Still Me (24 page)

Unfortunately, all these productions began before the end of the school year. To have these exciting offers conflict with exam week was almost more than I could bear. But a deal was a deal, and I had to finish the semester.

By the time I was free for the summer, there were few choices left. I ended up in a touring production of
Forty Carats
, starring Eleanor Parker on the straw-hat circuit. This was a letdown compared with the earlier offers, but at least I was working, and we played in places like Cape Cod, New Hampshire, and Maine, some of the nicest spots in New England. The production was undistinguished, but I tried my best. We played each theater for a week and then moved on; one pleasant challenge was to see how many sail-boats and good restaurants and delightful companions I could find in each town. The most memorable moment of the summer took place onstage at the Candlewood Playhouse in Connecticut: Eleanor Parker took a step toward me just as a fifty-pound stage light fell twenty feet right onto the spot where she had just been standing. I dutifully came out with my next line, and she tried not to react to the huge thud right behind her, but the audience freaked out. The stage manager brought the curtain down until everyone could regain composure. The rest of the lights were checked, and we picked up where we had left off.

The following March I once again began the process of finding a job for the summer. This time it didn't take long. I was offered a full-season contract with the San Diego Shakespeare Festival, with decent parts in
Richard III, The Merry Wives of Windsor
, and
Love's Labour's Lost
on the main stage at the Old Globe Theatre. I thought this was a wonderful opportunity and decided not to let it pass me by. I approached all my professors with a letter of support from John Clancy, and after some negotiating it was agreed that I could leave school April 15 to begin rehearsals in San Diego—on the condition that I complete all my papers and exams on the honor system and send them in on time. Having worked things out with Cornell, I was able to sell the plan to my parents without too much difficulty. I drove home to Princeton, traded my ski parka and long winter underwear for khakis and short-sleeved shirts, and soon found myself looking at palm trees and the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

Anthony Zerbe played Richard and soon became a good friend. His approach to the part was to go way overboard in rehearsals, to try anything, no matter how outlandish, then pull back later. He was never intimidated by the role; instead he took big bites out of it. His confidence and the boldness of his choices made him fascinating to watch. I was improbably cast as Edward IV, who dies of syphilis, thus making way for Richard's ascent to the throne. I had a gray wig and a complete age makeup, and I followed Zerbe's lead in attacking the part. Because the role was so far from my own age and personality, I felt free to explore and was quite secure in the characterization.

In
The Merry Wives of Windsor
I was cast as Fenton, a “service” part that only required the actor to dress well and deliver paragraphs of exposition. Frankly I was bored by it because it seemed so dull compared with my part in
Richard.
Ellis Rabb, who had been the artistic director of the APA Repertory Company in New York for many years and was one of my mentors, came to see the Old Globe productions. (As a teenager I had seen all of his productions and become friends with him and many of the actors in the company.) His comment to me in the dressing room was brief and to the point: “Your Edward is acceptable; your Fenton is a mess.” Later a group of us went out for something to eat, and I cornered him for an explanation. His point was that as I progressed in my career it would be more valuable to learn how to play parts closer to myself; that it would rarely if ever be necessary to put on tons of makeup and play so far against type. There were opportunities with Fenton that I hadn't explored because I'd decided that it didn't require “acting.” He argued that a greater challenge than playing Edward IV would have been to find something original and interesting in Fenton instead of allowing my condescending attitude toward the part to come across the footlights.

As Dumaine in
Love's Labour's Lost
, a carbon copy of Fenton in
The Merry Wives of Windsor
, and under a ton of makeup in
Richard III
.

I rank that conversation as one of the most important of my whole career. I understood that without being typecast an actor can and must bring his own personality, emotional life, and physical attributes to the work. These are assets, not liabilities. I learned that acting is about being truthful and figuratively naked onstage, as opposed to trying to disappear into some clever but remote characterization.

The season at the Old Globe was so exciting and enlightening that I dreaded the approach of Labor Day weekend, which would bring it to a close. I also realized how reluctant I was to go back to Cornell. I was still willing to get my undergraduate degree, but I needed to take some time before returning to university life. I wanted to see more top professional actors at work in both modern and classical plays and had a strong urge to travel. With money I saved from my job at the Old Globe, I took a three-month leave of absence from Cornell, packed a knapsack and a small bag, and headed for England.

I bought a copy of
Europe on Five Dollars a Day
and made a rough plan for the trip. The cheapest fare I could find was on Icelandair, which landed in Glasgow rather than London; so I decided to begin my theater tour in Scotland and work my way south.

The very first production I saw was the Brecht-Weill
Threepenny Opera
at the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow. The production was first-rate, but what impressed me most was that the name of the theater reflected its role in the community. Tickets were cheap, and the theater was filled with working-class people. Too many American rep companies are patronized primarily by affluent subscribers. Even at the Old Globe and Williamstown, during curtain calls we were almost always looking out at a sea of gray hair—well-to-do retirees with plenty of free time. Where were the students and the small shop owners, the taxi drivers and the gas station attendants? In Glasgow they were all there, mingling comfortably with the doctors, lawyers, and university professors. I imagined what it must have been like for Shakespeare: his plays had to appeal to everyone, from the commoners in the pit to the gentry in the upper circle.

From Glasgow I made my way north to Inverness and Aberdeen, then south to Pitlochry and Edinburgh, where I managed to catch some of the “fringe” productions at the end of the Edinburgh Festival. Working my way south, I saw an amazing
King Lear
at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool (another theater that lived up to its name), Ibsen's
Brand
at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton, and productions of Pinter, Chekhov, Albee, Williams, and many others in places like Nottingham, Sheffield, and Derby. In Manchester I came across a production of Wycherley's
The Country Wife
with Albert Finney, who was a little heavier but just as dashing and charismatic as he was in the 1963 film
Tom Jones
. At each town I would usually find the actors in the bar after the performance. I had no hesitation about introducing myself as an admiring and curious American actor. At first some of them were taken aback by my direct approach, but it's pretty much true of actors anywhere in the world that if you compliment their performance and ask them how they did it, they will soon launch into a monologue and often tell you even more than you wanted to know.

I was particularly impressed by the commitment so many of them had to theater in and of itself. Many of their American counterparts feel stuck in a rep company while they wait for a good film role or even a TV series to come along. The actors I met in the UK seemed not to care if or when film work turned up. They lived simply, enjoying the rehearsal process and the satisfaction of deepening and enriching their performances over a long period of time. Most of them had attended drama school and were extremely versatile. They could move and speak well and had obviously developed acting technique. They could play Shakespeare or Miller or Alan Ayckbourn, just as a musician in an orchestra can play Haydn or Berlioz or Stravinsky.

I also found the clichéd notion that British actors are “technical” while American actors are “natural” to be completely unfounded. That may have been true several generations ago, but not now. I saw many performances (one of the best was Finney's) that were both technically adroit and absolutely truthful. It was also a pleasure to find that the younger actors felt honored to have been chosen for these companies; they weren't just “passing through.”

I reached London the third week of October and stayed at the flat of an actress I'd met who was performing at Nottingham Rep. Occasionally she came to town on her days off, making my stay even more enjoyable. I saw dozens of productions, from the West End to pub theater in Camden Town and Hammersmith. I saw Olivier in
Long Day's Journey into Night
at the Old Vic. I was very starstruck watching him perform, but I still thought the Cornell production was better. Afterwards, as usual, I talked my way backstage and met the other actors.

I struck up a conversation with Dennis Quilley, who had played Jamie Tyrone and was in rehearsal for
The Front Page.
He confided that he and some others in the cast were having trouble mastering their American accents. They found it particularly difficult because the 1920s Hecht and MacArthur comedy had to be played at breakneck speed. The next day I found myself in the large rehearsal room at the Old Vic, sitting next to the director in front of a cast of thirty, charged with taking notes and making suggestions. I had assumed that the company would have any number of dialect coaches available at all times, but for some reason there were none in sight. I wasn't being paid but didn't care. I took copious notes in case an actor asked for advice. Sometimes the director asked me to stand in front of the company and read the newspaper aloud. The actors always paid close attention, and some of them tape-recorded the sessions. It was a tremendous honor to be useful to them.

At the end of November I went to Paris on the final leg of my journey, before returning to Princeton for the holidays and then back to academia. I had studied French from third grade all the way through my sophomore year at Cornell and was fairly fluent. As I crossed the English Channel I made a quiet agreement with myself not to speak English from the moment we docked at Calais until I boarded a plane for New York. I had an introduction to the great French actor Michel Lonsdale and the phone number of a young college student, Jacqueline, who had been the au pair for my half brothers Jeff and Kevin a few summers before. I stayed at a youth hostel near the Pont Marie and often went with Jacqueline to her classes at the Faculté des Sciences at Jussieu, where she was a biology major. Since I'd always been bored by the subject in English, my eyes glazed over as I sat in the back of à large lecture hall listening to an ancient professor drone on in French. Every Sunday night I joined Jacqueline's family for dinner in their comfortable apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement.

I managed to get in touch with Michel Lonsdale and thoroughly enjoyed watching him rehearse Pinter's
Old Times
at the Théâtre de l'Odéon. Through him I was introduced to the company of the Comédie-Française. Because their stagehands were on strike, they had moved into a tent in a nearby park, where they were preparing a production of Molière's
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
As I watched rehearsals I was surprised to find that the director was mounting an extremely traditional production. Actors would come forward and declaim their lines, playing directly to the audience as they did in the seventeenth century. I talked to some of the company and discovered that they felt Molière must be done “properly,” not reinvented for a modern audience. From studying the play in high school, I remembered it being extremely funny, and I'd seen productions in the States that were fresh and inventive. The Comédie-Française production was unbelievably boring, a real disappointment. On opening night I left after the first act.

I spent a lot of time roaming the city. Because I spoke French, I was treated better than many Americans. I could chat with people in restaurants, ask anyone on the street for directions, and catch up on the news by reading
Le Monde
instead of the
International Herald Tribune.
At Jacqueline's apartment on Sunday evenings, I confidently joined the discussions over dinner led by her father (a lawyer), who was usually challenged by her mother (a schoolteacher). Sometimes the whole family stayed at the table for two or three hours, enjoying lively arguments. Before I knew what was happening, I was becoming more French. I took to wearing a fisherman's sweater and baggy pants, and spent many afternoons in a bar smoking a pipe and writing in my journal. I have no idea who I thought I was, but I was still experimenting with different identities, both onstage and off. I tended to immerse myself in any new environment. In San Diego I looked like a surfer; at Cornell, a dyed-in-the-wool preppie; and now in France I was becoming some kind of generic bohemian.