Locally based actor, singer, and dancer Gale McNeeley has done quite a lot across his five decades as an actor, singer, and dancer. His early professional theater work was on Broadway in New York City in the ’60s and ’70s, performing alongside titans like Christopher Plummer. He’s currently readying a concert program to be performed in SLO and Santa Maria that will serve as a retrospective of his 50-year career singing American musicals.
McNeeley didn’t think he would be a musical actor when he first arrived in New York City in his youth. He thought he would make his way into the city’s famous theater scene as an actor in dramatic plays, but his talents as a singer and dancer put him in higher demand in the ensembles and supporting roles of Broadway’s musicals.
“For me, at the time, working musicals was the best work you could get in New York, and to a certain extent it still is today,” he said. “Many actors get their start in choruses in musicals, that’s how you get your experience and equity card.”
Sharing the stage with the greats helped shape the young McNeeley’s talents for stagecraft, but the young performer already had a lifetime of singing under his belt.
Beginning as a boy singer in a Catholic Church choir, McNeeley was also in the blue jacket choir during his time in the U.S. Navy. It was after leaving the service and moving to New York that he began to refine his vocal ability with lessons.
“That’s when I had to give up smoking, because I couldn’t afford both voice lessons and cigarettes,” he said. “It was $12.50 a week for voice lessons in New York then, and that was what my cigarettes were costing at the time too.”
McNeeley eventually left Broadway, but his love for theater took him all over the country, including to PCPA in 1984. He returned again in 1987 to play The Ghost in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, directed at the time by Jack Shouse, songs from which he will include in his upcoming program 50 Years of Musicals.
He decided to focus on the songs he’s enjoyed most from the numerous musicals performed across his career, McNeeley explained, rather than just the most famous barnburners everyone recognizes.
“I had to find what was interesting about the songs I have done,” he said. “I’m basically trying to surprise the audience with the songs I’ve chosen, which they might have forgotten about or never heard.”
After setting up a permanent residence on the Central Coast in 2002, McNeeley began producing his own satirical musicals, including Pope: The Musical and Pope II: The Sequel, which skewered the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. He enjoyed collaboration with local actors from PCPA, the Great American Melodrama, and the SLO Little Theatre to help make these productions a reality.
Other programs McNeeley’s offered on the Central Coast—which garnered him a loyal following of fans in the Santa Maria, SLO, and Ojai areas—were solo singing shows with accompanist and longtime collaborator Betty Faas, like the upcoming retrospective show. These concerts were either tributes to famous songwriters, like Yip Harburg and most recently Pete Seeger, and some even included more of McNeeley’s satirical song parodies.
“At the end of the show I am doing some parodies that I’ve done before,” he said. “I have a song about medical marijuana, there is an Edward Snowden song, which are all parodies of well-known tunes.”
Never content unless he’s busy, McNeeley also recently collaborated with the Poetic Justice Project for their comedia del’arte production of Inside Out, which was performed locally and at Alcatraz in San Francisco.
His local solo shows and collaborations may be a far cry from Broadway, where he started, but McNeeley has found that what many actors see as the pinnacle of a career is just another stage in another town.
“It’s kind of ironic, in a way, that once I was on Broadway, I saw that that itself couldn’t be my goal, because people get lost on Broadway, they may do Cats for 20 years,” he said. “It’s understandable, because the money is good, you get attention, and you have a Broadway show on your résumé.
“What I learned over the years is it was about the particular show and projects you worked and the great performers you worked with more than just being on Broadway,” he added. “I learned that Broadway isn’t the goal, it’s the step along the way.”
Contact Arts Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 6-13, 2015.
