Steve Routman hopped on his bike and made it to the stage in less time than it sometimes takes to park a car in New Haven.
Call him Wooster Square’s and maybe New Haven’s first “TOA” — or transit-oriented actor.
Routman is one of the ensemble of stars in The Underpants, the Steve Martin-penned farce that opened at Long Wharf Theatre last week.
From his new Wooster Square digs, it takes him only six minutes to bike to the Long Wharf for rehearsal or show. It’s a short walk to the State Street Station to train into NYC for that TV/film or commercial gig.
Cleveland-born and Great Lakes Theater Company-trained, Routman moved to New Haven about a year ago from New York, where he’d live since 1984. He moved along with his wife, distinguished composer Hannah Lash, and (now) 2‑year-old daughter Beatrice.
Wooster Square beckoned because the young family wants to keep to a one-car max, Lash can ride her bike, with kid aboard, to teach at Yale. Routman can get to the theater and Manhattan easily.
Oh, likely the best part, Beatrice can enjoy collecting chestnuts from beneath the large tree to the right of Columbus’s statue in the park.
New Haven comes out great in the real estate comparison: “Our bedroom here is bigger than our whole apartment” in New York, Routman said during an interview near his home at Fuel coffee shop.
T. Charles Erickson Photo
Jeff McCarthy and Routman exploreinMartin’s Underpants.
Routman said he pitched in last year for three or four performances when an actor was called away from Long Wharf’s production of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class. Otherwise New Haven is fairly new to him. He’s enjoying what he’s discovering, although rehearsal for the demanding play has been taking a lot of his time.
The move to New Haven has affected Routman’s accomplished theater and movie career in one way, he said: He won’t accept a Broadway show commitment, should it come his way.
“I ruled out commuting eight times a week [by train]. If a show ends at 10:30, I wouldn’t see my wife [and child],” he said.
Transit Is Quick; Farce Must Be Too
Allan Appel Photo
By his daughter’s chestnut tree in Wooster Square Park.
Routman plays Benjamin Cohen, a hypochondriac boarder, in Steve Martin’s send up of bourgeois morality in 1910ish Germany. There things have become unsettled because the heroine Louisa has mysteriously dropped her underpants while viewing the parade of the king.
Cohen is one of several people responding to a room-for-rent sign put out by Louisa’s conservative husband Theo. Of course all the interest is less in the room than in meeting the woman to whom the underpants belong.
In the end, even the king shows up.
Martin has infused fast-paced slapstick, raunchy puns, and lots of physical comedy and shades of the Marx Brothers and Woody Allen into the original play by Carl Sternheim
Routman said it takes speed to do farce right. But the speed must be nuanced. “There’s an energy here. There can’t be anything casual in farce. It can’t be ten all the way, but there always has to be urgency,” he said.
That goes for the way lines are also delivered, particularly in farce whose aim at heart is to get laughs, with so much therefore depending on the timing and the nuance.
“If you don’t honor the cleanliness [he meant ‘crispness’] of this material, you lose it,” he said.
Routman said so far the laughs have been hearty and the play well received.
Before bicycling over to the theater, he said he planned to relax a bit by going to go “see this thing called a movie.”
