How David Patrick Kelly Brings Unexpected Depth to a One-Dimensional Fairytale King
David Patrick Kelly, Michael Urie, and Ana Gasteyer in Once Upon A Mattress. Photo by Joan Marcus.
I usually have a pretty standard intro that I run through when I interview an artist over the phone. I introduce myself, explain what I plan to write about, then launch into my questions. David Patrick Kelly didn’t work that way. He’d come prepared to talk about his role as King Sextimus the Silent in the Broadway revival of Once Upon a Mattress — and he’d brought visual aids. He quickly emailed me the image he wanted me to see, and we were off to the races.
It was an image of a man and a boy — maybe they were father and son, but maybe not — hunting birds using a large basket. It’s a beautiful piece of art from The Feather Book of Dionisio Minaggio created in 1618 by the Chief Gardener of the State of Milan. Each of the 156 images in the book is made entirely out of feathers. But what did it have to do with King Sextimus?
David Patrick Kelly saw King Sextimus and Price Dauntless in this image from The Feather Book of Dionisio Minaggio. Courtesy of McGill University.
In Once Upon a Mattress, Sextimus is cursed by a witch, removing his ability to speak until "the mouse devours the hawk." But he’s meant to be more of a slapstick scene stealer than a main character, so his backstory pretty much ends there. We never learn why he was cursed, or how long it’s been. The curse is a convenient comic device that confines the king to flailing gestures and over-the-top facial expressions, but Kelly was determined to deepen his character, even if only for himself.
For Kelly, the image in The Feather Book depicts Sextimus and his son, Prince Dauntless. “It’s something that represents a few years back in their relationship,” he says. “It’s them out trying to capture hawks and end the curse because they mistakenly believe that's it’s a literal thing instead of a metaphorical one.” Kelly loved this image so much that he asked Lear DeBessonet, the musical’s director, to incorporate it into the show. “Lear allowed me to collaborate and show this picture. And they made the prop — the big bell basket — and I run onstage trying to catch birds,” he says. It’s a quick comedic bit that holds much more meaning for Kelly than a nightly audience would be privy to.
But he didn’t stop there. Kelly sat down with Michael Urie, who plays Prince Dauntless, and they established the backstory that would serve as a foundation for their onstage relationship. The first thing they decided was that these characters needed a way to communicate without words. “We developed a sign language ourselves,” says Kelly. “You see us use it at the end of the ‘'Man to Man Talk’ song. He signs to me that he loves me, and then I sign back to him that I love him.”
Bringing this level of depth and sincerity to a seemingly one-dimensional character isn’t foreign to Kelly. He treats every one of his endeavors with the same artistic reverence, devouring source material and stacking references, stretching from commedia dell'arte to Buster Keaton to inform his characters. “There are so many avenues you can pursue as an actor for how to make it enriching for yourself, and then you get to share that with the audience,” he says. He’s made quite the career of it.
His list of credits reads like a hall-of-fame of cult classics, from Twin Peaks to Commando to The Crow. His first Broadway credit was understudying Eddie in the original Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Show in 1975, and he’s perhaps most famous for portraying Luther in the 1979 film The Warriors. His sing-songy “Warriors, come out to play-ay!” was an ad-libbed line that firmly secured his spot as a cult icon.
He’s a magnet for the stories that appeal deeply to a niche audience, which is why his presence in Once Upon a Mattress doesn’t come as a surprise. The musical’s 2024 Broadway production began as part of New York City Center’s Encores!, a series dedicated to reviving seldomly produced musicals — the cult classics of the theater world. It’s his second stint in a Lear DeBessonet-helmed Encores! production; he also portrayed the The Narrator in the 2022 production of Into the Woods, another story whose multifarious approach to fairytale tropes inspired Kelly to dig deeper.
“I like art that's encyclopedic, meaning that it is multilayered, and you can learn stuff about all different things by looking at it,” he says. “It's layered with influences, and then on top of that it does its own thing and creates something new from all those parts.” And while Kelly is speaking of the musicals, the same can be said for his performances within them.
David Patrick Kelly, Nikki Renee Daniels, and Daniel Breaker in Once Upon A Mattress. Photo by Joan Marcus.
One of the main influences for Kelly’s Silent King was Buster Keaton, who played the role during the first national tour of the musical in 1960. “I asked for elongated shoes for the King,” says Kelly. “Buster Keaton always had these slap shoes, and there's something about them that really helps with physical comedy. In fact, when I made my first entrance with that bird basket in those pointy shoes, I fell flat on my face.”
It wasn’t just archival footage and performances admired from afar that inspired Kelly’s king. He’s had plenty of training in pantomime, physical theater, and clowning over the course of his career, including from the master of silence himself, Marcel Marceau, whom he studied under in Paris as a young man. “Physical theater, circus techniques, and rock and roll inspired my generation to make acting more full body, more physically inhabited. So going to Paris to study was transformative,” he says. “It was quite life changing for a young fellow, and it inspired me my whole life.”
In talking to Kelly, it’s clear that he’s a collector of knowledge and experiences, and a true connoisseur of art and performance. And he uses every bit of his collection to build a character. Kelly’s career has spanned genres and decades, though he doesn’t seem caught up in the amount of time that’s passed since he began, especially now that he’s regularly cast in decidedly “old man” roles. “I am a kooky old man,” he says. “Age is a gift.” And it’s that collective experience that allowed him to turn a flat fairytale character into a complex bundle of history and emotion.
