masquerade” from Broadway’s “Stereophonic” cast recording below.
Much of the buzz on “Stereophonic” has emphasized the fictional band’s many parallels to Fleetwood Mac, whose masterpiece 1977 album “Rumours” was recorded as members Christine McVie and John McVie were on the brink of divorce, while Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had also called it quits on their relationship.
Pecinka spent months in guitar lessons in preparation for his role, sending videos to the show’s creative team to keep them abreast of his weekly progress. Though he looked to Buckingham early on, his interpretation of Peter also winks at Mick Jagger, Robert Plant and James Taylor, among other ’70s music icons.
“I never felt like it was the Fleetwood Mac story, because these characters are so fleshed out, they felt like their own people,” he said. Vocally, he added, “my touchstone was 1970s Billy Joel, because that was the music I grew up with from that period. So it was already sort of in me.”
A Wantagh, New York, native, Pecinka auditioned for “Stereophonic” in 2020, mere days before COVID-19 shuttered theaters nationwide. The play received its premiere off-Broadway staging in fall of 2023, and the actor said the chance to work with a contemporary writer was worth the wait.
“Until then, my career had mostly been Shakespeare and Chekhov and Ibsen — dead people,” he quipped.
Though “Stereophonic” is billed as a “play with music” rather than a musical, Pecinka and his cast mates were able to document the show’s songs for posterity on a new cast album.
It’s an achievement the actor, who was told by casting agents that his rock tilt was ill-suited for traditional musical theater, is especially proud of: “It always caused me shame and sadness that I wasn’t able to do those things, but now I’m singing in the way I want to sing on Broadway.”
Most of Pecinka’s off-stage time these days is spent preparing for the June 16 Tony Awards, where he’s nominated for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play alongside Brill and Gelb.
Looking beyond “Stereophonic,” he’s eager to parlay his newfound acclaim into television and film work as well as theater. As for future roles, he believes they may have yet to be written.
“I used to be more like Peter when I was younger ― a person who’s chasing success and working really hard,” he said. ”[But] the thing Peter has taught me is that my dream role may not even exist yet. I don’t feel like I’ve been pigeonholed. If I can maintain that, I’ll be a very happy clam.”
