Interviews

Laurie Metcalf Goes Bananas for Trevor

Nick Jones’ dark comedy about a chimpanzee and his human mother receives its West Coast premiere courtesy of Circle X Theatre Co. in Los Angeles

Laurie Metcalf stars in Stella Powell-Jones' production of Trevor, a play by Nick Jones, at Circle X Theatre Co.
Laurie Metcalf stars in Stella Powell-Jones' production of Trevor, a play by Nick Jones, at Circle X Theatre Co.
(© David Gordon)

Nick Jones' Trevor is a very unique play. The protagonists are Sandra, a 56-year-old widow, and her 11-year-old son, Trevor, who happens to be a 200-pound chimpanzee. Trevor, who is played by a human and talks like your average 30something, has dreams of Hollywood fame, having once starred in a pilot alongside Morgan Fairchild. But in the eyes of their neighbors, Trevor is becoming dangerous. This dark comedy, which had its New York City premiere in 2013, explores what happens when Trevor outgrows his surroundings and Sandra must deal with the grief that comes from the idea of having to let her baby go.

Enter the ever-intrepid Laurie Metcalf, the veteran of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, Broadway's The Other Place, London's Long Day's Journey Into Night, and three-time Emmy-winning star of TV's Roseanne, who adds Sandra to her roster of headstrong female characters with a fierce emotional undercurrent. In the midst of her run in the Circle X Theatre Co. presentation at the Atwater Village Speakeasy Theatre in Los Angeles, Metcalf shared her thoughts on the role, and a host of others from past and present.

Were you looking for a play when you heard about Trevor?
Yeah. I found myself in L.A. I had a TV show that had just ended and had a break because I'm going to the Hamptons to do a play, and I like to stay busy. So I did my little one-act that I do every once in a while, Voice Lessons, which I do with French Stewart, and this thing just fell in my lap. A friend of a friend sent it to me. It was the right place at the right time, and now we're talking about extending it a little bit.

What drew you to the piece?
I liked how it addresses miscommunication: two beings that have a relationship and they'll never fully understand each other. We get really close sometimes, and we're in the same vicinity, but they're never going to be able to really communicate. And it's really heartbreaking in certain spots. I like that the mom is his only advocate. You've got to admire the dedication on her part of, yes, she didn't foresee what he was going to become when she adopted him, but she's not going to give up on him. She accuses the neighbor and sheriff of, "what, you just want me to throw him away because he stops being cute?" You can only imagine what a full-time twenty-four-seven this animal is, who is so needy and so energetic and so dependent on her, that it's just life-draining. It's taken over her life, and yet she's not going to abandon it.

Jimmi Simpson as Trevor and Laurie Metcalf as Sandra in Nick Jones' Trevor, a production of Circle X Theatre Co. in Los Angeles.
Jimmi Simpson as Trevor and Laurie Metcalf as Sandra in Nick Jones' Trevor, a production of Circle X Theatre Co. in Los Angeles.
(© by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging)

Given the play's sudden shifts in tone and the fact that a human (Jimmi Simpson) is playing a large chimpanzee, how hard was the rehearsal process?
It was a weirdly difficult play to rehearse. It's a slippery little thing. The tone of it is all over the map. Some of it is very broad, and then it gets very serious and scary, and then sincere. It's quite a ride for an audience. It was difficult to rehearse also in the sense that I didn't realize how technical it was going to be. We have a realistic set and there are seemingly hundreds of props and light cues and sound cues. It's really heavy that way, which I didn't expect.

On the thematic heaviness scale of The Other Place and Long Day's Journey Into Night, where does Trevor fall?
[laughs] It's parallel with them. The first act is fun and light and I get a kick out of it. The second act you have to gear up a little bit for, because it just erupts at the end. That part's pretty hard. But it's also pretty streamlined.

You mentioned going to the Hamptons. How did this June's production of All My Sons at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall come about?
I got a call from Alec Baldwin, and I was like, "Hell yes, I'll meet you in in the Hamptons." I've done the play before and I love it. I don't like to revisit plays, generally, but this one I do…. If it's as complicated and worthy of a script as All My Sons, it really is a luxury to go back and look at something again. I also love that Alec wants to tackle something like that and loves theater like I do. I'm really looking forward to it.

Featured In This Story

All My Sons

Closed: June 28, 2015

Trevor

Closed: April 19, 2015