Seasoned star-caliber performers compete for a Tony for featured actor in a musical. Extracted from an article by Blake Green Newsday.com June 2, 2002

The featured actor is, let's face it, a show's second, possibly even third, banana. But with this year's crop in the Tony Award's featured actor in a musical category, you'll find an assortment of veterans, each of them with past credentials as a star - and assumably a future that holds the same.

For the four settling into their 30s - Norbert Leo Butz, Shuler Hensley, Brian d'Arcy James and Marc Kudisch - this is their first Tony nomination. For Gregg Edelman, into his 40s, it's his fourth.

Shuler Hensley in "Oklahoma!"

An all-time favorite among musicals, "Oklahoma!" wasn't greeted with universal acclaim when the recent revival opened on Broadway. But Shuler Hensley was - for his Jud Fry, a portrayal of the hired farmhand that has already received the British Olivier for the 1998 London production and the Drama Desk and Outer Critics awards here.

Tall, burly and - for Jud - bearded, the 35-year-old Hensley describes himself as "an actor who sings" and the chance to put a different spin on a familiar role was what attracted him to Jud. Of course, the restoration to the score of "Lonely Room," Jud's Act I solo, helped with the interpretation, Hensley is quick to point out. Most of the time, Jud is played as the show's villain. Hensley, however, has deepened the character, appealing to the audience's sympathy for a gruff misfit with dreams like everyone else.

The son of an all-American football player (and civil engineer) and the director of a ballet school, Hensley grew up in Marietta, Ga., and has been appearing in productions since age 4 (Fritz in his mother's production of "The Nutcracker"). That he ended up in a London production of "Oklahoma!" came both by way of his British-born wife, Paula, and his operatically trained baritone voice.

The couple was in England visiting his in-laws when Hensley learned of upcoming auditions for the musical which there, like here, was being directed by Trevor Nunn, whom he admires. They had been in Germany while Hensley played The Phantom in "The Phantom of the Opera." "It was one of the roles I wanted to do, but the way it's cast here [in the United States] is a lighter voice. My voice is darker" - which is the German tradition.

Hensley had been in two regional theater "Oklahomas" (once as Curly, once as Jud) but short-run productions are no place to fully explore a character, he says. "And I was younger then. When I watched the film version of the London production recently, I could even see a difference," Hensley says, from the way he's playing it here. He attributes this to "life experiences - I have a family now [a 22-month-old daughter] and for someone who's gambling with their dreams and hopes, so much more to lose."

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