Loose Lips

THE DOCTOR IS IN
You can bet that Peter Strauss will have learned all his lines for Sabina before opening night; the last thing the actor wants to have happen onstage is a Freudian slip-up. But the challenges of playing Sigmund Freud in Willy Holtzman‘s play about Sabina Spielrein, a patient who came between the famed Viennese psychiatrist and his rival, Carl Jung, go way beyond learning terms like “libido,” “superego,” and “transference.”

“I have an enormous responsibility to humanize this demonic-looking figure,” says Strauss. “It’s vital to show not only his arrogance but also his intellectual curiosity. The real complexity of this part is that showing a man thinking isn’t necessarily dramatic; I also have to illuminate the process of psychoanalysis, though Willy never shows a therapy session. At least in New York, most of the audience has been in therapy. It would be a lot different to do the show in a place like Tennessee!”

Strauss notes that playing Freud also presents a huge set of physical challenges: “Getting his intonation right is vital. I can’t play Freud with an American accent but it’s hard to know how far to go in terms of the dialect. And, in real life, he spoke with a prosthesis because he had 40 surgeries to his upper palate — he smoked 40 cigars a day. So I have to smoke cigars, speak with a dialect and like I have a prosthesis — plus I had to learn Yiddish.”

Strauss came to fame three decades ago in the TV miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man and earned an Emmy for The Jericho Mile (1979). Though he trained as a stage actor, it took the prodding of his pal Frank Langella — they met on the set of what Strauss calls “a stupid TV pilot” — to get him to leave his citrus farm in California last year and come to New York to focus on theater. (He also had the full support of his wife, actress Rachel Ticotin, a native New Yorker.) Does Strauss regret not making this decision earlier in his career? “While I wish I had reminded myself earlier how fulfilling the theater is, I am not so sure that I could have afforded to do it,” he says. “When I put in my Metrocard to take the subway to the theater, I think, ‘There goes my matinee pay.’ ”

But it was more than economics that caused him to return to films recently, playing the leader of the free world in the soon-to-be-released XXX: State of the Union opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Willem Dafoe. “Playing the President of the United States is a lot of fun,” he says. “You inherit a kind of respect that you don’t get when you’re playing a pedophile; people bring you coffee rather than leaving you alone in your trailer all day. We actually went down to Washington, D.C. to film it. That was right before the election, and I thought people might actually vote for me. I thought I was presenting a much more interesting option than either of the real candidates — and, if they had voted for me, we’d be in a lot better shape today.”

KRAZY FOR KRISTIN
Carnegie Hall should be close to SRO on Tuesday night when Kristin Chenoweth appears with the Cincinnati Pops, singing classic Broadway tunes as well as some selections from her upcoming CD, which is to be released in April. Next month, the Tony-winning star could be adding another trophy to her mantle: She and her castmates from The West Wing are up for a SAG Award in the Best Ensemble Performance category.

RENAISSANCE WOMAN
Laila Robins is no stranger to Shakespeare; in fact, she has played everyone from Lady Macbeth to Cleopatra. But the actress, who’s appearing in the Lincoln Center production of The Renaissance Muse at John Jay College on January 26, 28, and 29, is discovering that reciting the Bard’s poems — as well as works by such English authors as Henry King and Sir Thomas Wyatt — is rather different than doing one of his plays.

“I think it’s little harder for me to get a foothold on these pieces because there’s no action in them,” she says. “It’s all declamatory.” Nonetheless, the 65-minute program, which also stars the world-famous conuntertenor Andreas Scholl, has turned into one of her favorite projects of all time. “I do so many dramatic, tragic things that to be able to go to this other world is wonderful,” Robins enthuses. “It’s like an oasis. I did the workshop of this while I was still in Frozen, and to have Andreas’s amazing voice sing to me was like a healing balm.”

Earlier this month, Robins returned to Frozen — in which she played the unhappy psychiatrist Agnetha — for a five-night run at L.A.’s Skirball Center, and the performance was taped for National Public Radio. “It was kind of weird at first,” she tells me, “because Swoosie Kurtz and Brían O’Byrne weren’t there. [Their parts were played by Rosalind Ayres and Jeffrey Donovan.] But, by the third day, I was getting very emotional again in my own life. Agnetha really came back with a vengeance.”

After the Lincoln Center run of The Renaissance Muse ends, and before the show plays London’s Barbican Theater on February 10, Robins will spend some time in Washington, D.C.; her beau, Robert Cuccioli, is starring as Duke Lorenzo de Medici in Lorenzaccio at The Shakespeare Theater there. “Bob is having such fun playing this evil, bawdy character,” she tells me. “I saw the invited dress, and he and Jeffrey Carlson are having a great time up there.” Still, is Robins glad that she’s temporarily living apart from Cuccioli while he plays such a bad guy? “Actually,” she replies with a laugh, “when we played the Macbeths last fall at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey, we were really nice to each other offstage because we had such an outlet for our anger onstage!”

BERN THIS
We may think of Sandra Bernhard as the consummate New Yorker, but the funny lady is spending a fair amount of time on the West Coast these days. She’s just finished shooting an episode of the NBC series Crossing Jordan and she will debut her new one-woman show, Everything Bad and Beautiful, at the Silent Movie Theater in L.A. from March 9 through 26. So Gothamites should get Sandra when the getting is good this month: She’ll appear with Cyndi Lauper and Nancy Sinatra at Crobar on January 27 in a benefit concert for Oxfam’s Tsunami Relief & Global Emergency Fund; and on January 31, she will participate in MCC Theater’s star-studded Escape benefit at Circle in the Square.

BIRTH OF THE BLUES
Despite the winter chill, New York celebrities gave a very warm welcome to Geraldine Hughes at the Thursday night opening of Belfast Blues, her riveting solo show about growing up in Northern Island. Leading the ovation at The Culture Project were Harvey Keitel, Hayley Mills, Karen Akers, Ilene Kristen, Malachy McCourt, and Tony Danza, who caught up with his former Taxi co-star — and Blues‘s contributing director — Carol Kane.

REUNION
Jack Klugman and Brett Somers are back together at last — onstage, at least. The erstwhile couple will be seen in Danger — People at Large, a new program of one-act plays by Frederick Stroppel, which will premiere in April at the Quick Center for the Performing Arts in Fairfield, Connecticut. Meanwhile, Stroppel’s most recent group of one-acts, Spider Holes, is on view at the Nuyorican Café through January 29.

A, HER NAME IS…
The combination of Alice Ripley and The Town Hall proved electrifying at last year’s Broadway Unplugged concert, so here’s hoping that lightning strikes twice when the talented Ms. Ripley performs there in the 2005 Nightlife Awards event on January 31. (Word has it that she’ll be singing a song by Elvis Costello.) Fans hoping for more than a one-night stand with the Tony-nominated actress will have to wait until April 13, when she begins a six-week run of The Baker’s Wife at the Paper Mill Playhouse, forming a triangle with Max Von Essen and Lenny Wolpe.

********************

[To contact Brian Scott Lipton directly, e-mail him at BSL@theatermania.com.]