Hey, Hey! Micky Dolenz on the Monkees and Returning to the Stage in London's Hairspray

You know him, of course, as the singing drummer from The Monkees, the 1960s TV/pop phenomenon, but Micky Dolenz has broadened his reach in recent years to become a steady musical theater presence. His credits include Zoser, Radames’ father, in the Broadway and national touring companies of Aida; the long-running Grease, where the company at the time included a very young Sutton Foster and Marissa Jaret Winokur; and, on tour and/or regionally, A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum (as Pseudolus) and Pippin (as Charlemagne). Turning 65 in March, Dolenz recently started performances as Wilbur Turnblad in the Olivier Award-winning London incarnation of Hairspray, opposite Brian Conley’s Edna. Broadway.com spoke to Dolenz during a day off from rehearsals at a hotel within walking distance of the Bloomsbury flat he has taken for the run. Hours before the conversation, there was an announcement that Hairspray will close on the West End on March 28, a producers’ decision that seemed to bother the genial, ever-pragmatic showbiz veteran not at all.

It must feel odd to be coming into the company of a hit show that has just announced it is closing.
It is a great show and it’s sad, but I think probably this winter just killed them. We got hit with the worst winter in 200 years; I don’t think that helped. It’s always sad, you know, but they had a damn good run, starting in 2007. That’s show business.

Does this announcement affect your own timetable?
I wasn’t due to stay that much longer—until the end of April, or something like that, so [the day’s news] doesn’t amount to much of a difference for me. Perhaps the fact that they are about to start a national tour [of Hairspray] had something to do with it and trying to run both productions in this small country. They’ve asked me about doing the tour, which I have considered. I would come back here in a heartbeat, and I suspect I will.

You would think this show might have come your way before.
Actually, they offered me Edna in a regional production back east—a summer stock kind of thing—but I just didn’t see myself in a fat suit. Maybe I’ll think differently about it after this run.

How do you feel about coming into shows as a replacement as opposed to originating a part or a production?
I’ve done both. I’d say I probably prefer starting something from scratch in that you’re part of a much longer creative process, but I’ve had three weeks on this and that isn’t bad. Most of my stuff is with Brian [Conley] and then a little bit with Tracy [Chloe Hart]. I’d like to think I’ve brought something to it: a Wilbur who’s maybe a little louder, a little broader, than before. And the part’s a good fit. Don’t forget, I have four daughters.[Laughs.]

Did you watch the film?
No, I refused to watch the movie and I heard that the Americans connected to the show aren’t crazy about it. I had seen Harvey [Fierstein] and Marissa Jaret Winokur on Broadway, so when I heard that they hadn’t cast her as Tracy and they didn’t cast Harvey as Edna, I was like, “Gimme a break!” I didn’t see it out of principle. But they needed those names above the title, and I heard Christopher [Walken, the screen Wilbur] was good in it.

It’s fascinating that you have so thoroughly embraced the theater at this point in your career.
The last number of years, I’ve been mostly only doing theater. I was in Aida for the best part of two years on the national tour and on Broadway. I remember one day adding them all up and realizing that I worked on Aida longer than I worked on the Monkees. Isn’t that interesting?

That’s surprising!
The Monkees lasted only two years, 26 episodes a year, across two seasons—1967 to ‘68.

And yet, they remain culturally iconic.
[Laughs.] There’s no accounting for taste. You hope and pray with any show, but no one ever knows—if they knew, and it was down to a formula, then there’d never be a flop.

How do you account for the appeal of The Monkees?
There were a few things, including the quality of the Neil Diamonds and Carole Kings and all those people who were writing for The Monkees more or less on command and then the fact that we had people working with us like Bob Rafelson and Paul Mazursky, who wrote the pilot. Also, when you look at the script, the really important fact is that The Monkees were not successful within the narrative of the TV show itself; they were only struggling for success. It wasn’t like A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, which was all about the Beatles being huge and running from their fans. The Monkees on the show were never successful, so it spoke to all of those kids around the world in their flats and basements and living rooms and garages who were trying to be famous. That’s what the show was about.

The irony is that over time you guys became, of course, an enormous success with a gigantic fan base all your own.
Sure, but I can’t tell you the number of times that people say, “Oh, we’re going to do the new Monkees,” and the thing they always miss is the idea that it’s not successful: they start with them all being good-looking and very successful, which wasn’t us. We were not that good-looking—well, Davy Jones was cute—but we weren’t all good-looking guys; I mean, I’m not. Having said that, the music and the band and the whole thing took a quantum leap; it just sort of ramped up to what it became.

It must have been hard when the whole thing ended.
You’d have to ask the others how they dealt with it but in my case, I had already been in the business 15 years. I had my first screen test when I was six and a series, Circus Boy, when I was 10, that ran two or three years. I’d done parades and autographs and had a fan club and fan mail. So when The Monkees came along, it was like my second career. And after The Monkees, I had already moved into directing and producing because I kind of knew I wasn’t going to get hired as a dramatic actor.

And here you are, reinventing yourself again, this time in musicals. Do you find the eight-show-a-week routine a grind?
Ha! Not when they’re in the same place. I have done eight shows a week and traveled 400 miles on a limo, a bus and an airplane in order to do so. Trust me, this is great.