John C. Reilly‘s Mister Romantic music and stage show brings together live music, vulnerability, and humor in performances that challenge conventional boundaries of connection. Recently staged in Austin, Texas’s Paramount Theatre, the show follows Reilly’s alter ego Mister Romantic—a pansexual, time-traveling character desperate to fall in love—as he interacts with the audience and explores the power of song and empathy.
Emerging breathless and in character, Reilly’s Mister Romantic is introduced in narrative fashion, having arrived in a steamer trunk, his appearance deliberately disheveled, ready to offer his heart—sometimes literally on paper—to an audience member. Every element is theatrical, from the drooping bow tie and flushed nose to the selection of a participant, whom he invites onstage, only to face rejection. That moment becomes an emotional touchstone, lingering throughout the 90-minute journey as Mister Romantic continues to break the fourth wall, climb into balconies, and gently tease audience members, never letting go of the original rebuff.
The show’s opening, however, belongs to Mister Romantic’s band—Charles DeCastro on cornet, with musicians David Garza, Gabe Witcher, and Sebastian Steinberg—who solemnly process down the aisle. These artists ground the show, forming a tight unit familiar with the past but quietly frustrated by Mister Romantic’s endless pursuit of love. Reilly’s connections with these musicians, forged through figures like Fiona Apple and Noam Pikelny, reflect the collaborative spirit behind the show.
“I have my foot in all kinds of different worlds of music, and this is a culmination of a lot of those relationships,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Building a World of Vulnerability and Improvisation
Mister Romantic’s entrance from his eBay-sourced trunk, emblazoned with his name, is more than just spectacle. Over time, the trunk has evolved into a symbol of emotional stasis and the human longing to connect.
“I had to create this whole world—this whole mythology—for this guy so that it all made sense,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“The trunk is a part of that. I didn’t realize that people would end up feeling like the trunk was a metaphor for their own places of emotional frozenness, or their inability to connect. People started seeing that; I just went with my instincts.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Throughout the show, Mister Romantic selects standards from the Great American Songbook, such as “My Funny Valentine,” “Mona Lisa,” and
“We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me),”
using them as tools to draw the audience into his offbeat quest for love. His performances blur lines between performer and viewer, as he bridges the physical space by greeting attendees, asking about their experiences with love, and creating fleeting, sincere moments with volunteers.
“We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me).”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Improvisation is deliberately woven into the fabric of the production. Unexpected events—from malfunctioning microphones to a stray bat weaving through the theater—become part of the narrative. Reilly embraces these unpredictabilities, regarding them as marks of authenticity.
“If I could do [Mister Romantic] without a microphone, I would,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“But I wanted to make sure that everyone could hear what I’m saying. I live for that, I live for mistakes—the unexpected reactions. That’s what makes the show unique. That’s art.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“Almost every movie you see me in, including Paul Anderson’s movies, huge chunks of what I do are improvised. That’s the way to get the best out of me—to let me just open my stream of consciousness. It’s exciting and it’s real, and it’s what people want. I make mistakes in shows, and I always say, ‘Look, you can see a polished show any night of the week here in Los Angeles. But I’m going to tell you the truth.’”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
The Quest for Empathy and Human Connection
Central to John C. Reilly’s perspective is a determination to engage the audience with empathy. Mister Romantic’s inclusive, unscripted crowd work is designed to foster kindness and consent, asking deeply human questions like,
“Am I lovable? Are you lovable? Could you love me forever?”
Reilly is earnest in his search for human warmth, resisting mere performance in favor of real emotional exchange.
“My work, as an actor and a performer, is all based in empathy and sincerity,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“I have other friends that are comedians who can just read the phonebook and it’s funny. But my approach has always been: try to be as honest as you can, try to meet the moment, and try to really see people.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“If you follow that all the way down, men and women, that stuff just doesn’t matter. If I say I think human beings are beautiful and I think everyone is unique and special and deserves dignity and love, then you find yourself with the show that we have.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
The show’s inclusivity is both philosophical and practical. Mister Romantic’s audience interactions are intentionally varied, always alternating between speaking to women and men and treating the room as a space filled with individuals worthy of attention. Reilly notes the modern, even subversive, elements of the production, with its gender-blind engagement and refusal to let the audience passively observe.
“The stuff we traffic in the show is pretty subversive and pretty modern,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“The gender-swapping approach I have to the audience, and how improvised it is, I don’t think you would have seen anything like this in vaudeville back in the day.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“I might talk to anyone in the audience—people in the balcony, people in the back, men, women, it doesn’t matter.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
As the show progresses, a sense of shared experience grows, with audience members gradually shifting their focus from John C. Reilly the film star to Mister Romantic the hopeful character.
“That gives it an immediacy and a realness, you know?”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“The audience just wants to play along, once they understand what’s going on, or what the character believes, or the place he’s at,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“That’s alive. It’s not just some rehearsed thing, or some song that we’ve done a million times and now we’re going to try to keep it fresh. It’s alive, and I’m only interested in that. At this point in my life, it’s just a gift to give back to people—to say, ‘This is worth doing. It’s worth trying to love someone.’ I wish that wasn’t such a radical thing to say, but it is.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
From Private Experiment to Growing Phenomenon
Mister Romantic’s journey began as a low-profile, experimental event in Los Angeles, particularly at Largo, a space where Reilly has performed and found creative refuge for decades. After completing work on the series Winning Time, Reilly launched Mister Romantic’s first official show at Largo, inviting strangers into his unpredictable world.
“No matter how busy I am or how much I was working, I would always either go see shows there or friends who were putting on shows would say, ‘Hey, will you get up for a song or tell a story?’”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
The initial approach was intentionally modest, eschewing aggressive promotion in favor of gradual, organic growth. Flowing from monthly gigs at Largo and the Masonic Lodge, word of mouth drew increasingly diverse, enthusiastic crowds.
“I’m not into vanity projects or stuff that doesn’t earn its keep. I wasn’t interested in doing [Mister Romantic] for its own sake, or turning it into some big publicity push right away. I wanted the show to grow organically, and I wanted us to get our feet in.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“The spirit of the show is something that people want to share,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“They have these great experiences—these meaningful, emotional experiences—and, oftentimes, younger people discover a lot of music that they’ve not heard before.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Even as the production’s audience grew, its heart remained the same: open, sincere exchanges between strangers united by music and a willingness to engage.
“You can have down days where you feel like, ‘Oh, man, this world is just fucked. People don’t care about other people. People are selfish.’ I definitely have those dark thoughts. The show was born out of joy and despair. People are getting shot up on the streets. What can I do? Well, I’m going to get out there and try to connect with people, because that’s the first thing. We’re human beings, goddamnit.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“I have a 100% success rate with the people that I talk to, and I think part of that is just seeing people for who they are and appreciating who they are. People just blossom when you do that.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Modern Sensibility: Humor, Inclusivity, and the Challenge of Sincerity
The show defies straightforward genre definition. While its vaudevillian trappings—live music, dramatic monologues, audience engagement—might evoke nostalgia, Reilly clarifies the show’s essential modernity. Through gender-blind interactions and improvisational energy, Mister Romantic delivers commentary on love and identity that feels timely and radical. These inclusive, warm but sometimes challenging encounters are designed to upend expectations and invite every audience member—no matter their gender, background, or politics—into the show’s reality.
“You can see the audience going, ‘Wait, what?’ And you feel this shift in the room, where, suddenly, everyone is included,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Even at performances in places like The Franklin Theatre in Nashville, where personal and political divides might be presumed, the show creates moments of surprising connection. Reilly recalls intentionally focusing on individuals outside his “personal political spectrum,” deliberately seeking commonality.
“I was like, ‘I just want to connect with you as a human being. I’m not trying to kiss you, or get in your pants, or make you compromise what you believe. I want you to see me, and I want to see you.’”
—John C. Reilly, Performer. For Reilly, the power of music is its direct route to feeling, bypassing intellectual barriers:
“It hits you or it doesn’t hit you,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“And, if it hits you right, it feels pretty universal.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Reilly’s crowd work is careful, rooted in consent and sensitivity to others’ moods and boundaries.
“It’s cruel to talk to them at that moment. You avoid those people. You’re looking for someone who’s really in the present moment with you,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer. In every case, his aim is for everyone, regardless of background, to walk away feeling part of an authentic, spontaneous event:
“I’m trying to find common ground. And hopefully people, regardless of their political stripes or their gender or their sexuality or their musical tastes, walk out and feel like something just happened in there—like, I just experienced something real that wasn’t a show-business performance, that wasn’t some songs from an album. We had an experience together. It feels like that almost every time.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
The Music: Preserving and Reviving the Great Songbook
A key component of Mister Romantic’s appeal is its celebration of timeless music. Standards like “La Vie En Rose,” “Dream,” and “Picture In a Frame” become freshly alive through the show, particularly for younger audiences hearing these classics for the first time. Reilly’s approach is reverent but playful, positioning these songs as shared treasures.
“The songs are all bangers, every single one of them are eternal melodies.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“They already belong to everyone, and they’re already all there,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“All I’m doing is picking up a shell and being like, ‘Look at this one! Isn’t that beautiful?’ I think it’s part of the mission of my life, to keep sharing music—because I think music just gets lost. You have to sing songs and you have to hear them performed live for a song to really stay alive.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
His concern for musical legacy reflects the show’s broader philosophy. Reilly points to influences like Harry Nilsson, Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole as critical to his understanding of these songs’ endurance, and he is fascinated by what makes some works endure.
“What is it about ‘Amazing Grace’?”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“One of the only things that we can do is create harmony. You sing that note and I’ll sing this note. And when we do that, there’s a third thing that happens that was not there before, and it would not be there if not for our cooperation,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“The vibrations of music—of singing—really heal your body. They heal your brain and your soul.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Reilly’s own musical roots run deep—from family singalongs as a child on Chicago’s South Side to his introduction to Tom Waits’s evocative songwriting. These formative influences, and encounters with figures like Waits, shaped his sensibility, championing artistry and sincerity as sources of meaning.
“It matters what your esthetic is. It’s not just a style choice. It says something deep about your humanness, to care about the quality of what you do enough to work at it and to have the courage to share it with people.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Recalling the candid interview style of Dick Cavett and guests like Orson Welles or Flip Wilson, Reilly advocates for openness and the willingness to put one’s true beliefs in the public eye—even if controversial.
“Damn the torpedoes, who cares if people don’t agree with me? Marlon Brando is going to tell you what he thinks,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“And that’s just disappeared, because it’s not convenient for capitalism. There’s no way to monetize it. You might offend someone and, therefore, you might lose money, because you lose part of your audience. It’s a real poverty of thought in the world.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer. For Reilly, the very act of affirming love between people has become an act of rebellion against a marketplace that prizes profit over genuine expression.
“I’m not doing it for the money, I’m doing it because I was challenged by the work, or because there’s something about it that’s interesting or funny. We have to get back to that. If I had a prescription for the world, I would say we need to get back to standing up for what human beings feel is important—and human beings are not Amazon. Human beings are not Coca-Cola, or Netflix.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
A Show Fueled by Vulnerability and a Desire to Matter
Every Mister Romantic show is an act of exposure for Reilly, who openly admits to the vulnerability and exhaustion that comes with each performance. Yet the reward, for both performer and audience, is the creation of a communal event that marries music, comedy, and candid inquiry into what it means to connect in a fractured world.
“At this point in my life, as I’m getting older, that’s all I want. I just want to feel like I’m of use to the world, that I’m giving everything I can give. And I think, if everyone did that, regardless of the lane that we’re supposed to be in, the world would be a better place.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Asked why he started Mister Romantic, Reilly ultimately concludes that the world wants and needs this kind of space.
“I wanted to see, ‘Does the world want this?’”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“And I can tell you now, having done the show many, many, many times over years, that they really want it. In fact, every day that goes by, they want it more.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer. The show’s forward-looking vision is to create powerful, shared moments that are meaningful in the present.
“They’re not analyzing, ‘Does John really think that?’ They’re just like, ‘This guy doesn’t know what day of the week it is, he doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know these other people in the band.’ I think that creates something special in our world, which is this moment that we all have together. Not to be corny or sentimental, but what’s happening in this room is the most important thing in these 90 minutes. We’ve done this show on days when there have been terrible shootings or awful developments in war, and you can see people come in and wear that heaviness. They’re carrying that information with them, and then, when they realize what’s happening [at the show], it’s about us all connecting. You can see all the shoulders relax.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Music as a Universal Thread in Everyday Life
Reilly insists that music is woven through every relationship, every moment of genuine connection. He credits artists like Harry Nilsson for inspiring him to keep the tradition alive, regardless of commercial reward.
“I don’t know how much money [Nilsson] made on that record, but, to me, it’s one of the most important recordings of my life, because it kept these songs alive,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“I don’t need to get any more famous or make any more money. I just want my life to have meaning. And I think that’s true of everybody, whether you’re a janitor or a rocket scientist or a journalist or a musician—you just want to feel like, at the end of the day, my life had meaning. What I did affected people and, possibly, made the world better than it was before I was here.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
Reilly also reflects on the importance of simple, everyday acts as a means to change the world, stressing the power of choosing respect and care in small moments.
“When you’re at a red light and someone starts walking across the crosswalk, you have enough time to pull your car and make that right-hand turn,”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
“[You think], ‘That person walking in the street would feel endangered by that. I should wait, because that person matters.’ That’s what changes the world: actual action, seeing people and doing it tiny bit by tiny bit. We all fail, and we all make the choice to just zip past the person anyway. But, if we can try to keep ourselves in touch with each other, I think that’s the key.”
—John C. Reilly, Performer.
The Lasting Impact of Mister Romantic
John C. Reilly’s Mister Romantic music and stage show stands apart for its honest blending of humor, aching sincerity, and community-driven live music. More than just a showcase of standards, it is a quietly radical experiment in bringing people together across divides of gender, age, and belief, affirming—through music and interaction—that everyone deserves dignity, attention, and love. As Mister Romantic leaves the stage each night, emerging from and disappearing back into his trunk, he leaves behind a room that has, if only for 90 minutes, felt seen and uplifted. In an era marked by emotional distance and cynicism, Mister Romantic is a passionate reminder that the power of song and sincerity can draw strangers together—and, perhaps, make the world a little more loving.
