Town resident stars in ‘The Honeymooners’ at Paper Mill

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Bang, zoom — to the moon, Alice!
Bloomfield resident and Tony Award-winning actor Michael McGrath is not pulling any punches. As Ralph Kramden in the musical, “The Honeymooners,” beginning tonight at the Paper Mill Playhouse, McGrath said an assessment of the ‘50s-era Kramden as being a misogynist had to be addressed.

“There has been concern about the physical violence aspect of the relationship,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “The men in those days were misogynists.”

McGrath — pronounced McGraw — gave as an example a 1956 episode, from the perennially popular TV series, called “Mama Loves Mambo.”
In the story, a nightclub dancer, Carlos, has moved into the apartment building where Ralph, played by Jackie Gleason, and his pal Ed Norton, played by Art Carney, live with their wives, Alice and Trixie, played by Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph, respectively.

While the husbands are at work, Carlos teaches the wives how to mambo, much to the consternation of the men when they arrive home without finding a hot meal on the table. There is a confrontation between the husbands and Carlos. The dancer calls for a truce by saying he will stop his lessons and not be a problem to them anymore. But before retreating, he asks the husbands a simple question: For all they do for you, why don’t you treat your wives better? Ralph has no good answer, and this is a humiliating concession for him and the others. He responds by asking Carlos to teach them how to mambo and all’s well that ends well.

“Ralph Kramden teaches us a lesson,” McGrath said. “At the end of the episode, Carlos is right and we have to treat the women right. Kramden never ‘bang-zooms’ Alice to the moon. The lesson they learn is at the end. But I wanted to keep those elements between Ralph and Alice so we can reach the lesson.

“We can’t take that element out of ‘The Honeymooners,’” he continued. “It is what it is — the ‘50s. For this foursome, Ralph and Alice, Ed and Trixie, it would have been wrong not to honor the TV show and its content.”

McGrath, who won the 2012 Tony award for his performance as a featured actor in the musical “Nice Work If You
Can Get It,” said he began preparations to play Kramden back in the ‘60s when
his father let him stay up to watch “The Honeymooners.”

“I’ve been a big fan of the show,” he said citing episodes, “Funny Money,” “The Golfer” and “Young at Heart” as some of his favorites.
As a fan, he has read a lot about Gleason, who served as executive producer of “The Honeymooners” and was in full control of the TV show. There is also the knowledge that Gleason did little rehearsing for the show. His performances have attributed to the belief that there was a natural affinity between Ralph and himself.

But McGrath said for his Ralph, the one to be staged, he has concentrated only on the make-believe.
“I wanted to separate, for the sake of the story and theater, Jackie from Ralph,” he said. “Jackie Gleason is different from the character of Ralph Kramden. I’m not playing Jackie Gleason, I’m playing Ralph Kramden — the man that lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant. That’s my starting point.”
McGrath said, as an actor, it was difficult for him to deal with either Ralph Kramden or Jackie Gleason: Both are icons and it would have been very easy to imitate either one of them. But he wanted to develop Ralph Kramden fully but at the same time, understood that he had to be portrayed in the way people expected Ralph to behave. To fashion the predictable, McGrath said he still had to find out what made Ralph tick.

“But there are a couple of surprises in the show but no real shockers,” he said. “The people are going to get the Ralph they have seen. And we took a few things from some episodes, like ‘One of these days, Alice.’ It’s a classic piece of the show.”

As with the TV show, the stage musical entails a scheme for Ralph and Ed to make money. But with the TV show, McGrath said things turn sour quickly. For the musical, it is after Ralph and Ed win a $500 jingle contest that their problems begin. Fans of the TV show will recognize that the music Ed plays for the jingle is “Swanee River.” This is the same tune he plays on the 1956 TV episode when Ralph, preparing to appear on a quiz show to answer questions about song titles, is quizzed by Ed.