Broadway Veteran Robert Petkoff Talks MOULIN ROUGE! Tour in Montreal

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Robert Petkoff has had tremendous success on Broadway, the West End and regionally along with film and television. He is also an award winning audio book narrator! I had the chance to chat with Petkoff just prior to MOULIN ROUGE! landing in Montreal, where it will run at Salle Wilfred-Pelletier, Places des Arts, 175 Rue Sainte-Catherine O, Montréal, QC H2X 1Y9 from June 9-14, 2026.

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Tell me a little bit about your journey into the arts.

I was in high school and I was doing some plays, just for fun. I wasn't taking it very seriously. But I had a teacher, Dan Martinkus, who saw something in me. He really pointed me in the direction of perhaps doing this as a career. When I graduated from Illinois State University I stayed in Chicago working with the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre . I got a TV pilot and then went to LA. I was there for about five years. I met the woman that I married out there. She lived in New York, so I moved to New York and it was the greatest thing that I ever did, because my whole career changed. I never looked back. I’ve been now in New York about 34 years.

Your pivot from Shakespeare to musical theatre is so interesting. Can you share a little bit about that shift?

It’s so strange. Something I never expected. I had done musicals in high school and I did a couple musicals in college, then I got out and just never did musicals. I didn't train my voice, I didn't do anything like that and Shakespeare is my first love. I love using language as an actor. I think there's something really wonderful about it. I will say it is one of the things that really helps support the character of Harold Zidler because he's got a lot of language. The way he uses language is Shakespearean at times.

Someone who had worked with me in college contacted me 15 years later and said, “I'm directing Sunday in the Park with George and I'm wondering if you think you could sing that. I'm coming to New York and I would love to see you.” I thought, “oh God, I sing in the shower, but I don’t…I haven't trained at all.

But we met, I sang, and he said, “yeah, yeah, I want you for that role.” It was ironically at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre . I loved it, I loved singing on stage, There are very few things like it in any of the arts. I played Hamlet, and I can do “to be or not to be,” and the audience sits there and listens. They may respond, they may be feeling something, but the immediate reaction to singing on stage, the sounds people make, not just the applause, but the sound, the expression of their joy or their grief or whatever is so visceral and immediate that I thought, “oh, I really like this.”

I went back to New York and I said to my agent, I'd like to audition for musicals now. I think the third audition I had was for the revival of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF on Broadway and I got that job. It just sort of went from there. I balanced it, you know, I'll do straight plays and Shakespeare, with musicals.

I left that show, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, after a year and like three months to go back to Chicago Shakespeare Theatre , because I got an offer to play the role of Mercutio, [In ROMEO AND JULIET] which was a dream role for me, with the same director that 10 years before had directed me as Romeo at the Hartford stage, Mark Lamos . I had seen that he was directing that production at Chicago Shakespeare and I sent him an email, giving him a hard time saying, “how could you even think of directing the show again, after we defined it for an age? He laughed and said,” you want to come play Mercutio?” And I said, “oh my god, yes.”

Shakespeare has been a foundational experience for me for my entire career and also because I narrate audiobooks now. It's a huge thing that I do and that is directly informed from Shakespeare. The phrasing, the use of language, being able to parse a difficult sentence and make it clear to the ear. It's one thing to read it on a page and maybe go back over a sentence a couple of times if you didn't quite get it, but with an audiobook, you have to get it the first time you hear it. So as a narrator, I have to be able to express it. I have done a lot of books where thought, “my God, if I had never done Shakespeare, I can't imagine how I would make this clear to a listener right now.” David Foster Wallace jumps to mind. A very, very wonderful writer and obtuse and obscure at times in his reference. The phrasing he uses is nearly impossible to express vocally unless you have some sort of ability, which language that Shakespeare gave me.

What are some of the differences between doing live theatre and reading audiobooks characters?

So many people listen to audiobooks now while driving or while doing housework or just while relaxing. I've heard people say “listening to a book is not reading” and it's not the same as reading, but you're still getting a story told to you, rather than consuming a story on your own. There are people who for whom reading is difficult. For them, an audio book allows them to enjoy a story or nonfiction in a way that they might not ever have done on their own. They might have started a book once or twice and said, “I just can't get through this thing.” But you put it on with a good narrator, and suddenly you're just in the room with somebody who's telling you the story. And that's my approach, especially with nonfiction. I always ask myself, “who am I saying this to?” Whenever you're playing a character, you are playing an objective, you're playing an intention, and you're saying, “I am talking to this person on stage because I want to get this from them.” With an audiobook, to me, I think of it in the same terms.

“Why am I trying to tell you this story? What do I want you to get from this?” You want it to be personal. I think what it's done in that way, of course, it's so much more engaging. Narrating has been wonderful because there are tons of books that I would never have chosen for myself that are chosen for me. I get hired to do it. And over and over, I'm like, “wow, I never would have picked up that book.” But I am so glad that I got to narrate that book because it's fascinating to me.

I know you've worked on the West End you've worked on Broadway. A question that I hear asked all the time is what would you say is the biggest difference between working on the West End and working on Broadway?

You know, I think the work ethic is the same. I think actors approach a musical or a play in pretty much the same way. I think universally, right? You have a basic idea. Whether your technique is based out of method or any number of techniques, the objective is always the same. “I want to lie. really well in front of a group of people, so that they believe I'm telling the truth.” We just have to be really good liars and add of course the complexity that we have to communicate with the people on stage in a way that's authentic. Obviously, financially, there's a big difference in that the West End doesn't pay on the same rate as Broadway does.

I would say what I'm envious about for the actors on the West End is that London is the center of film, television, and theatre in one place. There's a great respect that film and television gives to theatre there. You see actors seamlessly moving between film and the stage. There's more accommodation made for people who are maybe doing a TV show, but they could go do the play at night, For years here the standard was always film and television in Los Angeles, theatre’s in New York, and you have to really make a conscious choice of where you want to live to pursue the kind of career you wanted. It’s bled a lot now with self-taping. I can be in New York and I can audition for something anywhere.

There's a weird sense from casting and from others that British actors are better trained. They're more serious about their craft. I think there are university programs all over the United States that prove that wrong. There are people that are going to these universities that are taking acting very seriously. There are programs that are putting out phenomenal musical theatre performers as well as straight-up actors. So, I hate that there's this belief that the British actor is superior to an American actor.

I do think that perhaps it is easier for British actor to do an American accent or an Australian actor to do an American accent than it is for us to do an Australian or a British accent convincingly. I believe it's because of television and media. British and Australian actors often watched American programs over and over as kids. They’re able to pick up how to pronounce certain things, how to do the rhythms of an accent. Whereas we didn't watch a lot of British television as kids. Now, of course, if you're watching Game of Thrones, there’s more of that bleeding over now. I think that younger people are going to be better at doing a convincing English accent. Of course, an English accent changes by whatever block you live on. So it's funny when an actor goes, “oh, I do an English accent.” Which one? And it's the same as an English actor saying, “I do an American accent” You're like, “which one? Are you talking about North Carolina? Are you talking about Chicago? Are you talking about California?”

I have to touch on TANTALUS. [The 10 hour, epic world premiere production, directed by Sir Peter Hall ] There is a documentary out there for people to check out. But if you could give me three words about your experience what would they be?

Amazing, excruciating, life-changing. It was a thing I participated in that made me finally understand Dickens “t was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” you know? We rehearsed for six months which is a long time to spend with people. It’s a long time to spend having artistic disagreements about things, but it was an extraordinary experience. So it was the best of times. I've never done anything like it. Life changing in that it led to other things. It led to me acting on the West End, which was a dream of mine.

To work with Sir Peter Hall and of course because of my Shakespeare experience, John Barton . I had watched John Barton 's series PLAYING SHAKESPEARE on PBS and was enthralled as a young actor. There was a day in rehearsal where they said, “Robert, today you and John are just going go into this small rehearsal room and you're going to work on verse.” And I thought, “oh my God, this is a dream come true.” I mean, as I watched PLAYING SHAKESPEARE, I thought, “oh, I want to be in that room. I want to do that.” And here I was doing that. Then someone produced another, more modern version of the PLAYING SHAKESPEARE series and John asked me to participate in it. They shot some things in Denver, where we were rehearsing. Then they went to New York and shot some things there. I got to participate in that. There were so many things about that experience that were dreams come true.

And then like I said, the excruciating part was just having strong artistic disagreements about certain things and realizing that there are times in life, when as an artist, you're going to have to compromise. You know, we always think of the artist saying, “no, no, I paint what I paint and the world be damned.” And that's fine if you're a painter. But when you're in theatre, you're a collaborative artist. It is one of the most primary differences in theatre and film and performing arts. Unless you're doing a one person show. And even then you've got a director, usually. But you're always collaborating. So there

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/montreal/article/Interview-Robert-Petkoff-of-MOULIN-ROUGE-at-Salle-Wilfred-Pelletier-Place-Des-Arts-20260607)._