"We just want people to be propelled by the story and the music," Grier says. "It's not like we made a deal with the estate to destroy all previous versions and burn down all the opera houses. They will continue to do it and it will continue to live and be interpreted. That's what keeps classical works like this alive."
It's the fifth time on Broadway for this 55-year-old Yale School of Drama graduate best known for his four seasons on the groundbreaking sketch comedy TV show In Living Color.
Grier didn't expect to return to Broadway so soon after appearing in David Mamet's Race in 2010, but he had never been in Porgy and Bess and thought the new version was going to be "historic."
He e-mailed the American Repertory Theater's Diane Paulus, who was directing the adaptation by Suzan-Lori Parks and Deidre L. Murray. Grier, who knew Paulus from a workshop of her Best of Both Worlds, wanted to play Sporting Life, the drug-pushing pimp portrayed in the original Broadway production by Cab Calloway and on screen by Sammy Davis Jr.
Grier impressed the team by holding his own alongside lead actors Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis, and singing the funny, upbeat "It Ain't Necessarily So" and the teasing, seductive "There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon."
"I would sit in the back of the theater with my musical director and my choreographer. He'd start singing and we'd all look at each other and our jaws would drop. It's a performance that's blossomed," says Paulus.
"He's been the most incredible company member for this show. He's cracked a joke at every perfect and imperfect moment and made us all laugh. He's a famous name and yet he's right there in the trenches with everyone."
