David Fuller: Of such stuff dreams are made

Strange to admit, but a half-century has passed since David Fuller and I were high school classmates and friends, football teammates and cast members in our senior-year production of Fiddler On The Roof. 

David wanted the lead role of Tevye, but the high school drama coach selected me instead, after requesting my audition. That was awkward, to say the least. David was disappointed, though as always, good natured. I came down with a case of guilt; after all, I was Catholic. Besides, David was my friend. He was focused on drama, expected to study it at Dartmouth. I was interested in being a sportswriter, not an actor. 

Though he’d had his heart set on being Tevye, David took the more artistically challenging role of Perchik and turned out to be perfect for the part; he could convincingly play a romantic lead and he had developed a good singing voice.

Now, all these years later — having gone our separate ways in 1972 and having seen little of each other since — I had the extravagant pleasure the other night of seeing my old friend perform on stage, and in one of his Shakespearean roles. 

There he was, on a small stage in Brooklyn, big as life, playing a superb Prospero in a version of The Tempest that David trimmed from its original two hours-plus to just 75 minutes. This was no thin soup, but a savory and satisfying stew of comedy and drama that — from what I remember, having seen The Tempest at Baltimore’s Center Stage several years ago — kept all the important notes, with a slight lean toward the comic elements. This was a production of New York-based Theatre 2020, where David and his wife, Judith Jarosz, serve as producing artistic directors. They have been partners for years and keep their small company busy with an array of productions, all staged well off Broadway, in Brooklyn.

As Prospero, David delivered the Bard’s prose in a rich, mature baritone that seemed to rise from some cavernous trench in the sea around the imaginary island where The Tempest takes place. Though his stage was spare, with no theatrical lighting — and with the house lights on — David still managed to conjure Prospero’s commanding, mystical aura. He is every inch the professional actor — as fine as any I’ve seen on stage or screen — that he became while his high school classmates were not watching. 

His Prospero made me wish that all the folks from our small hometown in Massachusetts — our departed parents and neighbors, the ladies of the library, the men of the Kiwanis and American Legion, our teachers and coaches and classmates — could have been there, at A.R.T./NY’s South Oxford Space. They would have been popping with pride.

They would also be awed, I think, by David’s credits — performances in some 70 plays and musicals, producing and directing dozens more. 

Maybe others have had this experience: Either being surprised by the success of a high school friend, or having what you expected from that person confirmed. In my case, with David Fuller, it’s the latter. 

I knew and admired him as a peer dedicated heart and soul to everything he did — centering the football team, working toward (and achieving) the top grade in every class, making his Perchik pitch-perfect though he’d rather have played Tevye. He followed his bliss, and though other actors reached greater heights of fame and fortune, I wonder if they’re as happy as David seems to be, living a life, as Prospero says, “of such stuff as dreams are made.”