Producer of a Hit Career
Matthew Vargo is the Line Captain for the Las Vegas run of "The Producers" at the Paris Hotel. Smart, talented and versatile, he's managed to produce a rather nice career in musical theatre.
"I always like to say I started dancing at five in a Dolly Dinkle program. It was a strip mall with a grocery store and then dancing in a room with a linoleum floor." His teacher, Charlotte Johnston, may not have had an impressive studio but her background was another story. She had danced professionally with stars like Leslie Caron and Cyd Charisse.
With Charlotte as his teacher, Matthew migrated toward musical theatre. He said, "...at sixteen I started working at Disneyland, working the parades. Luckily, I never had to work at McDonalds or the Gap, which there's nothing wrong with that, but I got to have a fantastic education, to do parades and little specialty shows."
"I think dance-wise I was always very confident. It came very easily for me." Because of that, he focused elsewhere in college. "At the time, I never saw the point of getting a degree in theatre. Now hindsight is twenty-twenty. I always thought I was going to graduate from high school and immediately move to New York and kind of pursue the business that way, but I think I wasn't big enough for my britches yet. I didn't move there until I was twenty-six and it would've eaten me up and spit me out and I would've been back in California being an accountant or something."
In the meantime, his big break eluded him. "I actually was a big fish in a small pond which was great. My last year living in southern California I didn't audition for anything. People phoned me up and offered me jobs. Amazing. I didn't have a Broadway show and I wanted my Broadway show. 'Cats,' the tour, would come around every year and I would audition once a year in the fall, and for six years running I was on file. And finally I said, 'This is kind of stupid.' I wanted to move to New York and I wanted to be on the Great White Way and I did."
Then his career blossomed. "I've made a really good career being a swing. I've swung 'Cats.' I've swung 'A Christmas Carol.' I've swung 'Kiss Me Kate,' the national tour that I was on for the past fifteen years."
Then there was "The Producers." "I was on the second national tour, the 'second first national tour,' as they call it. There was a Max company and a Leo company. I was on the Leo company so I played L.A. I sought out that national tour. I wanted to do the show." And he wanted to work with Susan Stroman again.
"Susan Stroman is the Bob Fosse, the Jerome Robbins, the Agnes de Mille of our time...She brings out the best in everyone. She's a perfectionist. I don't want to say demanding because that sounds negative, because she's not, but she strives for the best in herself and strives for the best in everybody else and you want to work so hard for her."
He obviously worked hard enough for her to entrust him with the Line Captain position. "I'm told I'm a good teacher. I have a lot of patience. I'm very much, in my dance captaining, if I don't have the answer, I will then say, 'I'll find it out. I'll get back to you' rather than give them some song and dance."
Undoubtedly, he'll also get back to Broadway. He said, "I'll go back to New York and audition. I'd love to do 'Young Frankenstein.' That's Mel's next show but I don't think I have the performing bug out of me just yet. I love working on my singing and I've worked on my acting. I like assisting people. I think I'm a great assistant. I have no desire to be a choreographer. I have a voice for choreography but in a partnership. For me to come up with something out of thin air? I have great ideas but bringing them to fruition?"
What he has brought to fruition is his joyfulness at being onstage and he advises: "Have a sense of humor. Have fun with it. This is a fleeting art. It's sad. An actor can act until the day they die. A singer can sing much longer than a dancer. I used to be able to kick to my face. I can't do that any more. It's a little sad but I love dancing and I'm going to keep moving and do what I can. But I would say training is key." Once the training is established, it's a simple matter to produce an enviable career like Matthew Vargo's