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SAN FRANCISCO -- Tony Award-winning actor John Glover is famous for his villain roles, but he sometimes scares himself as he plays a famous weaver of fairy tales.
Glover has the title role in Hans Christian Andersen, a radically reworked version of the 1952 movie-musical starring Danny Kaye, that opens the season at the American Conservatory Theatre on Sept. 7.
"It's terrifying at certain points," he says of the playing the role, "and at other points so exhilarating."
HOW DOES THIS AFFECT ME?: A popular movie musical gets pulled inyo the 21st century by avant-garde director-choreographer Martha Clarke and Tony Award-winning actor John Glover.
A stage adaptation of the movie musical might not seem the stuff of soul-baring challenges, but what is being conceived on the stage of the Geary Theatre is far afield from traditional musical comedy. What basically remains from the movie are Frank Loesser's songs, and they are being woven into a new-age spectacle by director Martha Clarke and librettist Sebastian Barry that explores Andersen's troubled psyche as the source of his allegorical stories.
"This is a complete change of pace for me," Glover told Theatre.com. "I'm realizing that what Martha wants is me. I play a lot of villains and psychos and things like that, but I act them. She's looking for some kind of honed-down truth in all her work. Part of the challenge is peeling off all those layers of protection we have."
Glover, 56, has become something of an instant expert on Hans Christian Andersen, reading all his stories -- that are often a lot darker than the famous ones that most children know. He's also read several biographies, including the recent Fan Dancer that explores Andersen's fear of intimacy with both men and women.
"He had great guilt about his sexuality, which just unlocked so many demons in him but it all went into his work, and I think it's one of the reasons he was such a genius."
But the show isn't designed as a dark psycho-drama. "I look at the evening as a series of these incredible, beautiful, magical escapes that he finds from his life as he deals with all his fears and demons," Glover said, who is one of few cast member who doesn't take flight in Peter Pan fashion.
"What I'm focusing on in my performance are the parallels that I see between him and me. There are parts of me that I keep secret even from myself. I have demons and I'd love to be able to healthily look at the demons and still be a wonderful actor and not feel I need them to create."
The tall, imposing actor grew up shy and lonely in Maryland as the only child of a father who was a television salesman and a mother who was a member of the D.A.R. "I was terrified most of the time," Glover said, "and I became a clown. That was a part of my defense."
Glover arrived in New York in 1966 and was promptly cast as Huck Finn in a traveling children's theatre that played elementary schools. But sunny roles were not to be Glover's forte. He made his film debut in 1978 in Julia playing a mean drunk who gets slapped by Jane Fonda. The villainy would continue in such movies as 52 Pick-Up, Scrooged, Gremlins 2 and Batman and Robin, among many others. Glover even played the devil himself on the Fox series Brimstone. "I let myself be typed as a villain and I don't want that," Glover said.
But the movie roles provide him with the financial cushion to make more adventurous choices in the theatre. He won his Tony Award for playing two very different brothers in Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!, roles he recreated in the screen version. But Glover's career remains an uncertain succession of temporary jobs. He has no idea, for example, what will follow Hans Christian Andersen.
"That's the thing that's been hard," he said, "but I think I'm beginning to just relax about that, that this is the career I'm having."
KEY FACTS:
Title: Hans Christian Andersen
Theatre: American Conservatory Theatre
Venue: Geary Theatre
Address: 415 Geary St., San Francisco
Opening: Sept. 7; preview on Sept. 6
The Run: Through Oct. 8
Performances: Tues. - Sat. at 8 PM (except Sept. 12 at 7 PM); matinees Wed., Sat. and Sun. at 2 PM (except on Sept. 20); and Sun., Sept. 10 at 7 PM
Tickets: $21-$67. Call (415) 749-2228.
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