He knows it's counterintuitive, but Anderson Davis is a young actor without much taste for promoting himself. "Sometimes it may keep me from getting more work, but I just can't do it," Davis explained.
His self-promotional reluctance didn't, however, prevent him from landing the plumb role of Lt. Joe Cable in the national tour of South Pacific that recently arrived at the Ahmanson Theatre for a run through July 17. The tour is a recreation of the award-winning Lincoln Center revival that has been a hot Broadway ticket for nearly three years.
Davis, for example, is rare among rising performers in not having a website. There is an "andersondavis.com," but it belongs to a hunky model/actor who has a load of commercial credits. Our Mr. Davis knows about his same-named counterpart, and figures the other guy got there first as far as the screen and television unions are concerned. "It's totally an issue," he said. "I guess at some point I'll have to put another letter in my name."
YouTube fame
But Davis has found Internet renown, though through no efforts of his own. "It’s totally bizarre because I did this one song called ’And the Rain Keeps Falling Down’ [from the 1980s musical Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens] at this little cabaret in college, and somebody put it on YouTube. Now it has, like, 40,000 hits, and it’s not even one of my best performances."
Don’t tell that to the 100 or so viewers who have posted comments that range from musical compliments to declarations of love. "Friends will tell me what people have written," Davis said with a tone of embarrassment. "I think people really enjoy being fans of whatever it may be, and they go a little crazy with the enthusiasm."
Davis is only three years out of college, and remains somewhat bemused about the notions of fame and lusting for the spotlight. "I wasn’t a theater kid at all," he said of his years growing up in Baton Rouge. "I was a musician, and after going through a lot of instruments, I ended up playing the oboe. We thought it would be the best instrument to make a career out of."
He played in the pit for several school musicals, felt restless stuck in a chair, and finally appeared on stage in Anything Goes in his senior year. "I just realized I’m the kind of person who never sits still, and so it seemed that if you’re on stage you can still be musical, but be on your feet."
Intense story, intense issues
After convincing his wary parents that his heart no longer belonged to the oboe, he headed to the theater program at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. "After a year there, I realized I wasn’t as into musical theater as I was really just into theater. I wanted to get more exposure to the dramatic side of it, so I transferred to Carnegie-Mellon."
As the fates would have it, most of his credits since moving from Pittsburgh to New York in 2006 have been in musicals, including a run in the Broadway revival of Les Miserables, and in regional theater productions of West Side Story, High School Musical 2, The Who’s Tommy, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And, of course, his first national tour in a musical: South Pacific.
"Coming to New York, right out of school, it’s a lot easier making a living doing musicals," he said. "It’s not that I don’t love musicals, but I’m rarely inspired by them. That’s why it’s so amazing to be working on a musical where you feel like you’re actually telling a story that is worth telling."
In the 1949 musical, Davis plays a young Marine lieutenant stationed in the South Pacific during the Second World War. His love affair with a Polynesian girl turns sour over his racial prejudices, a theme mirrored in the main story of Navy nurse Nellie Forbush, who breaks off her relationship with French planter Emile de Becque after learning he fathered two children with a Polynesian woman.
"I think one of the great things that our director Bartlett Sher has done is that he has put back a lot of things cut from the original script [by Josh Logan and Oscar Hammerstein II] that the first producers thought were too controversial," Davis said. "When people think about South Pacific, they usually think about the beautiful Rodgers and Hammerstein songs. But they come from this very intense story about very real issues."
Davis wasn’t too keen on the notion of committing to a long tour so soon after arriving in New York. "It’s hard to be detached from New York and the idea of developing your career," he said, but the chance to work with director Bart Sher on a meaty musical like South Pacific helped convince Davis to get on board.
"Whenever you’re trying to make a career out of something you love," Davis said, "you’re inevitably stuck doing a lot of things you wish you weren’t, and it can feel like you’re just regurgitating someone else’s thoughts. But the experience of working with Bart makes you realize that when you feel you are part of the creative experience, it’s a rare and cherished thing. So I don’t care if it’s musicals or plays or TV or film, I just want it to feel like something."
South Pacific plays through July 17, 2010 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 North Grand Avenue Los Angeles, CA. For more information visit the Center Theatre Group website.