How's this for an enduring show-biz career?
At 20, after a successful stint as a child TV actor (in Circus Boy, 1956-58 ), you join a new, manufactured pop group called the Monkees, which becomes, however briefly, the No. 1 band in the world. Backed by a popular TV series, you sell millions of records (nine albums, four of which went to No. 1) and imprint your name on pop culture forever more.
Monkees mania ends, and you struggle for a period, but segue eventually into television as an actor, director and voice-over character. Then you switch gears entirely, move to London and become, for 12 years, a top BBC director and producer of sitcoms and dramas.
By the mid-1980s, a wave of Sixties nostalgia creates demand for a Monkees reunion tour, a little dividend that keeps on paying. Then you tour with a solo act and follow it up by jumping into musical comedy, appearing on Broadway in Aida, touring in Grease, and, this year, in a road-show company production of Stephen Schwartz's 1970s musical Pippin, now running at the Royal Alexandra Theatre until Dec. 3.
Come on down, Micky Dolenz.
"I'm having a great time," Dolenz, now 61, said in a recent interview. He plays Charlemagne, father of Pippin, the young hero in search of identity, authenticity and fulfilment. "They've added a new set and some elements of magic, so the show is now a bit like Cirque du Soleil." The original show, starring John Rubinstein and Jill Clayburgh, opened on Broadway in October of 1972 and ran for almost five years.
Ironically, Dolenz says, if you look at the old Monkees TV series (1966-68), "it was sort of similar to musical theatre, a musical comedy on television, with a sort of Marx brothers movie feel."
The son of Hollywood actors George Dolenz and Janelle Johnson, Dolenz says he went through a laborious audition process — 437 aspirants were seen — to win the Monkees' gig, along with band mates Peter Tork, Davy Jones and Mike Nesmith. "You had to sing, play an instrument, act and do improv. I think there were three or four screen tests. Then they made me the drummer, and so after faking my way through the pilot, I took drum lessons for a year. I studied very hard."
His parents, he says, hadn't really encouraged him to seek a career in show business. "I was just following in my father's footsteps. If he'd been a banker, I'd have been a banker. But my earliest recollections are of going on set with him, in movies with Victor Mature and Van Johnson. I thought everybody's father was an actor."
Dolenz was just 6 when he did his first screen test.
After the run of Circus Boy, he says, his parents — worried that Hollywood wasn't the best environment for a boy approaching puberty — took him out of the business and sent him to a regular public school, "the smartest thing they could have done." Although he continued to sing in school bands and area nightclubs, Dolenz had actually set his mind on a career in architecture. He kept one hand in acting, appearing in cameos in TV shows like Mr. Novak and Peyton Place, but was studying at a drafting college when the Monkees audition came along.
Married three times and the father of four daughters, Dolenz says he'd always wanted to do musical comedy and as part of his solo act had sung three or four bars in which "I basically imitated my father imitating Mario Lanza singing Some Enchanted Evening."
One night after a show, a friend said she hadn't realized that Dolenz had a legitimate singing voice — did he want to audition for stage musicals?
The first audition landed him a role as Zoser in Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, a show he ultimately spent more time with (Dolenz has done the calculation) than he had with the original Monkees.
Dolenz wrote a partial biography a decade ago ( I'm a Believer — My Life of Monkees, Music and Madness), covering roughly his first 25 years, and has since produced a children's picture book ( Gakky Two-Feet) and a music trivia book. He has no plans beyond the road show run of Pippin, which ends in January, but hopes it might end up on Broadway.
Dolenz says he's not envious of young performers trying to break in today. "It's so hard to get noticed. I remember Ringo Starr telling me that back then all you needed to do was show up with your drums and you'd get work. It's harder to get heard today and, because of downloading, record companies are reluctant to invest in new talent."
Pippin runs to Dec. 3, $35 to $94. The Royal Alexandra Theatre, 260 King St. W., 416-872-1212.