County Them In

Tuesday, June 17 was a red-letter day on the set of Broadway’s August: Osage County. Not only was it the first performance after the show won the Tony Award for Best Play, but it marked the arrival of five new cast members: Oscar winner Estelle Parsons as the pill-popping matriarch Violet Weston, Molly Regan as her tart-tongued sister Mattie Fae, Robert Foxworth as Mattie Fae’s good-natured husband, Charlie, Jim True-Frost as their shy son “Little Charlie,” and Tony winner Frank Wood as Violet’s adulterous son-in-law Bill Fordham. Recently, TheaterMania sat down with Foxworth, True-Frost, and Wood (who will be taking a two-and-a-half week leave of absence in mid-August to work with orphans in Africa) before an evening performance to discuss the show and their respective careers. Here are some excerpts from that talk.

THEATERMANIA: What kind of transition was it for each of you coming into your role?
JIM TRUE-FROST: It was particularly lovely because I have friends in the cast who I go back 20 years with doing theater. A lot of us have worked together in different capacities; we’ve directed each other and been directed by each other and acted together. But it was unusual for me to step into the shoes of a character that’s already been established in terms of behavior and rhythms. Fortunately, our director, Anna D. Shapiro, gave us the license to put our imprint on the characters, and I think the other actors welcomed having something fresh to play with.
ROBERT FOXWORTH: It was funny because we had about three weeks of rehearsals with understudies — which is a real luxury in this situation — and then two days with the original cast members. I remember the first time when Ivy comes and sits on the sofa and I turn to her, and I’d been accustomed to turning and looking at the understudy, and I turned and suddenly looked at Sally Murphy — different eyes, different mouth, different person — and we just started developing this sort of looking at each other thing. That was great.
FRANK WOOD: One of the more intimidating aspects of doing the play for me at the beginning was wondering if you would feel a drop off of excitement from the audience; whether your presence on stage would leave this blank spot where they go “what, why was that show supposed to be exciting?”

TM: Because the play had won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award by the time you started, has that made it a different experience from other stage work you’ve been involved with?
RF: It’s been a heady experience coming into this balloon. For me, the play has a kind of historical importance. I feel like I’m part of a historic moment in the American theater — of American writing, American directing, and American actors — and I feel very elated to be part of that.

TM: Frank: how did you dive into that relationship between you and Barbara, played by Amy Morton? Because you guys really do look like you’ve been married for 20 years.
FW: I dove in by, literally and figuratively, taking most of my cues from her onstage. But backstage she kept mostly to herself, which I think is her nature, although I kept wanting to have a casual conversation with her. I do remember that in our first run-through, she punched me in the shoulder at the end of our first scene and that reassured me that things were good. I also have to admit I had some trouble taking my character’s side initially — I mean in the way that an actor might — so I had to ask my girlfriend to argue for some of the things I say and some of the things I do. And she had some insights into why Bill makes the arguments he makes, and that’s been helpful.

TM: What kind of reactions have you been getting from fans?
RF: When I run into people on the street they say, “Oh my god, what a great experience in theater.” They don’t say, “You entertained me.” I think that’s a real tribute to Tracy’s work. On a more personal note, I met a guy I haven’t seen in probably 20 years coming out of the stage door one night, and we had a conversation on the sidewalk for about 25 minutes — and the play allowed him to open up to his life in front of me. Not that I really wanted to know all that, but as I listened to him I thought, this play does things to people that I wasn’t even aware of. People are walking out and they’re beginning to think about where they come from and what they’ve experienced. I come from Texas and Alabama and my dad was from a big family and there was a lot of craziness — I mean, not exactly like the Westons — but dysfunction is a pretty common-place American phenomenon.

TM: Jim, you’ve spent much of the past few years starring on TV’s The Wire. Have you found returning to the stage to be a tough transition?
JT: No, the skills you draw on to create a character or to be in the moment or to create a complexity within a scene or a relationship with another actor, these things are very familiar when you move from the stage to the camera or the other way around. But the thing that’s most different is that when you do a play usually the cast are the main body of the collaborators, but when you do a scene on film or television, there are 50 other people in the room with you and 50 other people working in studios elsewhere.

TM: What has it been like working with a legend like Estelle Parsons?
RF: I can’t believe that she’s 80 years old. I mean the energy and the dynamics that she brings to the part are incredible. You see her go up that staircase at the end, and it’s like, I hope when I’m 80 I can still do that. She was very quiet in rehearsal, and I’m sure that was disguising the churning discovery process that was going on inside, but that’s changed. It’s a joy to be in a company with her, and she is an inspiration for all of us.

TM: Did you have any kind of strange day jobs on your way to becoming a working actor?
FW: I had to hand out samples of long life herbal tea in grocery stores for a while, and I was also a Macy’s elf. I think my temperament was more suited toward it than David Sedaris’; it was basically about traffic control and being polite to people, and that wasn’t that hard actually. I sort of liked it, to be honest.

TM: Robert, do you miss being part of a long-running TV series like Falcon Crest?
RF: Not in the slightest. Frankly, I became suicidal at one point during that show, but what saved me was I directed 15 episodes, and that moved me into a different environment which I loved. But the thrill of doing a series lasted about three shows. You know, a couple of years before Falcon Crest, someone came to me with a script and asked if I was interested in playing this role. And I read it and said no I’m not interested in that. And a guy named Larry Hagman ended up playing J.R. Ewing in Dallas. But god bless him, it just wasn’t for me. I’m as happy as I could be right now. Being on stage is what I’ve wanted to do since I was 10 years old, and every day I think how lucky I am.