Loose Lips

NIGHT AND HER STARS
Anyone familiar with Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama ‘night, Mother might be surprised to hear how stars Edie Falco and Brenda Blethyn describe rehearsals for the new production of the play that will begin previews on October 22 at the Royale. “I think the people in the next room think we’re doing a comedy,” says Blethyn, the great British actress who plays determined mother Thelma Cates. Falco, who has the role of her suicidal daughter Jessie, says that she was shocked by the joyousness of the experience. “This play wasn’t how I would have defined ‘fun’ before we started, but rehearsals have turned out to be a ridiculous amount of fun,” she says. “In fact, I don’t really want to perform the play; I just want to keep on rehearsing it. There have been periods of time when I wasn’t sure we’d get through a rehearsal because we couldn’t stop laughing.”

The show marks the Emmy winner’s first stage reunion with director Michael Mayer, who guided her towards stardom in Side Man. Have things changed between them in the past seven years? “Michael is such a supportive director,” she replies. “We’re all holding this thing together with the same amount of respect [that we had for Side Man], but it’s 5,000 times better because I’m stronger. I take better care of myself. I ask for what I need, which is something I could never do before, even if it’s just ‘Could you move that table?’ Taking this part was the first time I haven’t seen eye to eye with my agents; they advised me against doing it, saying, ‘Do you really want to do another of Kathy Bates‘ parts?’ ” (Falco starred on Broadway two seasons ago in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune) “But I won. All I know is that, when I read this script, I loved it.”

The Oscar- and Emmy-nominated Blethyn, who is only making her second appearance on a New York stage in ‘night, Mother, has equally high praise for Mayer. “He knows the play very well indeed, and that allows him to create an atmosphere where one can try everything and not worry about looking foolish,” she says. “I’ve worked with some directors — one in particular — who want to keep the whole production to themselves, which I think is very selfish. They get good results, but I think you get something better when you’re not bullying the actors.”

Blethyn has had to find her way to Thelma, and not just because she’s American. “I talk with my chest and she talks with her nose, so for the first two weeks of rehearsal, my face really hurt,” she tells me. “Thelma is not a terribly sympathetic person, but my job is to find out why she is that way. I believe there are mitigating circumstances to her behavior, even if you don’t see them during the 90 minutes we’re on stage. I think the message of the play is that you shouldn’t judge people. Also, you should get to know your loved ones while they’re alive. These people didn’t really know each other. When my dad died, I got to spend more time with my mom and that turned out to be such a wonderful gift.”

COLOR HER WORLD
Marsha Norman will likely be represented on Broadway next season, too — as the librettist for the new musical The Color Purple, which concludes its sold-out run at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater on October 17. “It was such a fabulous project to work on,” says Norman. “I only started on it six months before opening night, and that was great because I got to avoid all the erosion that usually happens with musicals that are a long time in development. I knew I could write the book, because I grew up in the South and I was very familiar with the material, but I was concerned whether the cast would trust me. And they did.”

The most memorable performance of the run, says Norman, was on September 11: The show’s star La Chanze lost her husband, Calvin Gooding, in the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center: “Her character, Celie, has this song in the second act, ‘Bring My Nettie Back,’ and you could really hear a pin drop that night. There were these echoes of loss throughout the theater.”

BAD GOODWIN
Dancer extraordinaire Deidre Goodwin has found great success playing bad girls in Chicago and Never Gonna Dance. Now, she’s at it again as Ella Wall in Polk County — the Zora Neale Hurston play with music about a Florida sawmill town during the early days of the Depression — at the McCarter Theater in Princeton through October 31. (The show then moves westward to the Berkeley Repertory Theater for a two-month run, starting on November 19.) “Ella is, how do I put this, a friendly girl,” says Goodwin. “She’s a bit wealthier than the rest of these people, though she’s hardly rich. She comes to town to be a troublemaker, to look for a little revenge.” Sounds a bit like Velma Kelly, doesn’t it? “I’ve always felt about Velma that, even though she’s tough — okay, she’s a murderer! — she does what she does in order to take care of herself. It’s not about being mean, it’s more of a survival thing. Ella, on the other hand, will kick you in the butt just because she can.”

Many of the show’s 17 performers, including Mississippi Charles Bevel, Perri Gaffney and Lynda Gravátt, must play instruments on stage. While Goodwin doesn’t have to, she’s decided to learn guitar anyway, just for fun. And she is obviously a quick study; she didn’t take any formal dance classes until her first year at Missouri State University yet, by year’s end, she had switched her major from communications to dance. “I guess I always knew dance was something I wanted to do,” she says. “I used to watch Fame every day.”

KEEPING IT SHORT
If even a 90-minute play taxes your attention span, you’re in luck: On Monday, you can head to Playwrights Horizons for its benefit evening: Stories on 5 Stories, a program of five-minute plays by such celebrated writers as Christopher Durang, Nicky Silver, and Doug Wright. Two of the evening’s other contributors, Wendy Wasserstein and Kenneth Lonergan, are also among the nine authors of The Downtown Plays — the centerpiece event of the first TriBeCa Theater Festival, which runs October 19-31 at Pace University. And another Stories teller, Lynn Nottage, is one of five contributors to the 70-minute-long Antigone Project at The Julia Miles Theater (formerly Theater Four) through November 7. Also on the horizon are Five by Tenn, a quintet of Tennessee Williamsone-acts, opening October 19 at Manhattan Theatre Club; and Emerging Artists Theater’s annual EATFest, which will run November 3-21.

GLAD CY-TINGS
Cy Colemancertainly knows how to draw a crowd! At Monday night’s cocktail party for the famed composer at Feinstein’s at the Regency, where Coleman and his trio are appearing through October 23 (click here for info), the guests included music legends Bobby Short, Charles Strouse, Skitch Henderson, Barbara Carroll, and Margaret Whiting. Also in attendance were playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who’s collaborating with Coleman on Pamela’s First Musical ; former Seesawstars Michele Lee and Tommy Tune; the fabulous Louise Pitre, who has a new album coming out this fall; and Phyllis Newman, who responded “It’s great!” when asked what she thought about the new production of Hallelujah, Baby! (with lyrics by her late husband, Adolph Green) at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey.

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