Jason Alexander coming to Westbury with a one-man show about everything
"Jason Alexander: Comedy! Music! Musical Comedy!," starring the man who played George Costanza on "Seinfeld," comes to NYCB Theatre at Westbury. Credit: Getty Images/Tommaso Boddi
George Costanza couldn't do much of anything, but Jason Alexander does a little bit of everything. The former "Seinfeld" star not only acts, sings and dances but is a good enough magician that he's twice won awards from the Academy of Magical Arts.
All of these talents come into play with his one-man show, "Jason Alexander: Comedy! Music! Musical Comedy!," Thursday night at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury. A loosely autobiographical tour of Broadway musical numbers, this is the new production's opening night.
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George Costanza couldn't do much of anything, but Jason Alexander does a little bit of everything. The former "Seinfeld" star not only acts, sings and dances but is a good enough magician that he's twice won awards from the Academy of Magical Arts.
All of these talents come into play with his one-man show, "Jason Alexander: Comedy! Music! Musical Comedy!," Thursday night at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury. A loosely autobiographical tour of Broadway musical numbers, this is the new production's opening night.
The Newark, New Jersey, native, who turned 59 on Sunday, got his start in Broadway, TV and movies all in 1981. By decade's end, he'd won a Tony Award for best actor in a musical ("Jerome Robbins' Broadway") and joined an offbeat NBC show called "Seinfeld." Playing the Richard Gere character's attorney in the film "Pretty Woman" (1990) further solidified his career, and Alexander has gone on to countless screen roles and voice-over gigs. And in a discussion about his Westbury show, the eight-time Emmy nominee revealed a surprising number of links to Long Island.
"Comedy! Music! Musical Comedy!" What's in that show?
You'll never guess. [Laughs.] This is a show that's been done in symphony spaces for between two and three years. [The promoter] Live Nation wanted to see how it would work without the full orchestra, so we've reduced our orchestrations down to six instruments, six players, and the idea is that we're able to go into performing-arts centers and smaller theaters. And so Westbury is our first experiment. . . . The whole show is basically theater music — most of it is known, some of it is not, and it's sprinkled with anecdotal stories. And then there are some little quirks we built in, like there's one number when I will arbitrarily pick seven people out of the audience and they're going to come up and do it with me. It's like "An Evening With …" kind of thing.
So basically this is your "Springsteen on Broadway."
[Laughs.] Yes — minus my life as a vagabond-rock-star-poet-of-the-people!
I understand your wife, artist Daena Title, was raised around here.
My wife grew up first in Seaford, and the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway literally goes over her old home. Eminent domain — [her family was] kicked out of their home and they moved to Plainview. She went to Plainview-Old Bethpage High School, graduated there, and my dearest family members — my aunt and uncle and my three closest cousins — all grew up and still live in Lynbrook. And my bride and I were married at the Roslyn Country Club! [Laughs.]
Wasn't she a juror in the "Seinfeld" finale?
Wow — look at you! Yes, she was! That jury box, I can't remember everyone who was in there, but it was all loaded with friends and family. . . . I think she was Juror No. 10 — and she sent us up the river!
Now I ask this jocularly and feel free not to answer: Did you ever have a real-life Hamptons experience like in that famous "Seinfeld" episode ["The Hamptons" in which George in cold water suffers "shrinkage"]?
Do you know, I had never been to the Hamptons until a few years ago. I took over for Larry David in his [2015] Broadway play ["Fish in the Dark"] one summer, and my wife and I . . . decided to rent this Hamptons house for some ungodly money and then I got the play. So I barely got to be there! I would run out on Sunday night and then I had to be back by Tuesday afternoon. But the house was fantastic. So, by God, I didn't have a job the next summer, so we rented the same house. It was all very lovely. The most exciting thing is that I went for a walk in the woods and woke up the next day with seven ticks. . . . I'm grateful to say that they were not deer ticks.
WHAT "Jason Alexander: Comedy! Music! Musical Comedy!"
WHEN | WHERE 8 p.m. Thursday, NYCB Theatre at Westbury
INFO $40-$99.50; 800-653-8000, livenation.com