|| home || news || filmography || stage || audio || articles || images || list || forum || fans || Brimstone || Smallville || links || guestbook || about || |
Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- No longer sweet Aunt May of the Spider-Man movies, Rosemary Harris morphs into the acerbic matriarch in the latest revival of George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's 1927 theater-world send-up, "The Royal Family."
Harris, 81, plays Fanny Cavendish, head of an acting family that never wakes before noon and is always in chaos. Her daughter, Julie, is a Broadway powerhouse tempted to trade in stardom for a second chance at love.
During a break in rehearsals at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Harris reminisced about the 1975 revival, when she played Julie.
"It's lovely to be in the driving seat, which Julie is," said Harris, dressed in a bright flowery shirt, silver hair smoothed back from her unlined face. "But you've got to keep your foot on the accelerator all the time."
With Fanny, she said, it's a lot easier. "I just pop in and out delivering bon mots."
In this production, Jan Maxwell, 52, takes on the role of Julie, and she's finding it a perfect fit.
"There's so much of the character that is me," Maxwell says. "It's a little frightening."
Both Kaufman and Ferber were canny theater people and "The Royal Family" reflects their love of the stage. "Each character is intricate and multifaceted," Maxwell said. "It actually depicts this rich acting life and the humor comes from truth."
Marx Brothers' Threat
Not everyone loved it. Kaufman and Ferber based the character of Julie on theatrical grande dame Ethel Barrymore and wanted her to star in the play. Instead, the unamused actress called a lawyer to stop the production. Only when the Marx Brothers said they considered themselves theater's Royal Family and were also planning to sue did she drop the idea.
Matinee idol John Barrymore is satirized as the Cavendish brother fleeing a Hollywood scandal involving a sexpot and a slug fest with his director. Reg Rogers said the character is more than a cartoon.
"He's not just a jerk," Rogers said. "He's also got a huge heart and is really like a little kid." That doesn't prevent him from grabbing the spotlight every chance he gets.
Many of the play's jokes come at the expense of Herbert Dean, who's played by John Glover.
"He's like a lot of actors I know, a little overly theatrical about things," Glover said. Past his prime, Dean is still pitching ambitious, if ill- conceived projects like a new play which features him as both Nero and Abraham Lincoln.
Less Snot, Better Suits
For Glover, it's a change of pace from his Tony Award- winning turn in a revival of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." As the pathetic Lucky, he dressed in rags, wiped snot from his nose, and suffered constant abuse.
"Now I get to wear nice fitted suits and eat all the time," he said.
Ana Gasteyer is his actress-wife, Kitty, whose ambition also outstrips her talent.
"She's not self-aware. That's always the key to the kinds of characters I like playing," said Gasteyer, who honed her timing on TV's "Saturday Night Live" for six years.
The Barrymore dynasty swans on with Drew. The granddaughter of John and the grand niece of Ethel, she's just produced, directed and stars in "Whip It," a new film about women's roller derby set to open next month.
Harris has started her own dynasty: she's the mother of Jennifer Ehle, who has embarked on a busy film career and has already won two Tony Awards starring in plays by Tom Stoppard.
"The Royal Family" opened yesterday at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th St. Information: +1-212-239-6200; http://www.mtc-nyc.org.
(Zinta Lundborg is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Zinta Lundborg in New York zlundborg@bloomberg.net.
|| home || news || filmography || stage || audio || articles || images || list || forum || fans || Brimstone || Smallville || links || guestbook || about || |