Arts & Entertainment
St. Louisan Joneal Joplin Loves The Muny's Great Outdoors
Actior appears in his 66th Muny production with "Kiss Me Kate."
St. Louisan Joneal Joplin will appear in his 66th production at The Muny when Kiss Me Kate opens its weeklong run Monday, and he couldn’t be happier to be back in Forest Park’s great outdoors.
“There really is nothing to compare to being outdoors in the elements,” he said. “Feeling the heat, feeling the wind, feeling the sprinkles when the rain starts, sucking a bug down the throat. They’re all part of it. But it is such a unique thing. There is nothing that compares to working out of doors, and I think it also applies to the audience. There’s something wonderful about sitting out of doors and watching a play, or watching a musical. There’s something about that that’s kind of magical for people, that they really enjoy, they really look forward to.”
Kiss Me Kate, which features such Cole Porter tunes as “So In Love” and “Another Op’nin’, Another Show,’ is the story of a troupe of actors who find their performance of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew oddly and sometimes comically mirrors their offstage lives. It also stars Lisa Vroman, Tom Hewitt, Curtis Holbrook, James Anthony and Lee Roy Reams.
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Joplin, or Jop as he’s known to friends, plays the dual roles of actor Harry Trevor and Baptista, the father of the two girls in Shrew.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said Joplin, who lives in Webster Groves with Janie, his wife of 48 years. “It’s a pretty simple role.”
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Unless, of course, a bug decides to make a cameo during a grand solo, or the cottonwoods are bombing the stage with their floating, feathery debris.
“That’s the nasty one,” he said of the cottonwood’s cotton. “You suck one of those down, and it won’t go all the way down. It just stays in that halfway down position, and continues to tickle and tickle--it’s awful. It’s happened before at The Muny, it will probably happen again, where a performer has to stop in the middle of a number and go off and get a drink of water to wash it down. And everyone understands that. It’s just part of being out there.”
Joplin has been sabotaged by the scourge of the cottonwoods.
“I was caught in midsong, and I was foolish enough not to go off and get a drink of water,” he said. “I ended up having kind of a croaky voice for the rest of the show.”
Joplin’s first show at The Muny was 1776 in 1976. As a veteran of The Muny stage, but also a local actor, he is proud of something he started informally to foster more camaraderie among the cast members. Local performers don’t stay in hotels with the out-of-town cast members, so it was harder to make friends.
“There was virtually no chance for us to socialize,” Joplin said.
So he started a parking lot tailgate party afer a performance, and it caught on.
“So everybody from the show could come out, stand around the tailgate and drink a beer, and talk about the show, and talk about themselves--you know, get to know each other. It has turned out to be one of my favorite things that we do out there,” he said. “And even the shows I’m not involved in, there’s almost always somebody now who will have a tailgate. I’m proud that it’s a tradition we got started, and it seems to be one that will last long after I’m gone.”
After 35 years gracing The Muny stage, Joplin found it difficult to pinpoint one fondest memory.
“Oh, that’s a hard one,” he said. “But I think if I had to pick one thing, I would probably say when we did Hello Dolly.”
It was 1997, and Joplin played Horace Vandergelder opposite Muny favorite Gretchen Wyler as Dolly.
“I think she was probably in her late 60s at that time,” he said. “The first day of rehearsal, she’s out there doing the opening number, and she’s got her kicks going over her head. And all the guys who are going to be playing that scene with her are standing around looking at each other thinking, ‘OK, I think we’re gonna have to work a little harder this week, because that lady is throwing her leg higher than you have seen in a long time.’ She did that the entire rehearsal time, and the performance was absolutely splendid.”
As the male lead, Joplin had the next to last curtain call after the show, just before Wyler.
“On closing night... she came on to a standing ovation,” he said. “And she stopped the ovation. Everybody sat back down, and she said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I began my career at the age of 18. I came from Bartlesville, OK to St. Louis, MO to be in the ensemble at The Muny. That’s how my career began. And you’ve just seen my last performance. And she retired.
“There was not a dry eye anywhere--in the audience, on the stage--everyone was crying,” he continued. “It was an absolutely superb theater moment. She was one of the most talented ladies I ever worked with, one of the sweetest ladies I ever worked with, who just made every single moment you were with her a pleasant experience. And just made you better, because she had her bar set so high, you had to join her. Because when you see that bar, you say, ‘I’m not gonna go under it.’”
Joplin caught the acting bug at age four, when his older sister was taking what used to be called “self-expression lessons,” now known as acting lessons. He was hooked.
“I was listening to what she was doing, and I was just walking around the house, performing it for myself,” he said. “I think I was pretty much born an actor.”
He continued lessons for about a decade, but eventually began considering other professions.
“I kept shoving theater back down into the little hole that it lived in,” he said.
Luckily, the president of Phillips University in Enid, OK, where Joplin studied and met his wife, gave the young actor some sound advice.
“The president of the college said, ‘Stop doing that. You know what you want to do. Get out from under this other stuff and pursue the thing that you want to pursue.’ So I did.”
Joplin is proud of his longevity as an actor. He moved from New York to St. Louis years ago for one show, which turned into another, and another, until he was part of a resident company here.
“St. Louis theater, God knows, has been as good to me as any community can be,” he said. “The shows that I’ve done at The Rep and at The Muny, that’s a lifetime of work for a lot of people. I could not be happier, or feel more blessed than I do, for what has been handed to me.”
He realized a longtime goal last year by playing Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha. Later this summer Joplin will work with both his children in Shipwrecked at Webster University’s Insight Theater.
“We’re just all so excited about getting to work together,” he said. “I mean, how much more can you ask for? I’ve got two great kids, and they’re both great actors. To get to do something with them, that’s magic.”
Looking back to that first show at The Muny in 1976, one memory stands out for Joplin – probably because he still experiences it.
“There is a moment--like about 15 to 20 minutes, actually, is what it is--from the time the show goes up before it’s dark. So for those 20 minutes, you can see the audience pretty clearly,” he said, emphasizing “pretty.” “And if you’re out there and open the show, I mean, it’s daunting. There’s just no other way to describe it. And I feel it to this day, every time I walk out there. I mean, you’re standing there in front of 11,000 people,” he said, chuckling. “And you don’t do that anyplace else. It’s some experience, I guarantee you.”
Tickets for Kiss Me Kate range from $10 to $68 and are available at The Muny box office, online at www.metrotix.com and by calling MetroTix at 314-534-1111.
There are also about 1,500 free seats available at the back of the theater on a first-come, first-served basis.
Getting there from Wentzville
Take Highway 40 east to the Hampton Avenue exit into Forest Park. Go right at the first roundabout. At the second roundabout, follow the signs to Muny parking.
