February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The actor, who is currently giving a remarkable performance as John Cleary, the distressed, frustrated father in Frank D. Gilroy?s modern classic, ?The Subject Was Roses,? had an identical twin, Jeff, who died when he was 17 in an incident involving a snowy night and a lonely stretch of railway track.
The 54-year-old McGregor speaks about the difficult and painful parts of his life openly and freely, at least a first. He seems, after revealing an aspect of his past with refreshing candor, inclined to pull back, or change the subject.
For example, he comments, almost jocularly, that he once spent 52 consecutive weekends in county jail in Florida. ?Nothing serious, just small stuff, playing with my bank accounts, moving money around to cover my backside, and I got busted,? he recalled. ?When I?d disappear on weekends, I?d tell my friends I was going to the club.?
The actor spins his yarns, and intentionally or not, a strong impression is made.
McGregor, who will be playing in Gilroy?s play through Sunday, as part of the Fifth Annual Midtown International Theatre Festival, is a living reminder of an element of the development of an actor that is all too easy to overlook completely. It is that some performers bring a wealth of life experience to their work, while others, perhaps equally gifted, come to the stage with a strong academic grounding but not much in the way of exposure to the world?s harsh realities.
McGregor is in the first category, so much so that he delivers a powerful, sometimes threatening tone with everything he does.
John Cleary, the character he plays in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, is trapped in an unhappy marriage and unrewarding job. The play?s action centers on the return to the Cleary apartment in the Bronx of the family?s only son, who has been away for three years during World War II.
McGregor admits that he?s spent a considerable stretch of his life ?doing other things.? Not that he hasn?t been acting. He?s played Claudius in ?Hamlet? Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner?s ?Angels in America,? John Buchanan, Jr. in Tennessee Williams?s ?Summer and Smoke? and El Gallo in ?The Fantasticks,? among other parts, but most of his work has been done in Toronto, where he lived for a number of years.
But there is a gap. The ?Roses? programme says the McGregor ?came late to acting, having been a musician and architect previously,? and goes on to comment that ?a 22-year career has taken him all over the world.?
McGregor?s personal history, whatever it may or may not actually encompass, has clearly enriched and influenced his work.
McGregor?s first experience with acting took place when he was 31. ?I gave up being a builder in order to become an actor,? he said ?Before that, I?d given up playing music to become a laborer, a mason?s tender, a mason, a carpenter?s helper, electrician?s helper, and plumber?s helper. I learned those trades, and, eventually did a little school. Then I left school and worked for an architect. I worked as a project manager, doing some drafting and all those kinds of things. Then I took my boards and got certified.?
The work McGregor has done shows in his physicality and in his manner. His hands are large, strong and obviously used to hard work. His voice is secure and his gaze is steady. These characteristics stand him in good stead as he plays John Cleary, particularly the aspects that the working-class Cleary shows to the world.
McGregor said he came to the theater by accident. ?I was successful as a young maverick architect and I even taught it for a little while. But I was building in Florida, and I was living too high, wide and handsome,? he said. ?I overextended myself and it all came tumbling down, including my fianc