Drama: An Actor's Education

that had triggered laughs the last time around. I overlapped cue lines, rushed through pauses, mumbled some provoking phrases and buried others altogether. The process was like tiptoeing through a minefield or plugging leaks in a dike where laughter had gushed in. Only a few of these strategies worked. There were still plenty of moments where the young audience got away from me and ran roughshod over a scene like an unbroken horse. But it happened less often. There were fewer laughs, I was less cranky, I had a clear sense of where the trouble spots still lay, and I had begun to savor the challenge.

In each succeeding student matinee, I eliminated a few more unwanted laughs. I also discovered a few laughs that were worth keeping. Adjusting the humor, pathos, and horror of the play became a game of strategy and intrigue. Each show was an onstage laboratory where the experiments became increasingly complex and daring. I began to realize that kids — so spontaneous, restless, and impudent — were the ideal focus group for a piece of theater. If you are inauthentic, excessive, or boring onstage, an adult audience will rarely protest. Out there in the darkness, they will cough, shift in their seats, stare at their programs, roll their eyes, or nod off. The only way they register their displeasure is by merely applauding at the curtain call with slightly less enthusiasm (when did you last hear someone actually boo an actor?). But kids? When kids think something is dull, fake, corny, square, gauche, or inept, they’ll let you know it. They’ll riot. But if you can keep their attention and reach into their hearts, you know you’ve really achieved something.

By our last Of Mice and Men matinee, we had learned to cast a spell over an audience of teenage kids. They laughed all right, but only when we wanted them to. And when we wanted them quiet, you could hear a pin drop. They followed every turn of the plot, every ebb and flow of emotion. They listened intently and leaned forward in their seats to hear every syllable of every scene. All through the final terrible moments of the play, we could hear muffled sobs out in the house. And when George raised his pistol behind Lenny’s head, we would once again hear the occasional cry. But now the cry was “Don’t do it, George!” shouted out through tears. This time, it was a cry from the heart.

And here’s the point. During those weeks, we also performed Of Mice and Men several times in the evening for grown-up crowds. By the end of our run, the show had greatly improved. And I believe it was the student matinees that had improved it. We hadn’t learned all that much from the adults who had come to see us, but those kids had taught us volumes.

[20] Much Ado

So what was it like, working for my father? It was complicated. He was complicated. But because Arthur Lithgow presented himself to the world as such a warm, witty, genial man, I didn’t even glimpse those complications (or begin to understand them) until I myself arrived at adulthood.

I was lucky. All through my childhood there had been far more contact between Dad and me than between most parents and children. I had been a happy hanger-on, an eager volunteer, cheap labor, and local non-Equity talent for every one of his theater companies. Like an attentive student, I had watched him at work for days at a time. He had directed me in several roles, and I had acted alongside of him. We had shared dressing rooms and makeup tables. We had been at the same cast parties and company picnics. We had played chess together backstage during shows — in a moment of shared hilarity, he even missed an entrance once as a result. In all those years, there was never a harsh word between us. I idolized him and strove constantly to please him. But despite all of that companionable warmth and congeniality (or perhaps because of it), I never quite noticed that there was a dimension missing in our father-son friendship.

It could be argued that there is an element of performance in the interpersonal dealings of all entertainers, and that, in fact, their struggle with real relationships may be what drives them to perform in the first place. Whether or not such a generalization holds up in every case, it certainly characterized my dad. When I came back from England and worked for him on a professional footing, I began to see clearly what I had only hazily perceived up until then: for all his wit, wisdom, and jocularity, both as the head of a family and the head of a theater company, he had a lonely, self-doubting side, like the dark side of the moon. This unseen dark side prevented him from fully engaging with the most important people in his life. It was almost certainly tied to the loss of his own father when he was four years old and with his black sheep status within his own family as he grew up. Consciously or unconsciously, he had devised strategies to deal with these demons. He entertained other people to lift his own spirits. Creating theater was, for him, an ingenious and exhilarating way of coping with an indefinable emptiness inside himself. As a result, he was a charming, funny, deeply likable man. But when it came to the thorny realities of life, he could be aloof to the point of invisibility.

This was the missing dimension. Unquestionably, my siblings and I had a wonderful father. He loved to read us stories, tell us jokes, show us magic tricks, and impart to us great chunks of his endless supply of quirky, eclectic knowledge. He loved to entertain us, and we loved to be entertained. But when I was growing up, there were countless moments when his paternal guidance was virtually nonexistent. The trauma of starting seventh grade in a new town halfway through the school year? Not a word of reassurance. The chaotic arrival of puberty and the onset of feverish sexual urges? Not a scrap of information. The worrisome notion of marriage at the tender age of twenty? Little more than disgruntled silence. And worse was to come: halfway through that season of plays at McCarter Theatre, I experienced the first genuine tragedy in my life. Jean gave birth to a son nine weeks early. For a few hours the little boy struggled for life and then gave up the ghost. It was a devastating loss for both of us. My mother was deeply comforting. My little sister wept compassionate tears. Actors in the company clasped me in long, heartfelt embraces. I honestly cannot remember my father registering the slightest reaction.

In good times my father was effusively present. In hard times he was bafflingly absent. But I never judged him harshly for his abstraction and aloofness. How could I? In so many ways, he reminded me of me.

So what happened when this father and this son, these two genetically connected souls, faced hardship together?

When I set out to direct Much Ado About Nothing for my father that autumn, I had a problem on my hands. As with every production in McCarter’s repertory, the play was cast entirely from members of the resident company. At its best, this system leads actors to stretch their abilities and discover new strengths. At worst they simply end up miscast. Sadly, the latter case applied to the actor playing the role of Don Pedro in my McCarter production. In the play, Don Pedro is the commanding officer of a band of returning soldiers. The role is a little thankless but extremely important, since he sets in motion the entire comic machinery of the plot. An avuncular figure with a devilish streak, Don Pedro devises an elaborate prank to trick the caustic, quarrelsome Beatrice and Benedick into a passionate love for each other. Beatrice and Benedick are the flashiest and funniest roles in the play. But without a strong, stylish Don Pedro functioning as their impish puppet master, their comic romance doesn’t stand a chance. In London the year before, Albert Finney had played the role.

My Don Pedro was no Albert Finney. I’ll call him Biff Richards. Biff was a very nice guy. He was tall and rangy, with an easygoing masculinity and movie-star good looks. Rare among rep actors, he seemed destined for screen stardom. He had already gained a certain prominence in the business: everywhere he went he was recognized for a series of TV commercials he had done. In these ubiquitous ads, he smoked a stogey in dramatically lit close-up while someone else’s resonant off-camera voice extolled the virtues of a certain cigar. My father had been delighted to land such a splendid figure of a man for his company, blithely disregarding Biff’s meager list of stage credits. At first this enthusiasm was justified. Early in the season, Biff was broodingly effective in the role of Slim, a plainspoken mule skinner in Of Mice and Men. He played the part without a trace of artifice or histrionics. Neither was there a trace of nuance, variety, emotion, humor, or even energy. No one seemed especially bothered by this. No one but me, that is. I was sick with worry. After all, Much Ado About Nothing was just around the corner. I would be in charge, and Biff would be Don Pedro.

As we gathered for the first rehearsal of Much Ado, everyone felt the first-day-