From Los Angeles Daily News - 5/8/07

Stage, the final frontier for Scott Bakula

By Evan Henerson, Theater Writer

How's this for a leap back in time?

In early rehearsals for the Richard Rodgers musical "No Strings" at Reprise!, one of the younger performers told cast mate Scott Bakula that she had seen his work before.

And, no, not on TV, where he spent five seasons as a time-jumping scientist on "Quantum Leap" and another four on the bridge of "Star Trek's" Enterprise.

"She was saying, 'Oh, "Romance/Romance" was the first show I ever saw on Broadway,' " recalls Bakula, quickly adding, "Oh, God!"

It's not like this part of his past is any cause for mortification. "Romance/Romance," which had a then-34-year-old Bakula playing two roles and earning him a Tony nomination, was, however, nearly 20 years ago.

"It's really sweet," adds Bakula, who opens a two-week run of "No Strings" tonight at UCLA's Freud Playhouse. "I can think of the first show on Broadway I ever saw, and how affected I was by that. Hey, I'm grateful. I had a show on Broadway that (someone) could claim was (her) first show, and then I'm working with her."

And what might have been a career as a man of the stage was, if not short-circuited, certainly redirected. Bakula moved to L.A. in the mid-1980s under a certain amount of musical-theater steam.

Between family life, the demands of pilot seasons and limited hiatus time, he "just sort of stepped out of that world for a while." 

Back to the boards

"It's where I started," Bakula says of the 10 years he spent on stage in New York, on tour and at regional theaters around the country. "And that's just really what I love to do. I've been lucky to have these interspersed moments when I was doing other shows when I could go to the Hollywood Bowl or the Kennedy Center and do these beautiful little perks. They were always fast and furious and never relaxed."

That has started to change a bit since the 2005 demise of "Star Trek: Enterprise." Last year, Bakula played a four-week run of the Civil War musical "Shenandoah" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. That musical held special resonance because it was the first show Bakula saw on Broadway, as well as his first professional job.

"It was so great to sit down for three months, have a nice long run. It just kind of reinvigorated me," says Bakula. "You're out here (in L.A.) and you do TV and movies, which is so fast and so different. It had been 18 years since I had sat and rehearsed a show for more than a minute. I wasn't sure how I would feel about it."

Because they get but two weeks of rehearsals and two weeks of performance, Reprise! productions lie somewhere between the one-night quick hits of a benefit and a standard regional theater run. The organization's producers have long been courting Bakula to do a Reprise! show, and with "No Strings," the schedules and material finally lined up.

Plucky 'Strings'

Written in 1962, "No Strings" was Rodgers' first solo effort following the death of his partner, Oscar Hammerstein II, and the first Rodgers show to hit Broadway after "The Sound of Music."

Bakula plays David, a once-successful author living large in Paris, whose bout of writer's block is pleasantly interrupted by a beautiful model (played by "Shark's" Sophina Brown). The original production starred Richard Kiley and Diahann Carroll and ran 580 performances on Broadway.

"There's a lot to sink your teeth into in this piece in terms of acting, which isn't always the case in musical comedy. Each day, I fall in love with it more and more," says Bakula.

"Because the show is really a play with music, it's important to have an actor-singer, and that's what really makes the play come alive," says the production's director, Kay Cole. "So many people and audiences know Scott as an actor. They don't know the talent he has as a singer."

Bakula notes that a number of sci-fi fans might be surprised by his musical past.

"All of a sudden, a rock 'n' roll singer comes up with a group of standards, and you say, 'I didn't know he could do that,' " Bakula says.

To sing is his thing

Of course, while on TV, Bakula found ample opportunities to feed his love of music. Dr. Sam Beckett, the history-invading scientist he played on "Quantum Leap," certainly had plenty of musical moments. Sam sang blues, some Elvis Presley, some glitter rock, some Jerry Lee Lewis and even "understudied" an actor performing Don Quixote in "Man of La Mancha."

"I do a lot of stuff, and they could write to a lot of areas," says Bakula, who wrote an occasional song for "Leap."

"I play the piano, so they could write a blind concert pianist."

In addition to "Shenandoah," Bakula's post-"Enterprise" credits include a two-episode stint on "The New Adventures of Old Christine." He wouldn't be averse to another live stage project or another turn with Reprise!

Perhaps even a return to Broadway?

"That's something that's come along and been offered," says Bakula, who has two children, ages 7 and 11, with actress Chelsea Field.

"I love New York, and I love the theater there, but it's, 'Do I love it enough to yank my kids out of school and relocate them?' I'm looking. It's just finding the right match."

NO STRINGS

Where: Freud Playhouse, Macgowan Hall, UCLA, Westwood.
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through May 20.
Tickets: $70 to $75. (310) 825-2101. www.reprise.org.

Copyright © 2007 Los Angeles Newspaper Group. All Rights Reserved.

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