There are a handful of major leading roles in musical theater today - the kind that most actors would give their eyeteeth to play and probably find terrifying and intimidating.
You know, roles like Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables" or the title role in "The Phantom of the Opera."Thomas James O'Leary, who'll be playing the seductive and mysterious masked man in the upcoming Theatre League of Utah presentation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera," said he never felt particularly daunted by stepping into the the role.
The Connecticut native, interviewed by telephone from Tulsa, Okla., where the national touring company was performing before heading into Salt Lake City, said he just took his latest career move in stride.
"My career has been slow and steady," he said. "Mine is not one of those `I went to New York and got my first Tony Award when I was 25' kind of stories. I've seen some actors like that, but that's not my story. I've just kept plugging away and taking classes, and I've been lucky because I've been working solidly for eight or nine years.
"It seems like there's been a little step up every year or two, except this is the biggest step because it's such a big role."
For O'Leary, getting tapped to play the role of the Phantom was one of those "third time is a charm" situations.
First time: O'Leary had a featured spot in the chorus of the Broadway production of "Miss Saigon."
"It was a nice role, but there was nothing for me in the show as far as a principal goes. I wasn't Asian and I wasn't Black and I wasn't young enough anymore and I wasn't a women. There was just nothing `right' for me.
"But Mitchell Lemsky, the assistant director, who had worked with `Phantom,' suggested that I had the right voice quality and essence for `Phantom.' "About three months later, he arranged a `Phantom' audition with the production supervisor and some others, but this wasn't so great. I had a bug that was going around and nothing happened. I forgot about it and a year later, when I was still doing `Miss Saigon,' they called me again.
Second time: "This time when I auditioned I got in the show, performing the role of Monsieur Reyer and understudying Monsieur Andre. But they still didn't feel right about me understudying the Phantom yet.
"I accepted that. It was still good to be able to go into another big Broadway show. I had done `Miss Saigon' for two years. By then I had given up on ever playing the Phantom. I figured that if they didn't feel right about it, how could I change their minds? I thought `I'm not going to make myself crazy over this' and just forgot about it."
Third time: "The nice thing, I think, is that over time it was like they responded well to my work. So about a year later they approached me again, this time about understudying the role. A few months later they put me into four shows and that went really well, then two weeks later director Hal Prince came to me himself and said, `I'd be delighted to have you take over the role on tour.' That was nine months ago."
O'Leary continues to work with acting and voice coaches whenever he can.
"For me, it's a continuous process to keep honing the tools and the skills."
During the interview, I noted that the brief "bios" in the "who's who in the cast" section of the program says: "Tom dedicates his performance to Nephi Jay Wimmer."
"Now, Nephi . . . " I said.
" . . . that's a Mormon name, right?" he quickly interjected. "I'm glad you asked, actually. Nephi was a very, very dear friend of mine. We were both in the original cast of `Miss Saigon' He's from American Fork and he passed away two and one-half years ago.
"Before he passed away, I helped take care of him - along with a lot of other cast members who had rallied together. I'm actually looking forward to seeing his family when I'm out there.
"It was kind of coincidental. We did two shows together. We did the tour of `Chess' and when that closed, we both got cast in `Miss Saigon.' He was half Hopi Indian and he played an Asian because he looked more Vietnamese than some of the Japanese actors."
(Deseret News files show that Wimmer was 33 when he died on July 26, 1993, in New York City. The former BYU Young Ambassador had performed at the World's Fair Expo, Opryland USA and Walt Disney World.)
O'Leary has visited Salt Lake City previously and has friends in the area.
"I love it there," he said.
"And the whole company - at least I think I'm speaking for a lot of us - are really looking forward to it. The 16-week run is long, especially for this company. We hit the medium-sized cities and we stay for an average of seven weeks. The hardest thing on this tour is moving so often."
O'Leary has toured both ways.
The "Chess" tour was one week at a time, but when he was in the first national tour of "Les Miserables," they stayed for an average of six months at a time in cities like Washington, D.C., Boston and Chicago.
For the one-week runs, "you really live out of a suitcase in a hotel room, but you're just on the road and you never really get settled."
At the other end of the scale, in the longer engagements "you can get an apartment and set up housekeeping.
"But this company is sort of in between, and I find this to be difficult. They say that moving is one of the most stressful things you can do and we do it eight or nine times a year."
O'Leary noted that one of the performers in the "Phantom" cast is Susan Facer, a former Brigham Young University vocal student who plays the central role of ingenue Christine Daae for the Saturday matinees and on Sunday evenings. The Detroit native and BYU graduate is making her national tour debut with this company.
"I keep teasing her with `OK, Miss Salt Lake City' as the tour gets closer to Utah. You're all going to go crazy over her! "It's fun! I did my `hometown' when we were in Hartford, Conn., and that was an amazing thing. I think I'm still recovering from that. It was crazy."
O'Leary actually grew up in the town of Windsor Locks, about 10 minutes away from Hartford.
O'Leary didn't even begin acting until he was a senior in high school. He had joined a folk-singing group and discovered he enjoyed singing.
"When I went to the University of Connecticut I decided to try an `Introduction to Acting' class just to see how it would go. It went well and I got good feedback, so I decided to major in theater."
He earned a BFA in acting at U-Conn but wasn't quite ready to strike out for New York, so he entered an intensive two-year course at Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, R.I.
"That's where I learned a lot of the basic things that I still use today. I had some top-notch teachers there. Then I moved to New York and I've been based there for 15 years.
"And now I'm an old man!" he laughed. "Actually it just feels old. When I'm doing these interviews and I say I've been living in New york for 15 years it just boggles my mind!"
And now he's playing one of the most sought-after roles in American theater today.
Not bad for an "old man" of 39.
Another recent accomplishment was being invited to sing on a new "symphonic recording" version of "Miss Saigon." Like the expansive, three-disc set for "Les Miz," this soon-to-be-released package will include virtually the entire score of "Miss Saigon."
"I felt honored that they had me reprise my small role. It was just a 40-minute solo . . . oops, I mean a 40-second solo . . . I wish it had been 40 minutes. They didn't have to ask me. It's an international recording and they invited performers from all the different `Miss Saigon' companies."