“I Hope to Scare People” Student Spotlight on Phil Cooke

We recently sat down with senior musical theater Phil Cooke, who on October 17 will take the stage as the lead in CUA’s production of Sweeney Todd.

How do you feel about landing this role?
The interesting part of this whole thing is that I did my first show at Catholic when I was 13 … I was Winthrop in The Music Man with [Jane Pesci-Tonswend,] the same director for [Sweeney Todd.] I actually met her when I was ten - I took voice lessons with her. She was doing [The Music Man] at Catholic and needed a Winthrop and she knew I could do it. She’s been a mentor to me and we’re close, so this is kind of unreal. And she has a history with “Sweeney” -  she played it at the Kennedy Center and she got rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal. So it’s a big deal for her.

Why did you come to CUA?
I liked the idea of staying local. They gave me the most money. I was originally going to do drama, but [Pesci-Townsend] convinced me to do musical theater. It didn’t really take all much convincing.

Tell us about being a musical theater major.
Musical theater is a Bachelor of Music, [so] you get a lot of music training. It’s not as much homework, but you’re in class from 9 to 5 and then you have rehearsal at night. It’s time consuming, but it’s all necessary in preparing you.

What do musical theaters major generally do after they graduate?
Some people stay in the area – D.C. has a really good theater scene. It’s definitely top five in the nation. If you wanted to make it big and become famous I guess you’d go to New York. I want to get the hell out of here. Twenty-one years living in the D.C. area - I’ve had enough.

So you’re going to New York?
I don’t plan on going to New York. I know too many people who’ve gone there who are waiting tables and going to auditions and they’re miserable - that’s the last thing I want to do. If I didn’t have to go through the business of it, if I could just land jobs without having to go through all the bullshit of kissing people’s asses and auditioning nonstop, then I’d be like, “Sure I’ll do this!” You have to go into an audition and be a different person. You have to be the person that they want you to be. I don’t know how good at that I am.

Is Sweeney Todd a true story?
Not really. It’s more folklore. There are so many variations on the story. There are three different movies with three totally different plots - except that he’s a barber and his victims end up getting in meat pies. That’s a general theme throughout. This is a musicalized version of it. Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics and it’s considered his masterpiece. It’s very dark. Sondheim wrote to see if he could do what horror movies do in theaters, so he uses the music and the atmosphere to try to really just scare people.

But it’s not just a two dimensional thing - Sweeney’s a very three-dimensional character, it’s easy to emphathize with him. All the characters have a lot more depth to them. And a lot of it’s just really - repulsive, the things that a lot of the people do in the play. It’s disgusting.

It sounds very visceral.
This production in particular is going to be a very visceral experience. Ward Hall is a 120-seat house, it’s very small and intimate - the show was originally done with a huge orchestra and a huge set, but this is going to be really small. So it’s meant to really get in people’s faces and make them uncomfortable and make them squirm. The plot twist at the end is like, “Oh my God, no!”

What are you trying to bring to this role?
I hope to scare people, which I think won’t be that hard. The piece kind of lends it to you. [I want] to make the audience sympathize with him. At the end of the play, when they reprise the ballad, and it’s like, “Where’s Sweeney? He could be sitting right next to you. He’s not just a person who is a freak of nature psychopath that’s one in a million, but that society sometimes creates these people. And we are responsible for that. And it’s supposed to leave you thinking, “Oh, shit. The person I’m working with could be a serial killer and I would have no idea about it.”

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