Choreographer Twyla Tharp chooses non-dancer for Dylan show on Broadway

Oct. 25--Michael Arden trained as an actor and vocalist at the Juilliard School, but he hasn't had a dancing lesson in all his 24 years. That didn't keep choreographer Twyla Tharp from hiring him to interpret Bob Dylan in the new musical "The Times They Are A-Changin'." Over 90 minutes, Arden high-steps with professional hoofers, many from Tharp's own company, in four of the show's numbers, among them "Like a Rolling Stone," which he also sings.

"When my manager told me I was going to audition for this, I thought it was a joke," the 6-footer from Midland, Texas, said last week in his dressing room at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. "I heard the words 'Twyla Tharp,' and I knew her work from 'Movin' Out' and the ballet, and I just thought it was a crazy idea."

Tharp, whose show opens tomorrow, has said she believes anyone can dance, and she instructed her novice charge: "Just move the way you move." To complement Arden, she hired an ensemble of seven dancers he characterizes as "superhumans," among them "Movin' Out" vets Charlie Neshyba-Hodges and John Selya, who keeps dumbbells in his dressing room and, in Arden's view, moves as if he were fighting someone.

"Watching them, I'm learning to be more comfortable in my own body, and not worrying if people are going to laugh at me," Arden says. "Because actually, they do ... and that's good for the show."

Says Tharp, "I've been working with Michael for about a year now, and he's terrific."

A Dylanesque dreamscape

"The Times They Are A-Changin'" takes place in a dreamscape, with Arden as Coyote, who has been raised amid the disenfranchised performers of a dingy traveling circus. Coyote longs to see the larger world, but his plans are complicated when he falls in love with the only female member of the low-rent troupe, a lion-tamer already involved with Coyote's abusive father (Thom Sesma). The narrative is a funky collision of the artistic legacies of both Dylan and Tharp.

Arden, who last appeared on Broadway in 2003 as Tom Sawyer in the acclaimed Deaf West/ Roundabout production of "Big River," created the role of Coyote earlier this year at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. During the show, he sings more than a dozen Dylan classics, among them "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Not Dark Yet" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door."

His crash course in Dylanography is making up for an adolescence largely devoid of the iconic singer-songwriter's music, he says.

"I had heard my mother listen to 'Rainy Day Woman,' so I knew that, but I didn't really know any of his other songs," Arden says. "While I'm embarrassed about that, I'm also really excited that this project is what brought him into my life."

Arden didn't talk much with Dylan when the latter saw "The Times" in San Diego -- calling it "the best presentation of my songs that I've ever seen or heard on any stage." He imagines it was "terrifying" for Dylan to let somebody else make choices about his original work, "but I think he was thrilled that something so joyous and beautiful was created."

"The Times" marks Arden's first leading role on Broadway, although in 2004 he starred Off-Broadway in "Bare: A Pop Opera," a story about two gay teenagers at a Catholic boarding school. He also has left his imprint on pop-culture consciousness in other memorable ways.

He played a helpful Commerce Bank employee in a commercial last year with Kelly Ripa and Regis Philbin. In a 2004 spot for Domino's, Arden delivers a cheeseburger pizza pie to Donald Trump, who then takes credit for inventing the dish and bellows, "You should be paying me for this."

A versatile actor

The young actor more recently co-starred in the Season 2 finale of "Grey's Anatomy" as a man who unchivalrously pushes his fiancee in front of him to take a bullet. Arden auditioned for "Anatomy" in April, just after the Dylan musical ended its West Coast run. In the TV storyline, his wounded bride-to-be was played by Sydney Tamiia Poitier, daughter of Oscar-winner Sidney Poitier.

"When I met her, I said, 'Oh, so tell me about your name. So your parents are, like, big fans [of Poitier's]?' And she said, 'No, that's my dad.'"

The thing that's embarrassing Arden these days is that he "sweats like a wildebeest." A stagehand in the wings must stay on the ready to towel him off and blow air into his microphones to clear them of his dripping perspiration. Even so, during the San Diego tryout, he schvitzed enough to short out the sound system while he sang "Like a Rolling Stone."

The snafu occurred at the same moment in the show when a dancer comes onstage with cue cards showing the lyrics, a reference to a video of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in which Dylan does the same thing.

"The audience sang the song for the rest of the number," Arden recalls. "It was one of the coolest moments ever, and one of those reminders we get every so often about the magic of live theater. People love his music so much, they were dying for an opportunity to sing it, and there it was."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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