Michael McGrath, Tony Winner and “Spamalot” veteran, has died at the age of 65

Michael McGrath, winner of the 2012 Tony Award for his work in the musical Nice Work if You Can Get It, has been a regular in Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theater productions, and is particularly known for comedic roles and his ability to conjure up the likes of Groucho Marx, George M. Cohan and Jackie Gleason died Thursday at his home in Bloomfield, New Jersey, at the age of 65.

His family announced his death through publicist Lisa Goldberg. No reason was given.

Mr. McGrath was one of those theatrical actors who are rarely recognized on the street, and yet have worked steadily for decades, attracting attention all the while. He did much of his early work at Theater by the Sea in Matunuck, Rhode Island, where he appeared regularly from 1977 to 1991, including the title role in a 1989 production of “George M!” The musical about Cohan, the famous song. -and-dancing man.

“Exuding confidence and manic energy,” Michael Burlingame wrote in a review in The Day of New London, Conn., “McGrath struts and croons like a bantam rooster.”

By the late 1980s, he was appearing in New York shows, including “Forbidden Christmas,” a 1991 holiday version of the long-running satire “Forbidden Broadway”; In one sketch, Luciano Pavarotti is “wearing,” as Mel Gussow wrote in a New York Times review, “a white shirt the size of a bed sheet.”

A year later, he made his Broadway debut in My Favorite Year, a behind-the-scenes musical based on the 1982 film about the Golden Age of Television. This show closed after a month, but it marked the beginning of Mr. McGrath’s regular work on Broadway—sometimes as an understudy or stand-in, sometimes in featured roles.

He played three different roles in “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” the 2005 hit musical inspired by “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” including Patsy, a maid who would bang coconuts together to imitate the sound of a galloping horse. His performance earned him a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

His Broadway run continued with the song “Is He Dead?” (2007), “Memphis” (2009), and “Born Yesterday” (2011). Then, in 2012, came his Tony Award-winning role in “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” a musical that featured songs by George and Ira Gershwin. Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara got most of the attention in the lead roles, but it was Mr. McGrath (as a smuggler) and Judy Kaye (as a temperance leader) who took home Tony Awards for best actor and actress in the series. Featured role in a musical.

Most recently on Broadway, Mr. McGrath participated in “She Loves Me” (2016) and “Tootsie” (2019), among other shows. Between roles on Broadway, he worked off-Broadway and in regional houses. He also continued to perform in productions of “Forbidden Broadway” and, in 1996, in a spin-off of the “Forbidden Hollywood” films, where he impersonated John Travolta in “Pulp Fiction” and Tom Hanks’ “Forrest Gump.”

That same year, he tapped into his inner Groucho in The Cocoanuts, a revival of an old Marx Brothers show performed at the American Jewish Theater in Manhattan. Mr. McGrath has always been known to make some annoying announcements from time to time. (“It got me in trouble with authors,” he admitted in a 1996 interview with The Times. “A lot of them don’t like to go off script.”) But in “The Cocoanuts” ad-libs, Groucho style, were predictable.

“There are a lot of guys who do better than Groucho, but Groucho and I share the same sense of humour, so I find it very easy to lie like him,” Mr. McGrath told The Times. “I can’t say my timing was great, but we’re on the same ballpark.”

He brought another famous character to life in 2017, when he played Ralph Kramden, played by Jackie Gleason, in a musical version of “The Honeymooners” at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.

If Mr. McGrath wasn’t an A-list star, he would sometimes fill in for one. On Broadway, Martin Short understudied twice, in “The Goodbye Girl” in 1993 and “Little Me” in 1998. A Times reporter was in the audience for “Little Me” in December 1998 when Mr. McGrath replaced Mr. Short, who was suffering from the cold. Many may have been initially disappointed not to see Mr. Short, but by the end of the show, the Times reported, theatergoers “gave Mr. McGrath a special round of applause for people who jump into impossible situations at full speed and soar.”

“They rose to their feet and shouted: ‘Bravo! I did well!'”

Michael McGrath was born on September 25, 1957 in Worcester, Massachusetts. After graduating from high school there, he briefly studied at the Boston Conservatory in Berkeley, but left after three months to begin his acting career.

Among his fellow players in the series “Forbidden Broadway” was Tony De Bono. In the 1988 version of the show, he parodied Joel Grey’s “Cabaret” character; She did the same thing with Patti LuPone, singing “I Get a Kick Out of Me.” Mrs. De Bono and Mr. McGrath later married.

She survives him, as does their daughter, Katie (Claire McGrath).

In a 2012 interview with The Cape Codder of Massachusetts, Mr. McGrath talked about Cookie, the character he played in his Tony Award-winning role in “Nice Work if You Can Get It.”

“There’s a little bit of Gleason in everything I do,” he said. “For the cookie, I also incorporated elements of Groucho Marx, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, Skip Mahoney of the Bowery Boys, and even a little Bugs Bunny.”