Two by Austin Pendleton: BOOTH and ORSON'S SHADOW

excerpts from Theater Review by Anthony Stoeckert in The Princton Packet

‘Orson’s Shadow’

The collaboration between Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier is examined in this solid Actors’ NET of Bucks County production

Wednesday, January 28, 2009 6:24 PM EST

By Anthony Stoeckert

"George Hartpence (who also designed the simple but moody sets) makes a fine Olivier, behaving so differently than you’d think a legend would. He’s incapable of making a decision without Plowright and is fearful of trying anything new. He’s most afraid of telling Vivien, who is mentally ill, that he wants to end their marriage. A phone call between Olivier and Leigh is one of the play’s most dramatic. Hartpence displays a desperation to get away from Leigh while making it clear that although he may love Plowright, he loves Leigh more, he just can’t handle the illness anymore."

"Carol Thompson is terrific as Leigh, the play’s trickiest part. She acts affected, as a mentally unstable star would, while keeping everything believable and true."

"Playing Plowright is Vicky Czarnik, who’s very good at playing the kind of woman who would offer comfort to Olivier. It makes perfect sense that he would seek her advice and listen to it."

"Actors’ NET deserves praise for bringing different works to the area, and for doing a fine job with Orson’s Shadow."

Austin Pendleton: I’m so thrilled that the ActorsNET is doing two of my plays, Orson’s Shadow and Booth, in their season.

In the spring of 1996 I was approached by my friend Judith Auberjonois to write the play and it was developed at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Over breakfast that morning she told me that in 1960, in London, Orson Welles had directed Laurence Olivier and that by the time the play opened Orson no longer felt welcome in the project.

Orson’s Shadow re-imagines actual events during those rehearsals of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros, directed by Welles and starring Olivier and Joan Plowright (his then paramour and soon-to-be third wife). Having Welles direct the play was set in motion by Welles' ardent admirer, critic Kenneth Tynan for whom this matchmaking was a stepping stone to a job as the soon to be formed National Theatre's literary manager, which Olivier had been named to head. Additional theatrical fireworks ensue with visits from Vivien Leigh (Olivier’s soon-to-be ex-wife).

AP: I was daunted by the idea at first. Originally I wasn't sure how to approach their lives so that they would seem more than "turf wars," but then I read in a biography of Olivier that it was during the rehearsals for Rhinoceros that Olivier decided to make the break with Vivien Leigh and that's when it fell into place. I knew there was something dramatic there.

AP: I think that these characters are all on the line. Playwrights are drawn to people, whether imaginary or actual, who do that. Who wants to watch an evening of people who don't put themselves on the line? They allow themselves to be totally vulnerable and I like that.

AP: Almost everything in the play is based on fact, although things happen not necessarily in the context in which they originally took place.

AP: I had worked with Orson in the movie of Catch-22, which was rough. He was an unhappy guy and wished he had been directing it. He was very funny and charismatic, but disruptive. He did to director Mike Nichols on that film what Olivier does to Orson in Orson's Shadow. After that movie I began to see his other movies and I saw that he was a major artist.

AP: I also met Vivien Leigh once for about an hour in 1962. I never saw her on stage, but I was in Oh Dad, Poor Dad and she was thinking about doing the show in London. My mother and I were invited to tea by Vivien so that we could talk about the play. We went up at 4 PM to Vivien's suite in the Dorset. She was gorgeous, in part because she was in distress (this was a couple of years after the breakup with Laurence) in that way that with some people their beauty is enhanced by suffering, it just intensifies their beauty. She's the only person I ever met where there was a kind of courtesy that is rarely seen.

You're an actor, playwright, director and you wear many hats very well. When did you start writing as a playwright?

AP: When I turned 50. It was my present to myself. Until then I had been hired to work on the librettos for musicals, but none has been produced professionally. And then someone said, why don't you just try writing a play? I took the idea behind a musical I had been working on and I turned it into my first play, Booth. It was very exhilarating and that play was a real crowd-pleaser.

Booth, another theatrical story - this time about the famous first family of American Tragedy - is scheduled for a May/June run in 2009 at the NET. With any luck, the ActorsNET will complete the trilogy by presenting the third of my plays, Uncle Bob (which by the way has nothing to do with famous theatrical personages), in an upcoming season soon. 

Excerpted with the playwright’s permission from an interview with Warren Hoffman, dramaturg for the Philadelphia Theatre Company, and from other direct communications with ActorsNET personnel.

(above: George Hartpence as Laurence Olivier & Carol Thompson as Vivien Leigh)

Notes compiled by George Hartpence:

Orson's Shadow is a play that has a lot going for it. It's about the struggle to create art amid personal turmoil; it's about the conflict between different types of artists; it's even got some juicy gossip about legendary movie stars.  And it's got some very witty and intelligent dialogue, courtesy of playwright Austin Pendleton.

It's 1960, and Orson Welles has been hired to direct Laurence Olivier in a London production of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros. Welles has a lot to prove with this production: it's been nearly twenty years since he became a legend, thanks to Citizen Kane, but his demanding perfectionism has made him a pariah in Hollywood. Olivier, meanwhile, wants to prove that he's more than just the world's greatest classical actor; he wants to show that he can handle edgy, modern works like Ionesco's. He is also struggling to make a clean break from his tormented wife, Vivien Leigh, and create a new life with his lover (and Rhinoceros leading lady) Joan Plowright. Critic Kenneth Tynan is on hand, too, to assist Welles with the production.

Playing well-known, recognizable figures can be a tricky proposition; our actors in Orson's Shadow generally steer clear of direct imitation – relying instead on a few physical mannerisms or vocal inflections to convey a sense of the character’s famous persona.

If you’re unfamiliar with Hollywood history you need not be deterred from seeing Orson's Shadow, now being staged at the ActorsNET of Bucks County, as despite the play's mostly factual gathering of stage and screen legends backstage at the Royal Court Theatre in London, each of the impressive characters, director Orson Welles, thespian Laurence Olivier, stars Vivien Leigh and Joan Plowright, both of whom shared marriage vows with the former, and storied critic Kenneth Tynan, find plenty of time to run down their list of credits and accomplishments throughout the night.

And leave it to playwright Austin Pendleton to insert such egotistical rants throughout Orson's Shadow, occasionally while breaking the fourth wall, without ever being anything but acutely accurate in his characterizations of actors in general, who often find time to slip in a name drop or credit whenever the situation allows. Pendleton is a spot-on observer of human characters, and much of this play is built upon such intuitive examinations of theatrical legends.

While Ionesco's play, Rhinoceros, is a comment on totalitarianism and group conformity as a small French town, with the exception of one man, all turn into rhinos, there are strong thematic similarities between Ionesco's modern classic and Austin Pendleton's behind-the-scenes look at the staging of this play.

In Rhinoceros, Ionesco's characters literally transform into pachyderms, representing modern society's easy ability to turn into unfeeling and hardened creatures who have left their humanity behind. Similarly, Welles in real life and in the play is a large, hulking, domineering individual whose singular and determined sense of artistic vision often made him appear aggressive and bullying to others. Once he's put into a rehearsal room with Laurence Olivier, the stage is set for a showdown as the two men occasionally go at each other like wild beasts.

But Rhinoceros is also about taking a stand as best seen by the play's hero Berenger (played by Olivier) who goes from apathy to action. "I'm not capitulating!" Berenger screams in the final line of Rhinoceros. Welles frequently screamed similar sentiments at the Hollywood studios who wanted him to conform to their ideas of how a movie should be made and edited. Despite having achieved fame at a young age for Citizen Kane, Welles spent the remainder of his film career unsuccessfully trying to assert his right to complete control and final cut privileges over his work.

Where Welles and Olivier ultimately have it out, though, is over the question of modernity. In Pendleton's play, Welles wants to direct Rhinoceros in the modernist fashion in which Ionesco conceived it.  Olivier, however, known principally for performing Shakespeare, approaches the play (and tries to undo Orson's directing) from a romantic perspective. Olivier's new flame Joan Plowright had already made a name for herself performing Ionesco and Pendleton clearly positions Plowright not only as Olivier's new love interest, but also as the embodiment of modern drama, while Vivien Leigh represents not only Olivier's broken marriage, but also an older style of acting.

Orson's Shadow, then, is not a "simple" look at stubborn rhinoceros-like theatrical egos, but a clash of multiple ideologies: modernity vs. tradition, innovation vs. status quo, and the individual vs. the collective. Pendleton's play reveals both the rhinoceros and the non-conformist in Welles and Olivier, a struggle that both of them would fight between each other and internally for much of their lives.

Orson' Shadow received its world premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in January 2000, and subsequently premiered in New York City at the Barrow Street Theatre in March of 2005. Rhinoceros was originally produced on January 25, 1960, at the Odéon in Paris under the direction of Jean-Louis Barrault. Its London premier was on April 28, 1960 at the Royal Court Theater, directed by Orson Welles and starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright. Ken Tynan was not involved in this production, though he did go on to work with Olivier at the National Theatre.

(above from left: George Hartpence as Laurence Olivier, Vicki Czarnik as Joan Plowright, Dale Simon as Orson Welles, Paul Dake as Ken Tynan and Mark Reilly as Sean)

June 17, 2008

Orson's Shadow, a play by actor Austin Pendleton, opened at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2000. But when it landed Off-Broadway after several productions in other venues around the country, the cast knew there would be audience members who idolized, and maybe even knew, the icons that appear as characters in the play: Vivien Leigh, Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, and the critic Kenneth Tynan. New York University acting teacher Lee Roy Rogers, who originated the role of Leigh, says the actors never knew who might attend each performance -- the likes of Woody Allen, David Bowie, Ian McKellen. "People had amazing attachment and identification with Leigh," he says. "And there were people who knew her as well," including actor Eli Wallach, Dick Cavett, and Tynan's son Matthew. Pendleton had also met Leigh.

Providing Leigh-Way

Rogers says she has always been told of her resemblance to Leigh and that she loved Leigh in films. Still, she says, "it's always a concern when you play someone in the public eye that you'll not humiliate yourself" or do them a disservice. Like the other actors I talked to, Rogers read everything she could find about her character, including watching Leigh's films and looking at photos of her. She also studied the floating way Leigh moved, observing her posture and gestures, and thought about her own grandmother, who, like the bipolar Leigh, had electric shock treatments. She discovered how Leigh placed her voice, and she adopted Leigh's particular British accent.

Rogers' castmate Jeff Still was cast in the original production as Welles. As he looks nothing like Welles, he wore a fat suit and high-rise shoes. He also worked on Welles' vocal resonances, capturing the man's cadences and breathiness rather than trying to lower his voice to match Welles'. "Nobody ever asks you to imitate anyone exactly, but you have to honor it, do your best," Still says. Knowing what Welles looked and sounded like was a starting point; after that, "it sounds a little glib, but you take a swipe at the essence of the character," he says. "An imitation would be very limiting." In the end, it's about the character's needs at the time.

British-born Sarah Wellington, who created the role of Plowright, agrees: "You cannot fall into the trap of doing an impersonation. I don't look exactly like Joan, but you do want to honor certain physical aspects."

For Chicago actor John Judd, playing Olivier was not just daunting but downright preposterous -- "To portray the guy everybody thought was the greatest actor in the English-speaking world!" he exclaims. 

More useful to him was a documentary, Laurence Olivier: A Life, that was made when Olivier was 75, 22 years older than his age in Orson's Shadow, which is set in 1960. Judd nevertheless watched the documentary many times, absorbing the essence of the man until he felt haunted by Olivier. He lost weight to play him, worked on nailing details of gesture and physicality, and, unfortunately, developed vocal problems from speaking in Olivier's higher register. Judd, like Olivier, also likes to work from the outside in. "It was a life-changing role," he says. "As an actor, I learned to take no half measures.... Now I throw myself at everything like it's life or death. I loved him. I hated being him at times. He'll never leave me."

Similarly, Sharon Lawrence misses Leigh, whom she played in a recent Pasadena Playhouse production of Orson's Shadow. For her preparation, Lawrence listened to recordings of the star at press conferences to hear how she pitched her voice. She studied her tempo, especially in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, when Leigh was the age she is in Orson's Shadow. "It was important to make sure that her mania and her behavior came from her personality and wasn't just generic," says Lawrence. Wearing a wig and wardrobe were helpful; she also used some of the personal characteristics she saw in Leigh's most famous role, Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.

I got an email from acting teacher Larry Biederman, who directed The Ladies of the Camellias at Theatre First. "When actors play actors," he wrote, "I see it as an opportunity to be self-loving, gentle, forgiving, and come to terms with the...traits we associate with actors, from the stories of diva fits to the old 'Oh, you're an actor, which restaurant?' jokes." He added: "Perhaps playing an actor is an actor's opportunity to accept that to actually be the instrument of your profession is a beautiful, unique, and ultimately selfless calling."