| Jon Mullich | |
|---|---|
Jon Mullich in The Author's Thumb |
|
| Born | 1961 (age 50–51) Los Angeles, CA |
| Website | |
| http://www.madbeast.com | |
Jon Mullich (born 1961 in Los Angeles, California) American actor, playwright, director and Academy Award historian who played Gloucester in Reza Abdoh's vision of King Lear and Abel Drugger in The Alchemist at the Globe Playhouse among other roles before achieving recognition for his performance in the title role of Mark Ringer's production of Hamlet in Los Angeles (praised by the Los Angeles Times[1] for its "touches of gallows humor and mocking fatalism"), the first theatrical production produced under the Actors Equity Association 99-seat theater plan.[2]
He has since excelled in such roles as Angelo in Measure for Measure (of which the LA Weekly[3] wrote "this staging of Shakespeare's tragicomic treatise of sexual politics shines on the merits of the marvelously austere, yet emotionally vulnerable, Jon Mullich"), the villainous Lord Grizzle in Dennis Gersten's production of The Author's Thumb (adapted from the works of Henry Fielding), Thomas Diaforus in The Imaginary Invalid, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream opposite Kelie McIver as Titania, the snake who offers Adam and Eve forbidden fruit in The Apple Tree and Malvolio in Twelfth Night, as well as appearances on the television show Totally Hidden Video.
His work as a playwright includes an award-winning adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's farce A Servant of Two Masters which transferred the action of the play to Prohibition-era Chicago, in which Mullich also played the role of Truffaldino Bottachio as a Brooklyn wise guy in the premiere production, a performance that Back Stage West[4] said "keeps the audience roaring with laughter at his shameless mugging". He also wrote The Special Award, a drama about film legend D.W. Griffith which examines events surrounding the director's lifetime achievement Oscar at the 1936 Academy Award ceremony and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' controversial early role as a labor organization in Hollywood.
Mullich directed and adapted U.S.S. Pinafore from H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert & Sullivan, which took the original operetta's depiction of social climbing on a Victorian sailing vessel and transferred it to an absurdist take on the universe of Star Trek, including such non-G&S elements as a talking computer, a lizard man, and an alien probe, and also featured Gilbert & Sullivan songs from The Mikado and The Yeomen of the Guard with such new lyrics as (in Pinafore's famous "He is an Englishman", rewritten to "He is an Earthlingman"):
"For he might have looked like strange shapes/
From some distant far-off moonscapes/
Or the Planet of the Apes!" Kerry O'Quinn, founder of Starlog and Fangoria Magazines, wrote "It's rare that such a bold and original concept is so professionally executed."[5] The Huffington Post added "I don't want to spoil any jokes or gags because they are so lovely and lively and fresh. Suffice to say you don't need to be a fan of both or either genres -- just someone who likes to laugh -- in order enjoy this silly, sexy romp."[6] It was nominated for a 2011 Saturn Award for Best Small Theatre Production by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films.[7][8]