Jim Korinke stars in ‘The Velvet Rut’By ROBERT TRUSSELL
The Kansas City Star
Jim Korinke is on a roll.
He might not put it that way. But that’s certainly how it looks to this correspondent.
In the last couple of years the veteran stage and commercial actor has chalked up a series of exceptional performances at the Unicorn Theatre. He surprised a lot of people with his fine comic embodiment of Laurence Olivier in “Orson’s Shadow.” He played a gay nightclub owner opposite Ron Megee in “La Cage aux Folles.”
And late last year he got to play an obsessive stamp collector who was part philosopher and part thug in “Mauritius.”
Now Korinke is back at the Unicorn, appearing as a poet and English teacher in the midst of a spiritual crisis in the world premiere of James Still’s “The Velvet Rut.”
After some 45 years of dramas, comedies and musicals, Korinke said, he’d never done a play quite like “The Velvet Rut.” “This is particularly difficult because typically you find the connection to the character,” he said.
“This time around the character is finding me and taking me places I don’t really want to go. It’s really screwing with me. My wife says, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I say, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s the show.’ ”
Joe Price, who directed Korinke in a reading of the piece last spring, is now staging the full production.
“I think this is great for Jim in a way,” Price said. “He’s a truly talented actor and a veteran, and he brings all that to the work. But it’s got so many layers and so much depth to it that it’s really going to test him. Which is great for an actor.”
Korinke was born in Charles City, Iowa, but grew up in Nashua, the home of the Little Brown Church memorialized in the old hymn “The Little Brown Church in the Vale.” His high school was so small that everybody went out for everything — football, choir, drama — and he found that he particularly liked doing plays because they gave him a chance to kiss girls and get away with it.
He was part of a folk-singer quartet, for which Korinke learned the banjo. After townspeople pooled their money, the boys flew to New York to audition for Ted Mack’s “Original Amateur Hour,” a nationally broadcast forerunner to “American Idol” that sometimes boosted singers to legitimate stardom.
“I’d never been out of that town,” Korinke said of Nashua. “It was a world we never would have imagined. And we won the first round. And I got a note backstage. It read: ‘I would like to come back stage and talk about a project with you. If you don’t mind I would like to discuss a business matter with you.’ It was signed Meredith Willson.”
Willson, another Iowa native, is most famous as the creator of “The Music Man,” and his “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” was on Broadway at the time. He wanted to use Korinke in a new show he was developing called “Here’s Love.”
“At that time he was probably the most successful musical playwright in the country, and he’s asking me, some snot-nosed kid, for a moment of my time,” Korinke recalled.
Korinke’s problem, though, was that he had to stay enrolled at what was then the State College of Iowa to avoid the draft. So initially he passed.
“Finally I said (screw) it, if they’re gonna get me they’re gonna get me,” Korinke recalled. “I figured if I’m gonna die why not experience something I would never experience in my life?”
So Korinke went to New York and rehearsed with a cast that included Fred Gwynne (most famous as Herman Munster) and a young Michael Bennett, who would go on to choreograph and direct “A Chorus Line.” The show went to Detroit for a road tryout, and that’s when Korinke received his draft notice telling him to report to Des Moines.
Before he could be drafted, however, Korinke enlisted in the Navy and ultimately worked in Navy intelligence on a spy ship. After the service Korinke finished his education at Northwest Missouri State University and became a high school teacher in Maryville, Mo.
After a couple of years he decided to give acting a try and moved to Kansas City in the mid-1970s. He began landing roles at Theatre Workshop, which became the Unicorn Theatre, and continued finding work at the Unicorn through the mid-’80s. Eventually he was hired to be part of the Missouri Repertory Theatre acting company in the days when it still performed shows in repertory.
Korinke, who always divided his career between commercial work and the stage, eventually settled into years of doing shows for Richard Carrothers and Dennis Hennessy — first at their old Missouri-side dinner theaters, then at the New Theatre in Overland Park — and for the American Heartland Theatre.
“After awhile in this business you find that we don’t control what we do,” he said. “We control whether we get it or not, but it doesn’t depend on the job you did in the audition. It all depends on what they’re looking for.
“And producers and directors start casting you by what they saw you in last. And because I did so many comedies and lighter things, that’s what people saw in me. So for a long time I wasn’t thought of in terms of the Unicorn or the Rep. It’s not their fault. It’s just the way it is.”
Indeed, Korinke developed a relaxed acting style that served him well in comedies. He approached his work with a cool efficiency. But every now and then he’d land a role that gave him the chance to show how much more he was capable of. Like playing Olivier in “Orson’s Shadow.”
Korinke admitted that it was a little intimidating to play the man considered the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation. But he learned an important lesson in the 1980s, when he went to Florida to appear with popular comic actress Vicki Oleson in a production of “Barefoot in the Park,” Neil Simon’s comedy about young honeymooners.
Korinke played the artist who lived upstairs, and Oleson played the mother. But after a couple of weeks the director fired the young actors playing the leads and begged the old pros to play the honeymooners.
The idea was ridiculous on the face of it, Korinke thought. He was at least twice the age of the character, who was a virgin to boot. The director said simply: Play it and they will believe you.
“We did it, and I’m telling you they laughed their asses off,” Korinke said. “The lesson I learned then was that if I play it and just play the heart of the character and tell the story, nine times out of 10 they’ll buy it. And it’s worked for me ever since.”
Korinke’s versatility allows him to work in straight plays and musicals. He appeared in “All Shook Up” last summer at the New Theatre.
Jim Korinke (right) last year delivered one of his best performances as an obsessive rare stamp collector capable of violence in “Mauritius” at the Unicorn Theatre. He appeared with
Darren Kennedy.
By ROBERT TRUSSELL
The Kansas City Star
Kristen Place
