Jack in the Box, page 19
The act clatters to an abrupt close as the various characters scatter like chaff for hiding places, not to be found out. It’s all over in a second. But for Falstaff. But for John. Moments ago, he’d been at the apex, hilarious, setting the room on end, a genuine triumph, but now, in the blink of an eye, danger had arrived, was knocking at the door, was entering. It was every man for himself, clearly. I recall that at this point in his life, John had yet to forswear alcohol; he was drinking, and drinking fairly heavily. He knew well the consequences. He knew what happens to a body when the booze collapses in on you, the useless shell that remains, the physical disconnect, the meaningless miasma that seems to dominate the present. As a probable alcoholic, then, John made the decision to do … nothing. The world was churning all around him, and as the adrenaline subsided, he stood like a great bleeding ox in the very center of the stage, just looking balefully around him at the room, possibly even at the audience. He was utterly fucked. And without my actually having to suggest anything, the cast realized that Falstaff himself, not John, was vulnerable, left out in harm’s way, unable to move, and they whisked him behind a torn, dirty curtain just as the sheriff made his entrance.
I can recall many moments from that production, but that one beats them all. Goodman/Falstaff weaving in the center, blinking uncomprehendingly, about to pass out. A moment of genuine honesty, naked reality, and inspiration, when the actor John Goodman became indisputably the Falstaff of his generation. As he was someone struggling with alcohol, I can assert I never experienced a moment when I suspected John was drinking while he was working, and it couldn’t have been easy for him under all that pressure. Between the weight and the drinking, there were years I feared he was flirting with his mortality in a truly terrifying way, but his getting sober and losing considerable weight years later proved that he was as determined to be indestructible as he was to be responsible to his talent, to his family, and to his fans.
The show got great reviews, as did John, and the rumors whizzed and persisted that Roseanne herself and her crowd were all coming from L.A. any day to see this amazing performance. And yet the run proceeded without a visit. One evening once the show was finished and the cast dispersed, I was left in the house after the audience had gone, just looking about me, and, seeing that everything seemed correct, I climbed over the front of the stage to the stage right exit that led up a concrete ramp past the greenroom, now dark, now abandoned, to the dressing rooms beyond. As I walked up the ramp, I could see someone leaning on the exterior of the structure, near the top. It was John, still in his costume, both hands against the stucco wall, weeping. “John!” I said. “What is it? Are you all right?”
He wheeled around, surprised and not surprised at being discovered. He threw his head back and sniffed the tears up into his face. “Yeah…,” he said flatly. “I’m fine. Although, Jesus, I just can’t wait another fucking seven years before I try something like this again! I just can’t!” He wasn’t looking for consolation, and I wasn’t about to give it. As I continued on my way to where my car was parked, I said over my shoulder, “Did you hear from Roseanne? Is she still planning to pay us a visit?”
There was just one word, and he didn’t move a muscle as he said it.
“No.”
2. THE APOLLONIAN
Kevin Kline ranks as one of our great and authentic homegrown actors. He remains so, of course, but in the early nineties he had also become something of a movie star, having made the transition from Broadway newcomer (On the Twentieth Century) to comedic film discovery (A Fish Called Wanda and Dave) and on to more serious and heavy assignments (Silverado and Sophie’s Choice). He was one of the original members of Juilliard’s celebrated Group 1, along with Patti LuPone (with whom he enjoyed a rather spirited and quasi-legendary early affair that might have left marks on each of them), David Schramm, Mary Lou Rosato, and David Ogden Stiers, as well as the late Gerald Gutierrez, soon to make his reputation as one of our finest directors, and Dakin Matthews, who was to play such an essential role in the eventual staffing of the Globe during my stewardship. John Houseman, sensing something of an opportunity, swept them all up and with his second-in-command, Margot Harley, created the Acting Company as an ambitious touring repertory company designed basically to take classical theatre to “the people” outside the metropolitan centers, while providing young trained actors with the kind of employment that would increase their experience and value. All this coincided, for me, with the collapse of Ellis Rabb’s APA-Phoenix company after ten years of amazing success, and for which Houseman himself had provided late and welcome additional leadership. After about six years of steady theatrical employment, I found myself suddenly dumped on the open market without much professional clout, or, more truthfully … any!
Houseman, ever my champion, offered me first a few directing gigs at Juilliard and then a directing assignment for the Acting Company, a production of William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life, which not only became a kind of bridge to more employment but accidentally found its way to Channel 13’s Great Performances when the rights to the company’s current musical hit The Robber Bridegoom became unavailable for taping. Left holding the bag, Houseman literally crammed my production of a play that was far more suitable to more mature actors than our company could provide into the available production slot, thus introducing me to its television producer, Lindsay Law, who not only became one of my closest friends, but with whom I was destined to work side by side throughout the next several decades of remarkable television programming. At all events, once in, we delivered to Lindsay and Channel 13 a creditable production featuring the brightest lights of the company, including Patti LuPone as the iconic Kitty Duval, and, arriving in the second act as the Union dockworker McCarthy, Kevin Kline.
Kevin, at this point in the evolution of the company, to say nothing of his own career, should have been considered the leading man of the troupe. He had the starring, eponymous role in The Robber Bridegroom, where his marvelous singing voice, his élan, his physical skills, and his gift for comedy elevated the evening to something very special, and with Ms. LuPone opposite him, the musical was catnip to Channel 13, but now with their backs to the wall and nothing else on the horizon to flip to, they sucked it up and were more supportive than I would have imagined.
Truth to tell, I had chosen the play to showcase the other unquestioned leading man of the company, who, in the previous season, had been David Ogden Stiers, a somewhat older actor than the rest of them, but, coming from California to add something of a Juilliard gloss to his aspirations, he had realized at the conclusion of the previous season that it was probably time for him to move on with his commercial career. He had already secured a role in the production of Ulysses in Nighttown, starring Zero Mostel, for the following Broadway season. At all events, I was out my leading actor, and although Kevin had played the fairly minor role of McCarthy on the road, he didn’t seem keen to step up at this point.
Well, there is probably more to it than just that … Other than Bridegroom and, as I recall, Peter Shaffer’s The Public Eye (or was it the other one?), neither Juilliard nor the Acting Company ever did a production around or for Kevin specifically, although no one who knew the actors and/or the company at that time would dispute the fact that Kevin was clearly destined for stardom, gifted beyond question. Still, there was something missing … something odd about his development and his deployment, both at the school and during the subsequent touring seasons. There was this feeling that Kevin was a mystery if not a “problem.” Not personally, and never socially … you couldn’t find a young man more charming, more elegant, more socially connected. But it was generally felt at the time that he rarely fired, if that isn’t a misleading term. At all events, he wasn’t living up to his potential. He was always interesting, and he wore his gifts lightly, like a tennis sweater thrown casually around his shoulders, but if it wasn’t a matter of knockabout farce, physical comedy, at which, even now, no one in memory can compare … it often felt as if he were standing back from the part, watching from a safe distance, giving just what was essential, what was required, but never, ever going beyond that. If it wasn’t openly discussed, it certainly repeatedly came up in conversations among Houseman, Margot Harley, and Elizabeth Smith, the British speech coach who matriculated with the students into becoming a virtual fixture in and around Broadway for decades after. And yes, me, too. “What is the key to unlocking Kevin?”
But more to the point, and thinking back … there you have it: with Stiers exiting the roster, who should play the leading star turn of Joe in the Saroyan? I have to confess, I don’t honestly remember if the idea of Kevin ever occurred to anyone. Always promising, never astonishing … that was pretty much where we left it. And so the role went to Nicholas Surovy, the son of the esteemed Met mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens, who had authority and a degree of maturity as well. Kevin remained comfortably contained in the second act of the play, right where he’d always been.
But then came the next part of the legend: his debut in a flashy supporting role in a big Broadway musical, On the Twentieth Century, which revealed to the critics and audiences his effortless invention for physical comedy, as if he might be Mack Sennett reborn, and which earned him his first Tony Award. That debut resulted in his next break, a ravishing turn in Wilford Leach’s Pirates of Penzance, for the Public Theater in Central Park, one of the most charming surprises imaginable … with a cast headed by the impeccable George Rose, fueled by the imaginative choreography of Graciela Daniele, and featuring no less than pop star Linda Ronstadt in a perfectly pitched period soprano portrait a good ten miles, at least, from what anyone expected. Striding above it all, as if it were his natural right, was Kevin as an unforgettable pirate king, lustful, full-voiced, hilarious, lithe, like some witty feral cat who found the cage door left open … he slithered through the opening and took the evening by storm. He had arrived. And it felt to me, simply, as if the penny had finally dropped, and I believed I understood it: nothing earlier had spoken to him to a degree that required him to exert himself in any way out of the ordinary. Sure, he might have done better with what had been offered, but somehow the work just hadn’t appeared to deserve his best efforts. He had something very different in mind. Some other standard he sought. Some other energy field. And so, no longer branded a Juilliard Group 1 graduate, he slyly, confidently began to unspool that very thing.
In 2003, secure from the considerable height of his film career, Kevin called on André Bishop at Lincoln Center Theater to discuss a production of Henry IV in which, he confided, he’d longed to play Falstaff. Although he wouldn’t necessarily qualify as a “regular” who often appeared in productions at Lincoln Center Theater, still, he had starred in a very creditable production of Chekhov’s Ivanov there in 1997, and by this time had also played in two separate productions as Hamlet elsewhere in New York. And by now he was Kevin Kline. The opportunity didn’t come every day. As a matter of record, the opportunity almost never came. As the obvious preeminent classical actor of his generation, he was constantly being mentioned as ideal for this stage production or that. And he almost never did them. To the degree that eventually he received the (not always affectionate) sobriquet “Kevin DeKline.” Word would get out about some possible flashy production for Broadway, only to realize later that it had been canceled. Kevin, in spite of the glamour, the temptation, the rightness of the role, inevitably, if reluctantly, chose to say, “No, thank you.”
I don’t believe anyone felt he did this deliberately, but given his reputation, the ascendency of his film career, and the respect accorded to him, his appearances on the Broadway stage seemed curiously fewer and fewer. As it happened, André had, indeed, make the trek out to San Diego to see my earlier Globe production of Henry IV, as his love of the play made being able to experience both parts in one evening a real lure, and not only had he enjoyed the production, but it was his first time at witnessing Richard Easton, the Henry of the title, in the flesh; so that a few years later, when we were casting Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, André was only too eager to offer the leading role to Richard, who had been absent for decades from the Broadway scene, and for which he won the Tony for Best Performance.
During his interview with Kevin, André suggested that I might direct the production, and with nothing but happy memories of the beginning of his career as well as mine to draw upon, Kevin was both enthusiastic and happy to agree.
And that was that. Except for the fact that here I was, about to basically transfer everything I had learned and achieved in San Diego to a Broadway venue without mention of the revelatory performance that had so distinguished it. Everything was on board and available to me but the Falstaff.
Sure, you say, but a Kevin Kline for a John Goodman? Any director should be so fortunate. This was hardly a step down in any sense of the word, and what is more, the production at Lincoln Center Theater was being created for Kevin Kline. If there were reparations to be made, they would fall totally within my own province. No one else could be thought even remotely responsible. Although I smarted a bit at the apparent injustice that a major Broadway production of the Henrys was imminent and would not feature John Goodman in the key role of Falstaff, years had passed … This was a different management, a different coast, an entirely different approach, in all probability. I couldn’t somehow reconcile the idea of calling up John out of the blue after this much time to inform him that someone else was about to do a production in New York without him. Politeness aside, how could that possibly register with John as anything but “nanner … nanner … nanner”? You know? I never made the call.
That spring I found myself in London overseeing the West End production of Hairspray being done for the British musical star Michael Ball. André Bishop informed me that, fortuitously, Kevin Kline happened to be in London at the same time, making a film in which he was portraying a very glamorous, discreetly bisexual, and fairly fabricated Cole Porter, called De-Lovely. Why didn’t we two get together and discuss the Henrys? Why didn’t we? I called his hotel, and we arranged to meet for brunch the following Sunday.
There is something seductive about reconnecting with someone professionally at the opposite end of the ball field, decades from where you both began. It doesn’t always happen that those who start so promisingly end up paralleling each other, but when it does happen, there is an ease, a relaxed familiarity about it all, that can be irresistible. I knew full well that Kevin and I had always enjoyed each other’s company, never having occasioned a cross word or a disappointment. Although I was keenly aware of his meteoric rise to stardom and even felt some degree of pride in observing it, suddenly here we both were in London, sharing eggs and champagne like the warm old friends we weren’t precisely, but both of us relieved that the person sitting opposite was anything but an unknown. How delightful! How perfect! A dream deferred!
We discussed the play during brunch, primarily what I’d done with it in San Diego that I so firmly believed in—with the production beginning in natural light, getting the audience used to the language, seeing the entire company in rehearsal garb, hearing one another initially almost as if rehearsing the play, louche, casual, not stilted, and then, as the evening wore on, and fire became more prevalent as the primary light source, watching the actors begin to disappear into the period, into the all-involving story itself. Kevin, bright, attentive, and immensely savvy, seemed to be enthusiastically ahead of me, nodding, eager, interested, involved. We spoke a bit about costuming, but more than I had imagined, I was pretty much selling the San Diego approach. “Of course,” I apologized, “without being out-of-doors, as we most assuredly won’t be in the Beaumont, you don’t get quite the same effect of the natural light fading, and the period elements slowly emerging, but I don’t think finally that’s the point, do you?” Kevin was peering encouragingly over his coffee cup, and appeared to be with me pretty much all the way. What I also strove to assert was that more than anything, I wanted to create for us something intrinsically “American,” not stuffy or grand or European, although I felt completely comfortable with us ending up in Elizabethan England by the end of the evening.
We hugged and congratulated each other on our good fortune, and promised to think more, contact each other with more questions or ideas, and, as Shakespeare puts it, we pretty much “measured swords and parted.” I was happy to be able to report back to André that I felt it had all gone swimmingly, and we were clearly well on our way.
And as we prepped, cast, designed, and began to assemble the eventual production, there was no urgency in reaching out to Kevin, and no trace of insecurity coming back. Contracts were drawn up, dates were approved, scripts were printed and sent about … As André and I had originally intended, by bringing Richard Easton to play the king, I was able to marshal the inestimable help of casting director Daniel Swee and his staff in combing New York for the best possible actors available. And the slots began to fill with genuine promise: Billy Crudup for Prince Hal, Ethan Hawke for Hotspur, Jeff Weiss for Shallow, Audra McDonald for Lady Percy, and with the inclusion of Dakin Matthews, once more repeating his impeccable Glendower, as well as serving as dramaturge, and Steve Rankin both serving as fight choreographer and playing Ned Poins once more, I was beginning to feel very flush, indeed.
That is, until the Friday before the following Tuesday, designated as our first day of rehearsal. Midway in the afternoon came a call from Lincoln Center. It was André. Kevin was withdrawing from the production. His agent had called to inform André; there was no actual contact with our leading actor.
What? He couldn’t! He wouldn’t! The very weekend before rehearsals were to begin? What on earth was this about? I knew only too well the familiar reputation that was now howling outside my door, but surely those examples were always between Kevin and people he didn’t care about, people without any history with him. “What do you want to do?” queried the anxious André Bishop. My first thought flew out of my mouth unedited: “Find out what Albert Finney is doing!” And as, I believe, André and Daniel Swee set about doing that very thing, I immediately came to my senses. This was meant to be an American production, and as such, the opportunities and any potential glory should land securely on the shoulders of American actors. All my career I had struggled to give those great roles not to British expats with a predilection for comfortably swanning about in their own pumpkin hose, but to rawboned, assiduously trained Americans who almost never were entrusted with such plums.
