Kellams: This is Ozarks at Large. When Moulin Rouge! The Musical hits the stage, it is a three dimensional kaleidoscope of music, motion and emotion. The national tour will begin an eight show run at Walton Arts Center Wednesday night.
In the musical, the owner and nightly host of the cabaret goings on at Moulin Rouge is Harold Zidler. And on this tour, every night and some afternoons, Robert Petkoff embodies Harold Zidler.
Petkoff, the actor, certainly understands putting on a show. He's performed on Broadway in such productions as Ragtime, Spamalot and Fiddler on the Roof. He's been on West End in The Royal Family with Judi Dench and Emily Blunt, and he's toured the country with Fun Home, The Importance of Being Earnest and other productions.
Somewhere, he found the time to be in episodes of Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife and Elementary, and he's also an award winning audiobook narrator, reading books by authors including Stephen King, Ken Burns, David Foster Wallace and the just released Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
He says Moulin Rouge! The Musical is something entirely different from the moment the musical begins.
Petkoff: If I come out and I'm tired, oh my goodness, these poor actors around me are going to struggle to lift this show up and try to get it going, you know? So I have to shoot myself out of a cannon every day, eight shows a week and really get the audience to understand, because I'm presenting it like you're in the Moulin Rouge. You're the patrons of the Moulin Rouge. I need to charge the patrons of the Moulin Rouge up so they will a) drink, b) spend money, keep me alive, right? And so it's a big responsibility, but it's also just a lot of fun.
I will have done this show for three years in August when we close. And there's a reason why I've stayed with this show so long, because this character, the show itself is wonderful, but this character is such a challenge and it's so delightful to play. It's so agonizing to play. It's got such a large spectrum of things for me to do as an actor. He's a very complex character.
And so it's really satisfying. But that opening is so important and really does charge me up to, on the days when I'm tired, when I pop through that curtain, I have no choice. I don't get to be tired.
Kellams: Are you conscious of the sound? Because we know the sound before a curtain, there's sort of this murmur and anticipation in the audience, and then that crackle that happens once it starts. Are you cognizant of that sound from the audience that's in the theater as it gets going?
Petkoff: Way too much. Way too much. You know, it's wonderful because there's a little bit of a circus act that happens. There's an opening, a pre-show where some of the performers come out and engage the audience. Not verbally, but visually, and there's a little bit of a magic act that happens in there. And I kind of gauge the audience on that.
If there's a response to that, applause or cheers, I'm like, okay, we're in for a good time and my job is going to be so much easier. And if there's not a response to that, or when the reveal of the, for Lady Marmalade, if that doesn't get a response, then I feel like, oh gosh, now I really have to lift this audience up and bring them into our world because they're not already there. But when there is a response, I think, oh great, my job is so much easier, because they're already engaged and they're all there ready to play. That's my biggest thing is, is the audience ready to play.
Kellams: Eight shows a week for nearly three years, what have you discovered about Harold that you might not have known three years ago?
Petkoff: You know, I think when I first started, I focused very much on the showman. That he's larger than life, and he's that way on purpose because he's got to present the Moulin Rouge as something extraordinary.
But as the years have gone on, the depths of this man's love for this place and love for his star Satine outstrip his venality, that he's corrupt. I think the Moulin Rouge is in trouble, this is how I play it, that it's in trouble because he's been just taking money and spending it profligately on fun, and now they're in real trouble when the show opens. And that's the engine for him, is we're trying desperately to get the Duke to invest money in the club. And if we can, we stay open. If we can't, the whole thing shuts down.
So he's painted himself into a terrible corner, and there are the, what the Moulin Rouge means to him and what the people around him mean to him. I don't think I knew as deeply when I started as I do now, but it lends, it adds a desperation when I get upset about the way things are going. It's a lot more intense now than it used to be.
Kellams: So you're at Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville in July, July eighth through 12th. I believe you're in DC right now.
Petkoff: Yeah we are. We're in our second week in DC right now at the Kennedy Center. And, you know, it's fun for me. It's a full circle moment because I came into the show, I started my rehearsals while the company was in DC, the first company. And so I did my put in rehearsal here on the stage of the Kennedy Center.
And then I did my first performances in Pittsburgh. And so it's nice to finally get on the stage at the Kennedy Center and perform for audiences, which is really nice. It's like I said, it's a full circle moment for me, and there's a nice connection because the Kennedy Center was designed by a Fayetteville native, Edward Durell Stone.
Kellams: Oh, I didn't know that. I also want to ask you about something that, to my mind, would be completely different, a completely different skill set. And that's audiobooks, which you've done many, Louis L'Amour, David Foster Wallace, Bob Woodward. We talk about being shot out of a cannon to start Moulin Rouge. I'm imagining it's kind of the opposite to do an audiobook.
Petkoff: You know, it's interesting. Moulin Rouge starts as a sprint and then becomes a marathon. With audiobooks, it's a marathon and you just have to pace yourself. The big similarity is that we're both storytellers, right? I'm telling a story with an audiobook, obviously, and on the stage, I'm telling a story as well.
And so I have to think in terms of what's the tone, what's the entire feel for the book that I'm about to tell the story on. And you want to set the tone right off the bat so that the listener enters the world of the book as quickly as possible. And of course, that's different when it's a fiction book as opposed to a nonfiction book. If I'm telling a David Foster Wallace fiction story, or a Michael Koryta thriller, you definitely need to read it in a way that brings the audience into the world in that way.
And it's a very big challenge to stand in front of a mic for six or seven hours reading a book. And it's, I was a reader as a kid, so of course I'm thrilled that I get paid to read books. It's just the reading it out loud part that becomes difficult, because I have to use all of my vocal training from the theater world in the audiobook studio, in the recording studio.
Because when I first started it, halfway through the day, we'd be saying, okay, we need to stop for the day because your voice is so tired and we can hear it. It's worn out, and over time, I've learned, a, how to build my stamina vocally by doing a lot of my theater warm ups and things like that. And also just the most basic thing that human beings seem to know and seem to always forget, drink your water, keep the vocal cords hydrated and they'll keep going for you.
And that's, I learned that lesson on stage every night. And I learned that lesson in the booth every week. I like to drink tea when I'm recording an audiobook, but I also have to remember I must down so much water so that the cords stay supple and hydrated, and they, you don't hear that sort of sound come in, that's kind of a little hoarse by the end of the day. And so that's, it's tricky.
Kellams: All right, one last question about Moulin Rouge, both fictionally and for you and your company. You've got to be a team. What is it like to take something like this on the road?
Petkoff: It's extraordinary. I'm tempted to say the Dickens, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Because of course, when you go to work, in your average work environment, you go from nine to five and then you go home and you're off doing your thing. In the digital age, probably that nine to five gets expanded a little, but you're not living with these people and you're not traveling with them all the time. And so it, you, of course, just because of human nature, are going to have friction from time to time.
But I will say what is delightful about this company, and having toured for three years with this company, and new people come in and come out, is that the friction is so small that it's not noticeable to me. I'm delighted by that because I've worked on sit down shows in theaters where there was tension all the time because there was friction between certain actors or certain performers, and you could feel it all the time. And it wasn't a delight.
And in this environment, which is remarkable to me because we are spending so much time together, people love to hang out together. You become a family when you're touring, right? Because you're away from your family and you're either in a hotel room or an Airbnb and you're forced to hang out with each other. We really do enjoy each other's company. And that does translate onto stage. People are playing on stage with each other. They're having a lot of fun with each other. There's sometimes maybe too much fun, and we need to watch that.
I remember Mike Nichols, when I was doing Spamalot, had come out to watch the show and he said, you all are having a really great time up there, and I can tell that, and we were all very happy. He goes, just make sure that it's not a party the audience isn't invited to. And so I keep that in mind, that yeah, we can make little fun gestures, we can do little things on stage with each other as long as it's not noticeable to the audience, because it really will shut an audience out.
They'll be like, oh, there's something happening and I'm not in on it. And now I feel like that person at the party who's standing in the corner while everyone else is having a great time. So we have to be very conscious that we don't have fun at the expense of the audience joining in with us. But all of that said, I don't think it crosses that line, and I think that that kind of fun that the company has with each other really keeps them engaged. And it lets us tell the story with joy every night.
Kellams: Mike Nichols gives you a note, you listen.
Petkoff: You listen. I'll say briefly, there's one other note. He came out at one point and he said, I just want to remind you all, you're not funny, the material's funny. And I thought, well, I think I'm pretty funny, Mike. And he said, tonight when you do that scene, I want you to throw away everything that you've been doing, and I want you to just say the lines, don't add.
What he was saying was we were trying to say things in a very funny way. We were trying to put a spin on everything. And I, it was, I was playing the guard who's saying, where'd you get the coconut? And he's like, well, he goes, what? And he goes, you're banging two coconuts together, you know, and that whole thing. And I would be like, where'd you get the coconut? You're banging two coconuts together, you know, that kind of a thing.
And I thought, okay, if you want me to calm it down or just say the lines, and that night I went out and I was like, where'd you get the coconut? You've got two coconuts and you're banging them together. The audience lost it because they could hear it, and it wasn't me going, hey guys, this is funny. It was me just saying it. And that's exactly how the Pythons did it. They weren't being crazy with it, they were grounded as they were doing crazy things.
And so I've carried that with me into this show, into every show I do, is that you think you have to do all this stuff, sometimes you just have to say the lines. You just have to share it and the audience will pick it up.
Kellams: Well, Moulin Rouge! The Musical at Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, July eighth through the 12th. Continued success on the DC run. We look forward to seeing you. Robert, thanks so much for talking with me.
Petkoff: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Kellams: Robert Petkoff is Harold Zidler in the national touring production of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. The Walton Arts Center run is Wednesday night through Sunday night. Our conversation took place late last month. This is Ozarks at Large.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
