Denis O’Hare Cries Uncle

While many actors would consider the title part in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, the role of a lifetime, Denis O’Hare freely admits the role wasn’t really on his radar until director Austin Pendleton approached him to star in Classic Stage Company’s current revival of the play.

“I really wanted to play any of the male parts in The Three Sisters and some day I want to do Lophakin in The Cherry Orchard, but now that I’ve done a few performances, I know what a fantastic role it is,” says O’Hare. “He’s the only person in the play who really sees the world as it is, and so he becomes this sort of messy prophet because he sees that everyone lies. The thing is, a year before the play starts, he’s the nicest guy in the world and everybody likes him — and they wish he would go back to being complacent.”

O’Hare has played his share of nice guys, most notably the baseball-loving accountant Mason in Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out — for which he won the Tony Award — and villains like Charles Guiteau in the Roundabout’s revival of Assassins. But few roles, he says, have affected him like Vanya. “It’s a tough role to do night after night; it’s not exactly joyous heading to the theater and you don’t feel like a new man at the end of the night,” he says. “This one has a true psychic toll — I tend to take him home with me — and it requires a lot of focus.”

The actor is lucky to have Pendleton guiding him, especially since he played Vanya in a celebrated production at the Williamstown Festival Theatre about 25 years ago. “Austin having done the role makes us feel we can really trust him. With some directors, you really feel like ‘How do you know the character? Have you walked in his shoes?’ Plus, Austin is not only a great teacher; he is one of the more anarchic minds in the theater world and so he brings a real open-mindedness to the production.”

For his part, O’Hare has had to keep his mind open and not think about all the many actors who have played Vanya in the past, an illustrious list that includes David Warner, Derek Jacobi, Tom Courtenay, and Simon Russell Beale. “It’s my job to stick to the text and fully visualize the character through my eyes,” he says. “It’s not about seeing anyone else’s portrayal of the role. Fortunately, I’ve never felt a great need as an actor to differentiate myself from anyone else. I always figure I can’t do what they do, and vice versa, and that I’ve been hired because of my point of view on how to enact a role. That said, with a classic play, you know if things don’t go right, it’s going to be your fault.”

O’Hare is thrilled to be working opposite Maggie Gyllenhaal as Yelena and Mamie Gummer as Sonia. “Having an intelligent Yelena like Maggie makes her character more worthy of everyone’s admiration. In addition to having beauty and elegance, she has ideas and that makes the play more complicated than if she’s just a trophy wife. Her struggle with Vanya becomes one of more intellectual rigor,” he says. “And Mamie is phenomenal. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know her or her work before this, but we get along famously. She’s funny and smart and very right.”

An added dynamic to the production is that the cast also includes Gyllenhaal’s equally famous husband, Peter Sarsgaard, as Yelena’s would-be-lover Astrov. “I’ve worked with couples who became romantically linked during a show, but this is a first,” he says. “And they’re handling everything really well. They don’t have some special space where they hide and they’re very egalitarian. In fact, I think Maggie is harder on Peter than anyone else in making sure their moments on stage work. But they do have remarkable chemistry.”

Just as O’Hare is basking in the New York limelight, he’s also having his Hollywood moment as part of the award-winning cast of the film Milk, which was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, last week. “I am notoriously bad about when awards are announced, so I slept through the announcement, but I got some sort of email on my iPhone when I woke up. It deserves it; it’s such a good, quality movie.”

In the film, the openly gay O’Hare is cast against type as the conservative California politician John Briggs, who runs against Harvey Milk in a key race. “When the producers called me in to meet with [director] Gus Van Sant, they didn’t have me read anything or audition for a specific part, which usually means they like you as an actor, but don’t know what to do with you and you don’t get a part,” he says. “So I was surprised when they called me two hours later and offered me John Briggs. I didn’t even remember who he was at first, but I wanted to be in the movie so much I didn’t care what part. And then, like Vanya, once I started working, I realized it was a wonderful part and how necessary it was for the movie to have that pillar of opposition. I come from a family of Catholic Republicans so I’ve encountered my fair share of that behavior.”

And without question, O’Hare will be rooting for fellow castmate Sean Penn to take home the Best Actor statuette. “I’ve done three films with Sean now — I was also in Sweet and Lowdown and 21 Grams — and he’s always been incredibly generous as an actor and as a person,” he says. “But what I really admire is his ability to take on any challenge.”