Frankly Frank

It’s something I love to see during a performance: An actor has repeated entrances, and by the time the third one occurs, the audience gurgles with pleasure as soon as he emerges. That’s because they’ve already enjoyed him so much and now they know they’re going to get the chance to savor him once again. When he comes on for the fourth time, their “Oooh!” of anticipation is even louder, for now they’re firmly in love with him.

That’s what’s happening right now when Frank Vlastnik steps on stage as the Snail with the Mail in A Year with Frog and Toad. I heard an audience audio-embrace him at the New Victory earlier this season and just witnessed a new crowd give the same whoosh of pleasure at the Cort Theatre, where the show has surprisingly landed. And why do they love Frank Vlastnik so? Maybe it’s the way he conveys the Snail’s determination to do a good job. Perhaps it’s his hilarious snail walk. Undoubtedly, it’s the way he delivers his 11 ‘o’clock number, “I’m Coming Out of My Shell.” Whatever the reasons, it’s true love that the audience is giving him.

This is the third time that he has appeared in a Broadway musical, and it’s proving to be the charm. Back in 1995, Vlastnik (pronounced (VLAHST-nick) was cast in the ensemble of Big. Then, in 1999, he was cast in the ensemble of Sweet Smell of Success — only to find that the show would be postponed. Both times, Vlastnik was told that he was going to be part of the most anticipated musical of the season. But, alas, Big lasted only 193 performances and Sweet Smell a mere 109.

Vlastnik didn’t have all that much to do in either one; he played Matchless and Birnbaum in Big and Tony in Sweet Smell of Success. He was pretty despondent that closing week of Sweet Smell, wondering where his next role would come from or if it would come at all. Even if he were lucky enough to be immediately cast in something, would the show be postponed a year?

But then Drew Barr, who was assistant to director Nicholas Hytner on Sweet Smell, approached him. Recalls Vlastnik, “A friend of his was the casting director for Frog and Toad and had asked him, ‘Do you know someone who could play a snail?’ Drew said he immediately thought of me, which I guess is a compliment, though I’d like to think that my level of energy is higher than that of a snail who takes virtually a year to deliver a letter.” (Perhaps Barr knew that Vlastnik had also played the enormous F.A.O. Schwartz bear in the “Fun” number in Big.)

The next day, Vlastnik met the Frog and Toad creative staff, read the Snail’s big scene, sang “Not While I’m Around” (which has been his audition ballad since high school), and interested the powers-that-be enough to be taught the country-flavored “I’m the Snail with the Mail” song. He then left, walked 10 blocks home, and found the message on his answering machine that he’d made a sale and would be the Snail. Perhaps it’s his own experiences with snail-mail that got him the job. “Because I live on West 48th Street, which is in the 10036 zip code — and the code changes to 10019 on 49th Street — I’m always having mail problems,” he rues. “In October, they delivered a box of candy my mother had sent me for the previous Valentine’s Day.”

Vlastnik was told that he’d not only portray the Snail but also a Bird, Mole, Frog, and Lizard for three-and-a-half months in Minneapolis and a week and a half at the New Victory in New York. He could have looked at the glass as half-empty, for now he’d have to tell friends and relatives that he’d be portraying five animals in (let’s face it) a children’s show. But Vlastnik says he saw the glass as more than half-full for he’d be working with Mark Linn-Baker (Toad) and Danielle Ferland (Bird, Frog, Mole, Squirrel, Turtle). Vlastnik knew who they were as he’s been following theatrical lore with a magnifying glass ever since he was a little boy in Peru — not the country Peru (where, by the way, a production of Big played and yielded a cast album) nor even the Peru in Indiana from which Cole Porter hailed, but Peru, Illinois.

His interest in matters theatrical started when he was four, at the United Church of Christ, where the minister used to call kids to the front of the church and have them tell about themselves. When Vlastnik was called, he did not collapse in the apse. “I did, like, 15 minutes of material,” he says, “quipping things like ‘A funny thing happened to me on the way to the church.’ The reason is that I’d sneak out of bed while my parents were watching The Tonight Show and I learned what all the comedians had to say.”

By sixth grade, he was Randolph in Bye Bye Birdie, Marrying Sam in L’il Abner. Charlie Brown in You’re a Good Man… followed. In high school, he delivered so convincing a performance as Fagin in Oliver! that, the next year, his drama teacher went out on a limb and made him Professor Fodorski in the seldom-produced All-American. (Fodorski’s favorite student was played by Ron Sharpe, who’s since been seen on Broadway in Les Misérables, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and The Civil War.)

Meanwhile, Vlastnik was collecting each and every original cast album from The Act to The Zulu and the Zayda and every Theatre World annual, perusing the pictures in each one ad infinitum. There are plenty of people who can tell you who was in a certain musical, but Vlastnik can usually tell you the name of the show’s dance captain, too.

A Year with Frog and Toad opened to enthusiastic reviews in Minneapolis. Word soon was heard that the 90-minute show (and that includes an intermission!) would travel to Broadway. Needless to say, Vlastnik was as skeptical as everyone else. After all, he’d played the inelegantly named Pinhead in Sondheim’s Saturday Night at Second Stage, and rumors were rife even before the first rehearsal that that the show was certainly going to move into the Booth on 45th Street — “which, of course, never happened,” he says, “no more than it’s happened for so many of my friends who have been in other Off-Broadway shows. So I was not making plans to be on Broadway in the spring.”

But that’s where he is! He admits that he needed time to adjust to the show’s atypical schedule — “two on Wednesday, one on Friday, three on Saturday, and two on Sunday,” he says lickety-split, counting them off on his fingers. But he’s also glad that he has Thursday night off, “because Steve [Lawrence] and Eydie [Gormé] are bringing their farewell tour to Westbury Music Fair and I’ve got to be there for that.” Frank Vlastnik remains a fan of musical theater but, judging from all those kids and adults who wait for him at the stage door of the Cort, now he’s a fan who’s got a lot of fans of his own.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]