David Margulies and Kristine Nielsen as they appeared in The Rivals at Baltimore’s CenterStage last month. Photo by Richard Anderson.
…and David Margulies and Kristine Nielsen as they appeared in the world premiere of Lil’s 90th by Darci Picoult at the Long Wharf Theatre two seasons ago. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
At the Long Wharf tribute to Gordon Edelstein’s first decade of leadership last month, I ran into one of my favorite actors, David Margulies.
(I also ran into one of my favorite playwrights, Donald Margulies, who is no relation to David and says “we get mistaken for each other all the time. He gets my bad reviews.”)
Long Wharf subscribers know Margulies as the furniture dealer in The Price (directed by Gordon Edelstein), the anxious father in Daniel Fish’s fishbowl rendition of Clifford Odets’ Rocket to the Moon, and—going back 15 years now—the dithery Richard Hardcastle in Doug Hughes’ production of Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer. Most recently, he was the easily scammed senior citizen in the Long Wharf’s world premiere of Darci Picoult’s drama Lil’s 90th, directed by Jo Bonney.
Sopranos fans know David Margulies as Tony’s lawyer Neil Mink. In Ghostbusters, he was the Mayor of New York City. Some of us were privileged to see him as Roy Cohn in the final cast of the original Broadway production of Angels in America.
I told Margulies, who I knew would understand my glee, that David Schramm was playing Toby Belch in Twelfth Night at Westport Country Playhouse, and wasn’t that cool?” Margulies countered with the equally dazzling casting news that he himself was playing Anthony Absolute in Sheridan’s The Rivals at Baltimore CenterStage. He played the same role in 1996 for Mark Lamos at Hartford Stage, and I can still remember the amusing way he kicked up his heels in those tight Restoration era stockings.
That CenterStage production just closed, but Margulies can now be seen online in one of the splattery short films Danny DeVito produces at The Blood Factory, thebloodfactory.com. Margulies enlivens the wish-fulfillment horror flicklet Skin Deep as a horny representative of the The Devil May Care collection agency, getting some face time with old client Erica Taylor.
You want to see range? Watch Margulies morph from Carmen Miranda to a ragtime piano player to a whiskered beast. Skin Deep is here.
The horror site Dread Central did a piece on the making of Skin Deep here.