John Christopher Jones, who appeared 16 times on Broadway, with stints in Hurlyburly, The Iceman Cometh, Beauty and the Beast and more, has died. He was 77.
Jones died Sept. 15 in New York City of complications from Parkinson’s disease, his friend Jeff Baron announced.
After his diagnosis in March 2003, Jones continued to act for nearly 20 years. His extraordinary efforts to overcome the challenges of his illness was at the center of the 2024 documentary Me to Play, a look at the preparations for a theater production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame that starred Jones and Dan Moran, also battling Parkinson’s (Moran died last year).
A native of Greenfield, Massachusetts, he was a regular on two short-lived CBS sitcoms, 1977-78’s On Our Own, set at an advertising agency, and the 1987 Barry Kemp-created The Popcorn Kid, set in a movie theater.
His onscreen résumé included the films Moonstruck (1987), Awakenings (1990), In & Out (1997), The Hurricane (1999) and The Village (2004) and TV appearances on Amazing Stories, Spenser: For Hire, The Sopranos, Ed, Law & Order, New Amsterdam and Evil.
In addition to David Rabe’s Hurlyburly, Jose Quintero’s revival of The Iceman Cometh (starring Jason Robards) and Beauty and the Beast (as Cogsworth), he worked on Broadway in Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl; Simon Gray’s Otherwise Engaged, directed by Harold Pinter; Michael Frayn’s Democracy; and George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House.
Elsewhere, he appeared in Tony Kushner’s Slavs, David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child, Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, David Lindsay Abaire’s Fuddy Meers, Donald Margulies’ Sight Unseen and a Bartlett Sher production of Don Juan.
A founding member of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, Jones played the Bard regularly in New York at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, at Lincoln Center and for the Classic Stage Company and Theatre for a New Audience.
Jones began a second career as a translator 15 years ago, and his version of The Cherry Orchard won the 2012 Lortel Award for best revival. His other Chekhov translations included A Month in the Country, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and Platonov.
Survivors include his wife, Mary Beth, whom he married in 1995; their children, Hayden, Catherine and Char, an actress; his sisters, Shami and Jennifer; 18 nephews and nieces; and six great-nieces and -nephews.