Let Your Foodie Fantasies Unwind
A Conversation with Clean-Eating Broadway Star James Barbour
In February 2015, NJ native James Barbour was anointed the title role of Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. Since then, he’s donned that iconic mask eight times a week to belt out Andrew Lloyd Webber’s haunting songs.
We had a chance to talk with James a few hours before curtain call on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. We asked about everything from his views on the staying power of the Phantom masterpiece to, naturally, his dining habits. We also got to ask for his take on a timeless NJ debate…
Whereas most people’s work days are unwinding, you’re gearing up to head to the ‘office.’ Is this a schedule that one ever really gets used to?
Well, that’s an interesting question because when I was a kid, I was always a night owl. For some reason, I just stayed up later. It sort of comes with the territory, specifically for theater.
Tonight we start at 7, so I’ll be at the theater by 5:30. I get into the makeup chair at 6, I sit there for an hour, and then the show starts. On any given night, even on a two-show day, I’m usually leaving the theater at 10:45 at night. That’s the end of my workday—my entire day, because I have other things, a production company, other businesses. Before I was doing all that, my day used to be just preparation for that show. Because if you think about it, if you ever go see a dance show—like American in Paris or On the Town, even the shows like Les Mis or Phantom—you’re physically using your body. I describe it this way: It’s like playing a professional sport; a football game eight times a week...
It’s funny, I was just talking to my agent and was like “I’m exhausted!” and all of my friends who had done Phantom—Norm Lewis, Hugh Panaro, all these guys—they all told me, it’s going to be the most physically demanding thing you’ve ever done, and I was like, “Nah, come on! Really?” But I gotta tell ya, it’s physically daunting. And my agent just said, “Well, James, you’re getting old.”
You must really prize Sundays then. What do you want to do on your day off?
I’m a natural homebody. When I didn’t have kids—I have two girls—literally my day off would be: I’d wake up, I’d eat something, or I’d go to the gym, then eat something, come back, and just go to a movie or whatever. Now I’ll try to get as much sleep as possible, and we’ll chill out, we’ll have some breakfast. The girls will do whatever lessons they’re taking. And then what we always do is—and it’s ironic because this is for DiningOut—we always go out to dinner on Sunday as a family. And the girls will always say, “Let’s do dinner!” So it’s become that family time. It takes us out of the house, gives us a break from cooking, and all that kinda stuff.
How does playing the Phantom compare with the experience of playing the Beast—or with any of your other roles, for that matter? I mean, the makeup alone is pretty intense!
It’s unique, iconic. Everybody knows the Phantom, everybody, anywhere. In that sense, it brings with it a great deal of responsibility. You know, I’m the 15th person to be contracted to play the role on Broadway—of course there are understudies and people who will come in and do the role, and everybody’s fantastic—But there’s a certain responsibility that I feel to keep the show where it is. It’s also tricky because everybody does it differently. I’ve had fans stand at the stage door and go, “Can I ask you a question? Why did you do this? The person before you did this.” You know, our fans—and they call them “ph”ans—they know the show. They know everything about it, they know little nuances, they’ve created backstories for it.
They have all the recordings from all the stars…
Yeah! Even the ones they’re not supposed to have because they sit in the theater and they record you. They’ll be like, “This is you when you missed that note!” Oh, okay, great, thanks.
Having done Beauty and the Beast, it sort of prepped me because I had prosthetic rubber glued to my face eight times a week, so coming in to do Phantom, I had already sort of had that experience. There’s also a kind of neat parallel between those characters: this unrequited, physically deranged figure, and because of how he was raised, he was sort of an angry person inside and finds love. Now, the Beast gets the girl in the end, whereas the Phantom doesn’t, but the characters are very similar.
Yeah, I think it ties to feelings that all of us as humans have… We can all relate to rejection.
Of course. I joke that I was going to call my company DBG for “Dark, Brooding Guy.” Every role that I play, except for when I did Urinetown, are these dark brooding characters that go from darkness, learn about themselves, and ultimately come to some realization about themselves, and they can change. I think that kind of story we can all identify with...
Besides the dark, brooding thing, and getting into makeup, is there anything else special that you do to get into character? Any French food or wine before a performance?
Ha! I don’t. I eat pretty cleanly. I actually don’t even drink at all. My drink of choice is water. Occasionally I’ll have a tea.
After you’ve done a show for a while, you sort of know the guy, or you know the character. But that doesn’t stop the learning process. We had a rehearsal three weeks ago with Hal Prince, the original director; he’s still very much involved with the show. Revisiting the scene work with him, it’s a joy, an honor. I mean I’ve known him for a long time but we’ve never worked together until this production... I keep all of the notes so if I’m ever going, “Hmmm, something’s not feeling right,” I’ll go back and re-read what I’ve been given from all of the different creative people—from music to acting, even [producer] Cameron Mackintosh will come in and say, “Hey, think of it this way…”
It’s so fluid. The changes are fascinating.
You know there’s a great actor named Denis O’Hare who did Assassins with me on Broadway. In that show, once we finished our scene, the characters would sit on stage for the remainder of the show. I had the ability to watch Denis O’Hare every night, and watching his performance—and I’m not kidding—it was markedly different—but still brilliant--every night. He is so committed to the character that no matter what he did, it worked. You know… it’s like you or me. You’re still “you,” whether you hold the steering wheel with your left hand or with your right hand. It’s a really interesting philosophical discussion, this business, because it’s so creative.
It could easily lead to 5 million other interesting discussions! But back to food, of course. What are you into?
Well, as I said, I’m a pretty clean eater—I try to eat no wheat, no dairy, no gluten, and no sugar.
That’s by choice? No allergies or anything?
By choice, and here’s the reason why: When our first child was born, I went from 195 pounds to 230 pounds. I was sneaking Red 40, Twizzlers, jamming my face with candy because I just had to keep going… I was burning the candle at both ends... So I woke up one day, and I felt horrible, and so I called a buddy of mine, Tim, a former Navy special forces guy, and I’m like “Dude, I don’t know what’s going on.” He goes, “I’m gonna help you.” Now this is a guy who disarmed nuclear bombs underwater—elite of the elite... He had launched a program based on all this massive research he did on food, and in six weeks, I dropped close to 35 pounds with no exercise. I wasn’t starving myself; I was eating 1400 calories a day. It changed how I looked at food, how I looked at my health, and I maintain it. I mean, look, if a birthday happens, I’ll have a piece of cake, but I now eat so cleanly that I don’t really have those cravings to go grab Twizzlers anymore.
When eating out do you find it difficult to find what you want?
It’s a great question because no matter what kind of food you like—there are vegetarians, vegans, pescatarians—whatever restaurant you go to, if you just say to them, “Look you have this great fish but it’s doused in this sauce, can I get it without the sauce?” 99 percent of the time, they’re gonna go, “Absolutely!” So even though I eat organically, there are restaurants that don’t have that, so I try to make the best choice based on what they have that will fit within what I want to eat. It’s actually easier than you think.
What's your traditional go-to item when in doubt?
I can tell you what I eat every day, and I mimic that when I go out. In the morning, I have two eggs scrambled with a little bit of turkey bacon, and whenever I have to up my caloric intake, I’ll eat a little more. I also have green veggie drinks. One of the restaurants—we just went to lunch today—is Brownstone [Pancake Factory on River Road in Edgewater]. Brownstone is great for me because they make these green veg drinks. It’s just part of their menu so I’m like, “Woohoo! I’m coming here.”
Do you have any fave restaurants in the theater district?
I eat at primarily two restaurants. I’ll eat at Sardi’s—they have a great salmon dish, and I can go in and I can have that salmon, spinach, and, boom, go right back to the theater. On a Saturday when the theater district is massively crowded, it’s very hard to get a table sometimes. I don’t want to go all the way home and come all the way back so I can literally just go pop over there... They’re like family to me. The other place I go is Bareburger—and they have one in New Jersey, they have ‘em all over the place—is it’s organic, grass-fed beef, organic chicken, organic greens: Just healthy, healthy, healthy across the board. So I know when I’m going in there, if I order a salad and I get a hunk of chicken on it, or I order a burger patty on it, I know it’s organic, it’s grass-fed, and it’s in line with what I want to do, and they have myriad choices.
What about closer to you—What are some of your fave restaurants in Northeast NJ?
Well, there’s a Bareburger right near my house! And then Brownstone. There’s also a diner we go to called the River View Diner [on River Road in North Bergen]. And my kids go to Yogart all the time—they’re, like, addicted to that place. I think they’re there, like, twice a week.
Mmmm… froyo. What are some of your other summertime favorites in the Garden State?
I grew up in Cherry Hill and I spent my summers in Ocean City, and it is something that still sticks with me to this day. I worked the bumper car on Wonderland Pier, and this past year was the first time I got to take my girls down…When they came back they were like, “We wanna go back! We liked that better than Disney Land!”—Little Wonderland Pier... that’s the stuff I love about New Jersey. I think nationwide, there’s a big misconception. They think of New Jersey as, you know, Newark.
The “Armpit of America.”
Yeah. But but it’s really called the Garden State. And I grew up with apple orchards, and cherry orchards, and horses. I think it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous state with a great deal of diversity so our goal with our girls is to be outdoors—they love it…My kids are into horseback riding, they’re into tennis, they’re into just being outdoors and having fun, and that’s what I love about the summertime, because it allows us to be out, it allows us to go to the beach. I gotta say that’s a cool thing about doing a show. The kids pretty much go to school year-round, and it’s a pretty amazing curriculum; we can pull them out at any time. But I also have the days free so we can just spend the day together.
You can do the daytime things, and still get to the ‘office’ on time.
Yeah, exactly. And conversely, when they’re in school, I’ll see them in the morning when they leave and for a little while when they get home.
Getting back to your question, I get verbose, I apologize... It really is to me the memories of growing up and spending time at the “Jersey Shore”—not as in the TV show, but as the “New Jersey Shore.”
Or as just “The Shore” as we call it.
Yeah. “Down the shore.”
You know, Saveur magazine just devoted an issue to NJ, what they call "the unsung hero state of American eating.” They called out the fact that "Jersey folks take local food pride to scary levels." Anything come to mind for you personally when you hear that?
Well, look, when I was growing up, we called them “hoagies.”
I was going to ask you about “hoagies!” Up here, we call them “subs.”
Ha! I know it! Cherry Hill is also very close to Philadelphia so we had Philly cheesesteaks, but they weren’t “New Jersey.” The one thing I will always remember is my uncle had a greenhouse, and he used to grow Jersey tomatoes, and I gotta tell you: I’ve never had a better tomato. That’s another cool thing about New Jersey: We have so many local farms and growers. We really need to take better advantage of that...
Agreed! And now, finally, since you hail from South Jersey and are now settled up north, you are perhaps the most *uniquely qualified* person to weigh in on an age-old NJ question — maybe the most important of this interview. What do you call it— "Taylor Ham" or "Pork Roll”?
PORK ROLL! I mean, I know it started with "Taylor Ham." But the first time somebody said that, I was like, “What?!”
—Interview by Judy Grover
You can catch James’ lauded portrayal of the Phantom Mondays through Saturdays at the Majestic Theatre at 247 West 44th Street, New York, NY.
Visit boxoffice.broadway.com for tickets.
(Interview has been edited for length)
We had a chance to talk with James a few hours before curtain call on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. We asked about everything from his views on the staying power of the Phantom masterpiece to, naturally, his dining habits. We also got to ask for his take on a timeless NJ debate…
Whereas most people’s work days are unwinding, you’re gearing up to head to the ‘office.’ Is this a schedule that one ever really gets used to?
Well, that’s an interesting question because when I was a kid, I was always a night owl. For some reason, I just stayed up later. It sort of comes with the territory, specifically for theater.
Tonight we start at 7, so I’ll be at the theater by 5:30. I get into the makeup chair at 6, I sit there for an hour, and then the show starts. On any given night, even on a two-show day, I’m usually leaving the theater at 10:45 at night. That’s the end of my workday—my entire day, because I have other things, a production company, other businesses. Before I was doing all that, my day used to be just preparation for that show. Because if you think about it, if you ever go see a dance show—like American in Paris or On the Town, even the shows like Les Mis or Phantom—you’re physically using your body. I describe it this way: It’s like playing a professional sport; a football game eight times a week...
It’s funny, I was just talking to my agent and was like “I’m exhausted!” and all of my friends who had done Phantom—Norm Lewis, Hugh Panaro, all these guys—they all told me, it’s going to be the most physically demanding thing you’ve ever done, and I was like, “Nah, come on! Really?” But I gotta tell ya, it’s physically daunting. And my agent just said, “Well, James, you’re getting old.”
You must really prize Sundays then. What do you want to do on your day off?
I’m a natural homebody. When I didn’t have kids—I have two girls—literally my day off would be: I’d wake up, I’d eat something, or I’d go to the gym, then eat something, come back, and just go to a movie or whatever. Now I’ll try to get as much sleep as possible, and we’ll chill out, we’ll have some breakfast. The girls will do whatever lessons they’re taking. And then what we always do is—and it’s ironic because this is for DiningOut—we always go out to dinner on Sunday as a family. And the girls will always say, “Let’s do dinner!” So it’s become that family time. It takes us out of the house, gives us a break from cooking, and all that kinda stuff.
How does playing the Phantom compare with the experience of playing the Beast—or with any of your other roles, for that matter? I mean, the makeup alone is pretty intense!
It’s unique, iconic. Everybody knows the Phantom, everybody, anywhere. In that sense, it brings with it a great deal of responsibility. You know, I’m the 15th person to be contracted to play the role on Broadway—of course there are understudies and people who will come in and do the role, and everybody’s fantastic—But there’s a certain responsibility that I feel to keep the show where it is. It’s also tricky because everybody does it differently. I’ve had fans stand at the stage door and go, “Can I ask you a question? Why did you do this? The person before you did this.” You know, our fans—and they call them “ph”ans—they know the show. They know everything about it, they know little nuances, they’ve created backstories for it.
They have all the recordings from all the stars…
Yeah! Even the ones they’re not supposed to have because they sit in the theater and they record you. They’ll be like, “This is you when you missed that note!” Oh, okay, great, thanks.
Having done Beauty and the Beast, it sort of prepped me because I had prosthetic rubber glued to my face eight times a week, so coming in to do Phantom, I had already sort of had that experience. There’s also a kind of neat parallel between those characters: this unrequited, physically deranged figure, and because of how he was raised, he was sort of an angry person inside and finds love. Now, the Beast gets the girl in the end, whereas the Phantom doesn’t, but the characters are very similar.
Yeah, I think it ties to feelings that all of us as humans have… We can all relate to rejection.
Of course. I joke that I was going to call my company DBG for “Dark, Brooding Guy.” Every role that I play, except for when I did Urinetown, are these dark brooding characters that go from darkness, learn about themselves, and ultimately come to some realization about themselves, and they can change. I think that kind of story we can all identify with...
Besides the dark, brooding thing, and getting into makeup, is there anything else special that you do to get into character? Any French food or wine before a performance?
Ha! I don’t. I eat pretty cleanly. I actually don’t even drink at all. My drink of choice is water. Occasionally I’ll have a tea.
After you’ve done a show for a while, you sort of know the guy, or you know the character. But that doesn’t stop the learning process. We had a rehearsal three weeks ago with Hal Prince, the original director; he’s still very much involved with the show. Revisiting the scene work with him, it’s a joy, an honor. I mean I’ve known him for a long time but we’ve never worked together until this production... I keep all of the notes so if I’m ever going, “Hmmm, something’s not feeling right,” I’ll go back and re-read what I’ve been given from all of the different creative people—from music to acting, even [producer] Cameron Mackintosh will come in and say, “Hey, think of it this way…”
It’s so fluid. The changes are fascinating.
You know there’s a great actor named Denis O’Hare who did Assassins with me on Broadway. In that show, once we finished our scene, the characters would sit on stage for the remainder of the show. I had the ability to watch Denis O’Hare every night, and watching his performance—and I’m not kidding—it was markedly different—but still brilliant--every night. He is so committed to the character that no matter what he did, it worked. You know… it’s like you or me. You’re still “you,” whether you hold the steering wheel with your left hand or with your right hand. It’s a really interesting philosophical discussion, this business, because it’s so creative.
It could easily lead to 5 million other interesting discussions! But back to food, of course. What are you into?
Well, as I said, I’m a pretty clean eater—I try to eat no wheat, no dairy, no gluten, and no sugar.
That’s by choice? No allergies or anything?
By choice, and here’s the reason why: When our first child was born, I went from 195 pounds to 230 pounds. I was sneaking Red 40, Twizzlers, jamming my face with candy because I just had to keep going… I was burning the candle at both ends... So I woke up one day, and I felt horrible, and so I called a buddy of mine, Tim, a former Navy special forces guy, and I’m like “Dude, I don’t know what’s going on.” He goes, “I’m gonna help you.” Now this is a guy who disarmed nuclear bombs underwater—elite of the elite... He had launched a program based on all this massive research he did on food, and in six weeks, I dropped close to 35 pounds with no exercise. I wasn’t starving myself; I was eating 1400 calories a day. It changed how I looked at food, how I looked at my health, and I maintain it. I mean, look, if a birthday happens, I’ll have a piece of cake, but I now eat so cleanly that I don’t really have those cravings to go grab Twizzlers anymore.
When eating out do you find it difficult to find what you want?
It’s a great question because no matter what kind of food you like—there are vegetarians, vegans, pescatarians—whatever restaurant you go to, if you just say to them, “Look you have this great fish but it’s doused in this sauce, can I get it without the sauce?” 99 percent of the time, they’re gonna go, “Absolutely!” So even though I eat organically, there are restaurants that don’t have that, so I try to make the best choice based on what they have that will fit within what I want to eat. It’s actually easier than you think.
What's your traditional go-to item when in doubt?
I can tell you what I eat every day, and I mimic that when I go out. In the morning, I have two eggs scrambled with a little bit of turkey bacon, and whenever I have to up my caloric intake, I’ll eat a little more. I also have green veggie drinks. One of the restaurants—we just went to lunch today—is Brownstone [Pancake Factory on River Road in Edgewater]. Brownstone is great for me because they make these green veg drinks. It’s just part of their menu so I’m like, “Woohoo! I’m coming here.”
Do you have any fave restaurants in the theater district?
I eat at primarily two restaurants. I’ll eat at Sardi’s—they have a great salmon dish, and I can go in and I can have that salmon, spinach, and, boom, go right back to the theater. On a Saturday when the theater district is massively crowded, it’s very hard to get a table sometimes. I don’t want to go all the way home and come all the way back so I can literally just go pop over there... They’re like family to me. The other place I go is Bareburger—and they have one in New Jersey, they have ‘em all over the place—is it’s organic, grass-fed beef, organic chicken, organic greens: Just healthy, healthy, healthy across the board. So I know when I’m going in there, if I order a salad and I get a hunk of chicken on it, or I order a burger patty on it, I know it’s organic, it’s grass-fed, and it’s in line with what I want to do, and they have myriad choices.
What about closer to you—What are some of your fave restaurants in Northeast NJ?
Well, there’s a Bareburger right near my house! And then Brownstone. There’s also a diner we go to called the River View Diner [on River Road in North Bergen]. And my kids go to Yogart all the time—they’re, like, addicted to that place. I think they’re there, like, twice a week.
Mmmm… froyo. What are some of your other summertime favorites in the Garden State?
I grew up in Cherry Hill and I spent my summers in Ocean City, and it is something that still sticks with me to this day. I worked the bumper car on Wonderland Pier, and this past year was the first time I got to take my girls down…When they came back they were like, “We wanna go back! We liked that better than Disney Land!”—Little Wonderland Pier... that’s the stuff I love about New Jersey. I think nationwide, there’s a big misconception. They think of New Jersey as, you know, Newark.
The “Armpit of America.”
Yeah. But but it’s really called the Garden State. And I grew up with apple orchards, and cherry orchards, and horses. I think it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous state with a great deal of diversity so our goal with our girls is to be outdoors—they love it…My kids are into horseback riding, they’re into tennis, they’re into just being outdoors and having fun, and that’s what I love about the summertime, because it allows us to be out, it allows us to go to the beach. I gotta say that’s a cool thing about doing a show. The kids pretty much go to school year-round, and it’s a pretty amazing curriculum; we can pull them out at any time. But I also have the days free so we can just spend the day together.
You can do the daytime things, and still get to the ‘office’ on time.
Yeah, exactly. And conversely, when they’re in school, I’ll see them in the morning when they leave and for a little while when they get home.
Getting back to your question, I get verbose, I apologize... It really is to me the memories of growing up and spending time at the “Jersey Shore”—not as in the TV show, but as the “New Jersey Shore.”
Or as just “The Shore” as we call it.
Yeah. “Down the shore.”
You know, Saveur magazine just devoted an issue to NJ, what they call "the unsung hero state of American eating.” They called out the fact that "Jersey folks take local food pride to scary levels." Anything come to mind for you personally when you hear that?
Well, look, when I was growing up, we called them “hoagies.”
I was going to ask you about “hoagies!” Up here, we call them “subs.”
Ha! I know it! Cherry Hill is also very close to Philadelphia so we had Philly cheesesteaks, but they weren’t “New Jersey.” The one thing I will always remember is my uncle had a greenhouse, and he used to grow Jersey tomatoes, and I gotta tell you: I’ve never had a better tomato. That’s another cool thing about New Jersey: We have so many local farms and growers. We really need to take better advantage of that...
Agreed! And now, finally, since you hail from South Jersey and are now settled up north, you are perhaps the most *uniquely qualified* person to weigh in on an age-old NJ question — maybe the most important of this interview. What do you call it— "Taylor Ham" or "Pork Roll”?
PORK ROLL! I mean, I know it started with "Taylor Ham." But the first time somebody said that, I was like, “What?!”
—Interview by Judy Grover
You can catch James’ lauded portrayal of the Phantom Mondays through Saturdays at the Majestic Theatre at 247 West 44th Street, New York, NY.
Visit boxoffice.broadway.com for tickets.
(Interview has been edited for length)
