NR: Tell me about the summer tour. Were the audiences different than they are here?

RG: They were wildly enthusiastic. They loved the show, especially in Dallas. Dallas ate the show up. Houston was a little more reserved, but they still enjoyed it a lot. Atlanta was a very effusive response. They really did like it. What was great was we got really large audiences. They were subscription-based summer musical seasons in each of those cities so they sort of had a built-in audience, which was great for us. They were coming to see whatever the latest thing was and we were it. The response was so great. Here in New York, the response is often great, but it varies here. It can be terrific one night and it can be much more sedate the next. In a long run, it can be much more so in the beginning and then it starts to peter out as the run goes on. You get more tourists and more foreign visitors and maybe they don't get certain references. It does change over time. At the Minskoff last winter, we had plenty of shows when the audience would sit on their hands, and the next night they would love it. Certainly when there's more people in the audience, people are less self-conscious about laughing. Chances are if you have a big audience it will be a nice response.

NR: That feeds on itself. I've seen bad audiences and I've seen the cast work harder, and it just spirals downward.

RG: That's the worst thing you can do - work harder.

NR: I've seen that happen. I've also seen the opposite where the audience is so good that the cast gets better and better and it spirals upward.

RG: The worst thing you can do is push harder when you think the audience doesn't like you. I've seen people self-destruct on stage. You just have to back off. It's a natural thing. If you're doing something where you're used to getting a comedic response...they've been laughing and all of a sudden, they don't laugh, you immediately, as an actor, think, "Oops, I blew it" or "Oops, I did something wrong." Or, what's actually much more common is for the actor to say, "Oh, it's that audience." They will always blame the audience first before they will blame themselves.

NR: Really?

RG: Oh, yeah. Trust me on this. I've seen it in any number of shows and I've seen it in this show. The audience will not be terribly responsive and everyone will blame the audience. I'll think, "Maybe it's not them. Maybe it's us. Maybe we're tired or we're not focused." I have a few lines in the show that usually get a nice response, and if they don't, I do not blame the audience. The first thing I think is, "What did I do? Was it not set up well? Did I not deliver it the way it should have been?" I don't want to blame them.

NR: Sometimes you're not getting a lot of response, but they're smiling and they're enjoying it. They're just not vocal. There are times when I'm sitting in the house and it's very quiet around me, but I'll go downstairs at intermission and hear people saying, "That was wonderful. I loved it."

RG: Both of those times that I sat out and watched the show, it was mid-week. There were very small audiences that were vocally unresponsive. I remember going back stage at intermission and the cast would come up to me and say, "This is awful. They hate us" and I'll say, "No, they actually don't. They're just quiet." In the audience I would hear gasps and in the prison scene they would say, "Wow, he's really being mean to her" and in the sword fight, they would say, "Get him!" I would hear all these things that we don't hear on stage. I would tell people this and they wouldn't believe me.

NR: Do you know if you're going to do the tour yet?

RG: I haven't decided.

NR: If you don't, what would you like to do?

RG: Just do something new. After a year and a half, you definitely crave something new. I haven't decided if I want to go on the tour. There's a good chance I will, but I don't want to make that commitment just yet. I'm sort of entertaining the idea of staying and seeing what happens. A couple of smaller things in town have arisen as possibilities. They're basically non-paying jobs but they're chances to be creative in a different way. As an actor unfortunately, you can't always make a living by acting. It's nice, and I've been real lucky that I've gone through periods where I have, but there are always going to be periods where you don't make a living by doing your craft. You have to do other things, or you work on your craft and you just don't make any money out of it. No one makes any money doing Off Off-Broadway or little shows in town, but it's great for your soul. It's great for your being to stretch, to create, to try different stuff.

NR: A lot of people are hoping you'll do the tour. I received lots of email about that. They told me you're their favorite Bounder.

RG: Awww. Well, I like to hear that. It's very possible. I have to make a decision pretty quickly. What I do know is that I will not be the dance captain on the tour. I have already expressed to them that I have no interest in that responsibility and they have gone to someone else for that. That is a big burden off my mind, because I thought if they were going to be sticky about having that as a part of my responsibilities, then I really wouldn't have gone. I just didn't have any interest in it. I've been out on the road in those situations and I just didn't want to have to worry about that. When you're going out on the road you're already leaving your home, you're leaving your friends, you're uprooting yourself. If I go out on the road, I want it to be as pleasant an experience as possible, and for me that would mean buying a new car, bringing along things that will make me happy, not having to rehearse in the theater except when I need to as an actor in the show. I want to just come in and do the job, enjoy the cities I'm in, catch up with people I know in other cities. Whatever it will take to make it pleasant because it can be really hard. It can be a lot of fun, but it can also be hard.

NR: Is this going to be SP4?

RG: No. The changes to SP3 came because we had to make adjustments. We will not be making major changes to the show. Nobody has any interest in that and there's no need for it. The only change that I know about that I think they will try is tweaking "Madame Guillotine" and putting a different spin on that, just because we don't have enough bodies on stage. Now it's more of a number about the soldiers, and we just have so few soldiers, it isn't terribly impressive.

NR: Where do you see yourself in five years? What would you like to be doing?

RG: Oh, gosh. Still doing this - not necessarily this show but still doing the work.

NR: Is there any specific role? Do you want to go into directing or doing choreography?

RG: I actually would like to dip my toe back in the pool of creativity, in the sense of choreography and direction. I was studying direction in school, and back in San Diego I used to choreograph, once I learned that I could actually dance. I was good at it at times and bad at it at times as well. I was so young and I had so little experience. I was good at coming up with ideas for a number and conceptualizing a number and not necessarily coming up with great steps. I hadn't been doing it that long so I didn't have a big vocabulary of dance knowledge. I'm getting the bug to do that again because I've basically been an actor for the last twenty years. Now I'm thinking I want to try that again and see what that would be like at this point in my life with the knowledge that I've acquired over those years, with people I've worked with and things that I've learned.

NR: Well, good luck with whatever you decide. Thank you so much.

RG: You're welcome.

As I write this, I still don't know if Russell is going to do the tour. Whatever he decides, I wish him the best of luck. He's given me countless hours of laughter in his delightful portrayal of Elton, and he was even the inspiration for my screen saver at work, which says, "I'd rather be off netting butterflies." Of course my co-workers look at me strangely, but I know what it means and it never fails to make me smile.

Questions suggested by:

Jan Combopiano, Susan Cassidy, Leona Hoegsberg, Susan Luchey, Bettina Pagalilauan, Jody Uyanik, Stephanie Henkin, Lauren Teweles, Lois and Elizabeth Colpo, Jennifer Ahlborn, Pat Wafer, Laura Cutler, Colleen Rosati

Interview conducted and photographs by Nancy Rosati.