Amy’s View

Had a nice discussion with Amy Irving, who’s about to appear as the title character in Celadine, a new play by Charles Evered, at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In it, Irving plays a character loosely based on Aphra Behn, considered to be England’s first female playwright — which is really something, when you consider that she was writing in the mid-17th century. But Behn was also rumored to be a mistress of King Charles II and a spy for him, too, which Evered has included in Celadine.

“Even though it takes place back then,” says Irving, “the language of the play is very accessible. My 14-year-old son came to a rehearsal and laughed his head off. He called his best friend and said, ‘Yeah, it sounds old English, but it’s terrific. You gotta come see my mother in this!” That’s Gabriel, the son that Irving had with the man she refers to as her husband, though some say they’ve never actually married: Bruno Baretto, the Brazilian director who made the 1976 film Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (which became the lousy 1979 musical Sarava). Baretto is arguably better known for his 1997 film O Que É Isso, Companheiro?

Now, granted, Irving is better known for her film work than for her excursions into theater. She was lucky to be in Carrie the movie, not Carrie the musical. She wasn’t in Yentl on Broadway but was in the Hollywood extravaganza, where she nabbed an Oscar nomination for playing the less-than-liberated intended of Mandy Patinkin. She also played roles in film versions of such plays as Crossing Delancey and I’m Not Rappaport. But she’s certainly no stranger to the stage — especially considering that she’s the daughter of two troupers, actress Priscilla Pointer (who played her mother in Carrie) and Jules Irving, one of the artistic directors of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center from 1965-1973. “Before that,” says Irving, “in 1954, my mother and father founded the San Francisco Actors Workshop. My sister and brother and I lived backstage because theater was our religion and mom didn’t believe in baby sitters. So we were all either in the shows or falling asleep in the wardrobe department. I still remember playing Princess Primrose in The Magic Butterfly.”

Though the the Internet Broadway Database lists her first appearance on Broadway as a Constanze replacement in Amadeus, Irving says that she was in Lincoln Center’s second production under her father’s aegis. “In The Country Wife, I sold Stacy Keach a guinea pig,” she says, still amused that she got to do that. As for her daddy’s first co-production, “I can still recite all the last speeches from Danton’s Death,” she says, then lickety-split goes into a bit of the hero’s wrap-up. “I don’t know my lines from today,” she jokes, “but I do know everything that went on back then.” Yet she says that, as excited as she was to be on the Lincoln Center stage at the age of 13, her biggest thrill during her father’s Lincoln Center tenure “was being with Tennessee Williams in the green room” when the playwright’s A Streetcar Named Desire was staged at the Vivian Beaumont in 1973.

Now she’s back in a green room, talking to me and claiming, “I feel more at home in a theater dressing room than anywhere else in the world.” I bring up the sad fact that actresses of a certain age — Irving is now 51– often have a hard time in Hollywood. Is that why she’s returned to the theater? “There isn’t the opportunity in Hollywood that there used to be,” she admits, “but I’ve never stopped doing theater.” Twenty years ago, she did a Broadway revival of Heartbreak House; 16 years ago was The Road to Mecca (for which she won an OBIE); and 10 years ago was Arthur Miller’s new play Broken Glass. “He gave us new pages all the time, which is happening with Celadine,” she says, not at all complaining but just explaining the process. (Of course, that sort of thing didn’t happen when Irving played Olga in The Three Sisters at the Roundabout seven years ago.)

Irving met Evered on September 11, 2002; she had volunteered to be part of Brave New World, readings of new plays that dealt with the World Trade Center tragedy. Evered was so thrilled with what she did with his one-acter that he said he’d write a full-length script for her. “That was quite a compliment,” she says. “Up till now, I’ve only had songs written for me,” she tells me — but when I ask what they are, she looks flustered. “I’d rather not say,” she responds, “and I shouldn’t have even mentioned that.” When I ask if they’re songs that everybody knows, she answers, “Well, yes, some do. You mean, can you go to a record store and buy them? Yes.” And the way she stresses that last word, she lets me know that this is all I’m going to get out of her on the subject.

Irving is also purposely vague about Celadine — “because it’s a mystery, and I don’t want to give too much away,” she explains. But every now and then, she lets a factoid or two slip through. Seems that the play also has Charles II as a character, along with Mary, Celadine’s maid, who becomes her best friend. Then there’s Elliot Blakely, an actor who wants to commission a play from her and becomes her lover. The play that she writes deals with her child, who died from the plague. There’s also a tongueless boy whom she picks up off the street and brings into her home. Irving refers to him as “her horse,” and when I question her on that, she again shakes her head to indicate that she doesn’t want to say too much. “Let’s just say I like to ride my men,” she states.

After Celadine, Irving has another theatrical project on tap. “Two years ago, in Brazil,” she says, “there was a one-woman show about Elizabeth Bishop, the American poet who, in the early ’50s, went to Brazil and had a bad reaction from a cactus she touched. A lesbian couple took her in, and Elizabeth and one of the women of the couple fell in love. They were together for 16 years. The poetry that emerged from that relationship allowed her to win the Pulitzer Prize. I know Portuguese from being with my husband all these years; so I worked with the writer, Marta Goes, who lives five miles from where Elizabeth lived. I get credit as one of the translators of what we now call A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop. We’ve already done it at Vassar, with Richard Jay-Alexander directing. We’ll do it Off-Broadway next spring.”

Did I ask Irving about her previous husband, Steve Spielberg? Of course. “He’s still my best friend,” she says in the grand tradition of so many Hollywood ex-wives who’ve stated to the press the exact same thing.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]