The phone rang late on a Saturday morning, Brian sleepily calling from his bed God-Knows-Where to thank us for a glowing review of a show he was performing at Pennsylvania Playhouse in Bethlehem, "The Obituary Im Trying to Write" by Lawrence Fox. Of Brian, we had written, "But, an ESPECIALLY special bow to Brian Keller, who played more roles than I could count, employing about every cheesy foreign and regional accent he could conjure, sometimes more than one in the same sentence, and whose physical transformations would have been sufficiently amusing even had he not spoken."
Before we hung up, Brian not only tried to stump us with his customary questions about obscure baseball trivia, but had also deftly elicited an offer to take a colorful character role in a show to be staged at Bethlehems IceHouse the following August.
If you ever received a phone call out of the blue from Brian, it took you less than the duration of a lightning strike to know who was on the line. Brian had that rich, mellow, nasally voice that comes from God, cigarettes, and perhaps an early childhood in and around military housing. Had he chosen, Brian could easily have developed a memorable voice-over career, words emerging from his mouth as quietly and sweetly as scent from a rose.
He didnt call often, sometimes only once every few months, checking in, always asking first how you were, bringing the saga of his own life up-to-date only when you asked in return. But his friendship was genuine, enduring, and cherished.
We met Brian in 2012 at McCooles Arts and Events Place in Quakertown, an unfortunate facility that was better suited to the wedding receptions and Bar Mitzvahs that rumbled from the dance hall beneath than it was to the more subtle, less blaring entertainments delivered in the theater on the second floor, horns often drowning out our actors at their most critical moments. "My sister staggered from her room, clutching her throat, writhing against the wall and rasping her final words The man who killed me was¦ it was¦", and at that very moment a brassy, ear-splitting Hava Nagila erupted from the party raging downstairs.
On a rare quiet evening, Brian was playing Corrado to Will Alexanders The Shadow in the Italian classic, "Death Takes a Holiday". Corrado enters the garden at the top of Act Two and is immediately to be confronted by a rival. Only, the rival never entered, and for a full minute, Brian was left alone to wander silently through the plays gardens and to contemplate the softly glowing paper lanterns hanging from the gridwork overhead. He didnt clear his throat or harumph or call offstage awkwardly; he quietly, patiently gazed at the heavens, maintaining a serene expression and exhibiting nothing resembling the panic that was overtaking the stage crew. Someone in the audience called it one of the most tender moments shed ever seen in a play, insisting that it was all planned that way. But, no, Brian created it out of nothing but his own inner peace.
For Diary of a Scoundrel, a long-neglected 19th Century Russian comedy, Brian performed Mamaev to great acclaim. For reasons known only to himself, he devised to play this early oligarch as a Billy Goat, replete with baa-ing and head twitching, as if at any moment to butt heads with any other goats who might wander by. The Morning Call reviewer David Howell wrote, "Keller is wonderfully idiotic as he spreads unwanted advice and meaningless polemics."
In "Parfumerie", the play that inspired Ernst Lubitschs tender "The Shop Around the Corner", set just before Christmas in pre-WWII Budapest, Brian played a long suffering employee in a womens notion shop. Brian had such elegance when he moved around the stage, and exuded such savoir faire¦ too much savoir faire at times, in fact, for his role. When Brian, the actor, accidentally dislodged a shelf of perfume bottles that came crashing and shattering to the floor, rather than staying in character and sweeping up the mess, as the shop employee would wearily have done, Brian chose instead to gently nudge the debris under carpets and nearby cabinets with the toes of his shoes, effectively pulling focus from the scene, but doing so with great¦ elan. Myra Yellin Outwater, the late Drama Desk member and critic for The Morning Call wrote, "Brian Keller is touching as Mr. Sipos, the sensitive older and worldlier clerk who tries to caution Horvath against rash actions." You never saw a show with Brian in the cast and failed to notice his gifts and his ... distinctive choices.
In that August production that Brian had wheedled his way into, "A Softening of Her Eyes" at Bethlehems IceHouse, he played an expert witness at a criminal trial, a Columbia University authority on sexual assault; but somehow, and not subtly, he transformed the character into, as the actor Florence Taylor put it recently, "Foghorn/Leghorn", and delivered every line as if he were channeling a Louisiana congressman. "Brian, dont you think thats a rather unusual choice'", we asked, and, in reply, his mouth opened, his 400-watt grin switched on, and we gave up trying to persuade him to change a thing.
Everyone who worked with him surely has pocketfuls of colorful stories about Brian, all of them warm and funny and full of promise of more to come. He was a terrific friend, a wonderful castmate, a joyful man to sit beside around a table of actors and to laugh with and share stories long into the night.
Were just deeply saddened that night has come to its end.