A generation ago, Clive Barnes, then the all-powerful drama critic of the New York Times, reviewed Stacy Keach as “the finest American classical actor since John Barrymore” after attending his performance of “Hamlet.” On Feb. 21, theatergoers can see Keach in action locally in a black-tie fundraiser for the Malibu Stage Company. Keach will star opposite fellow Malibuite Genevieve Bujold in a staged reading of “The Unexpected Man,” a recent play by the current superstar of European theater, Yasmina Reza.
In Reza’s play, Keach plays the role of a celebrated novelist who encounters a hitherto unknown admirer aboard a European train.
“I love this play,” Keach said in a recent interview. “It is basically two streams of consciousness that eventually come together.”
Keach has known the work since seeing it in London, while starring for several months during the mid-1990s in the record-setting, eight-year run of Reza’s Tony Award-winning play, “Art.”
In addition to his fondness for the play, Keach is delighted to be working with Bujold again. He earlier co-starred with the actress, who received an Oscar nomination for “Anne of a Thousand Days,” in a modern-dress version of “Antigone” for PBS. “And, in 1995,” he says, “we made ‘False Identity,’ a film directed by my brother, James.”
Ironically, Keach, who has also recorded an album of Shakespeare’s sonnets, is less well known to the public as the modern Barrymore than as a contemporary Bogart. It was his performance of detective Mike Hammer in CBS’s hit, mid-1980s series “Mike Hammer” (revived 12 years later) that branded him as television’s tough guy. The image was cemented by his win of the Golden Globe’s Best Actor award for the 1987 mini-series based on the life of Ernest Hemingway, and his iconic performance of an L.A. detective in the 1972 film, “The New Centurions.” Among many honors, Keach has also won three Obies and the prestigious Millennium Recognition Award for outstanding contributions to classical theater. Of the seeming contradiction between starring as a homicidal sheriff in “The Killer Inside Me,” and playing the lead in the 1973 film version of John Osborne’s play “Luther,” Keach laughs: “I’ve always felt that versatility is a mark of accomplishment; unfortunately Hollywood often sees it as a lack of consistency.”
Lightning struck the house in Savannah, Georgia on the July night in 1941 when Stacy was born; at the time, his parents, who recently died after a 67-year marriage, weren’t sure if it was a good or bad sign. They didn’t have long to wait for an answer. Within months, his father, Stacy senior, who enjoyed a successful 50-year career as an actor, director, writer and producer, was invited to join the Pasadena Playhouse. His namesake son grew up in the Valley, and honed his craft at U.C. Berkeley and the Yale Drama School before going on to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts on a Fullbright Scholarship. He first came to notice in New York in the off-Broadway, anti-LBJ and anti-establishment play, “McBride.”
“After I played ‘Hamlet’ to those wonderful notices,” Keach says, “I thought my phone would start ringing. It didn’t ring at all. My agent told me to get out of my ivory tower. So I came back to California.”
And, despite success, a beautiful home in Malibu, a wonderful marriage to his wife, Malgosia, and a pair of teenage kids, Shannon and Karolina, Keach hasn’t slowed down since. Most recently, television audiences reveled in his gleeful take on the father from hell in Fox’s raucous sitcom “Titus.” He received raves for his performance in last spring’s production at the Mark Taper Forum of Jon Robin Baitz’s “Ten Unknowns” and, last Christmas, appeared memorably as Scrooge in Boston.
Tickets for the Feb. 21 benefit, to be followed by a champagne reception, are $250. For information, call 310.589.1998.