Austin Strip Clubs: Quite a character
More recently, and off-Broadway, he directed “Vieux Carre,” a Tennesee Williams play set in a boarding house in New Orleans’ French Quarter. He also wrote the book for a musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s “Candida.”
The roles he’s enjoyed playing the most, he said, are “the two tramps in ‘Waiting for Godot’ and Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”
His craft doesn’t always come easily, Pendleton said, mentioning a Central Park performance of “Romeo and Juliet” in which he found the role of Friar Lawrence particularly challenging.
“I’d get up at 5 in the morning, go outside and look for birds and flowers,” he said, explaining how he tried to get a handle on the character, who fiddles with herbs when he’s not advising star-crossed lovers or performing clandestine wedding ceremonies.
The role of the middle-age gentleman he’s playing in “Gypsy” – the musical story of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee’s rise to fame – is easier to understand.