Stephen Morhanan, who sang Arias and other music in San Francisco as a backer in San Francisco, played Kevin Klein's Nakali in Broadway Productions in 1981, and died in his Manhattan home on April 3rd in the three cat productions of the original Broadway cast of “Cats.” He was 78 years old.
His husband, Gary Widland, the only immediate survivor, said the cause was a heart attack.
During the “Cats,” Hannan (pronounced “Hang Woon”) told composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and director Trevor Nun that he spent several years singing and accompanying him at a concert at the Market Street ferry terminal in San Francisco.
“The truth is, I brought a concert,” he recalls telling Nun in a 1982 interview with the Washington Post. Well, I had no problem with embarrassment.
Mr. Hannan is eventually thrown into three parts: the dual role of Bastfar Jones, a poor cat, and the aging theatre cat, transforms into the original role (with the help of an inflatable outfit), reminiscingly, playing Graultiger, a tough pirate, and a parody of “Turand.”
In an entry on the second day of the rehearsal, he explained the assignment from Mr. Nun.
He continued: “I choose the cat Fritz,” Robert Crum's character, “Make a pass with kittens. It's gas to see other people. People's personality is beginning to appear.”
He and another cast member, Harry Groyner, were both nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. They both lost. Tap dancer Charles (Honi) Coles won “my only one.”
Over the years following “Cat,” many of Hannan's roles included Moonface Martin from “Anything Goes” at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. The dual role of Voltaire and Dr. Pangross in “Candid” at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. And another double role, Mr. Darling and Captain Hook of “Peter Pan,” Broadway and on tour. He also portrayed the villain Tentrudia in London's “Les Miserables.”
In 1999, Hannan created his own stage role. Al Jolson, a popular vaudevillian who performed on Blackface, sang on Broadway and starred in the pioneering sound motion picture, “Jaz Singer.” “Jolson & Company,” written by Mr. Hannan as Jay Berkow, was performed by Broadway at York Theatre Company.
Al Jolson “was a pure ID,” Hannan, who had physical similarities to him, told Harvard magazine in 2002 when the show revived at the Century Arts Center in Manhattan. “He didn't censor himself. It's not his joy or his rage. In Jolson, you can totally surpass the top. You have to. His personality demands such a size.”
“Jolson & Co.” recreates a 1946 radio interview with Barry Gray as a way to look back on his amazing life. Hannan sang many of the songs Jolson known to him, including “Swanny” and “California, here.”
Reviewing the show in a New York magazine, John Simon praised Hannan's performance as “invincible, but invincible.” He added: “On top of Jolson's appearance, the fertilizer absorbed all the voice, face and exercise etiquette, as if he had stolen the man's very soul.”
Mr. Hannan was born in Washington on January 7, 1947 to Stephen Hannan Kaplan. His mother, Lottie (Klein) Kaplan, was a high school English teacher. His father, Jonah Kaplan, was a pharmacist.
While attending Harvard University, Stephen appeared in theatrical productions at the Robe Drama Center and the Hasty Plin Club. He won the nickname during his college days on a trip to Bermuda. A friend of Broadway scripted John Weidman observed that his outfit looked like “a guy named Mo cleaning cabanas at the Catskill.”
After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English Literature in 1968, he studied for a year at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art at the Fulbright Fellowship.
Back in New York, he had difficulty landing the role, so in 1971 he moved to San Francisco, where he lived in the commune, singing for six years mainly for money at ferry terminals, earning enough to spend the winter in Mexico and Guatemala.
Once outside the stage doors of the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, he met Luciano Pavarotti, who had just performed at Verdi's “United Nations Barro of Maschara,” and summoned his nerves to sing for the great tenor.
“I raced on the money note. He cried out “Choi Bose Doro,” or “What a golden voice.”
After returning to New York again, he landed a small portion in Central Park in 1978 at the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of “Oldswell is on track” and “Sheep Tame” (about that time he dropped his last name and began using his middle name instead.
In 1980, director Wilford Reach cast him as Samuel, Shakespeare of Shakespeare, “The Pirates of Penzance” in the park production of Gilbert and Sullivan Comics Operetta. Mr. Hannan stayed on the show when he moved to Broadway in 1981.
Rex Smith, who played Frederick, the male romantic lead, said in an interview that Hannan “embodied everything that was necessary to become a li in the Pirate King, and that's why you had to stand and give birth every night – if you weren't keelhole.”
In 2006, Hannan rose to the ranks to play the leading general in the Yiddish Language version of the “Pirates” (called “Diyam Gazronim!”) held by the Yiddish Theatre Forks Bien at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan (now Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan).
The show's director, Allen Lewis Rickman, recalled that Hannan had no idea about Yiddish and had to learn his lines phonetically.
“He was very character and very interesting. One of the people you know is a real professional,” Rickman said in an interview. “It was his first instinct, but it wasn't a way to steal the scene.”
