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12/14/2016 11:01 PMJefferson Mays remembers he was a teenager growing up in Clinton when he went to New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre to see its 1982 production of The Front Page starring Brian Dennehy and Bruce Davidson.
“I was especially taken with a wonderful eccentric character actor from Second City named Severn Teakle Darden who played Bensinger,” says Mays at a recent interview at Sardi’s in New York’s theater district.
Now Mays is playing that same part—that of a fastidious neatnik reporter—in the star-studded Broadway revival at the Broadhurst Theater, 235 West 44th Street, New York City, led by Nathan Lane.
“I identify strongly with Bensinger,” says Mays, an elegant gentleman of the theater, known for his crisp old-school manners and splendid suits and haberdashery. “I know my germ-phobia has increased since doing this part. My dressing table certainly reflects his personality in that I like order. This outward need for order probably indicates an inner chaos. So it’s not a huge change for me to get into that mind-set.”
But he says “all actors are like Bensinger in the way you want all your ducks in a row and have things just so in order so you can fill your roles with that wild energy of performance.”
Mays’s roles in Connecticut include memorable turns in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, and The Importance of Being Earnest at Long Wharf and Outward Bound at Westport Country Playhouse. His Broadway credits include his Tony Award-winning performance in I Am My Own Wife and his Tony-nominated roles in the musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.
The Clinton Years
Mays’s love of theater and acting began at an early age. The youngest of three children and the son of a Naval Intelligence officer and a children’s librarian, Mays says reading was the primary home entertainment.
“We didn’t have a TV...Instead of TV, we would read aloud to each other after dinner.”
His parents’ families go back to 17th- and 18th-century North America; his “distant uncle” is Thomas Jefferson, his namesake.
Mays attended childrens’ theater programs at New Haven’s Yale Repertory Theatre in the ’70s, but he was more interested in the more adult shows at Long Wharf Theatre and other shows at the state’s theaters.
But his first taste as an actor was even more local—at his own home. His parents were part of the amateur theater group, Clinton Acting Society, “and it was a gathering of friends who would perform plays in each others’ living rooms. Those were the first plays I was ever in.”
He remembers being 15 when an older actor of the group couldn’t make a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest “and someone said, ‘Oh, let the kid play Algernon.’ Oh, I was in heaven. I wore a boater and ate cucumber sandwiches and after that there was no stopping me.”
A Bit of Journalism, Too
In Clinton, he even had a taste of Bensinger’s journalistic world.
“I was a theater critic for the Clinton Recorder when I was 10. The editor knew my parents and he wanted me to go see childrens’ theater productions at Post Office Square and review them. I remember writing a not very good review for The Little Prince and remembering the feeling of dread of walking through town and seeing the actors.”
The Front Page continues its limited run through the end of January.
And how is this production for him—where he is just playing one role after his acclaimed multi-character performances in I Am My Own Wife and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder—where he had 16 quick wardrobe changes?
“Oh, my dresser is so bored,” he says laughing.
To find out more about the current production of The Front Page, visit thefrontpagebroadway.com/.
Frank Rizzo is a freelance journalist who lives in New Haven and New York City. He has been writing about theater and the arts in Connecticut for nearly 40 years.