Drama: An Actor's Education

crew filled up the tub and we bathed in earnest. The effect was sensational. None of us had ever felt so goddamned real onstage. But after the first few hours, reality struck back. The tub sprung a leak. The crew drained it immediately, let it dry out, coated the seams with thick layers of caulking, then let it dry out again. The whole process took a couple of days. In the meantime, we pressed on with our tech rehearsals, minus the water and the mud, pretending to bathe just as we had in the rehearsal room.

In my Act II scene, stage manager Annie Keefe had to calculate exactly how much time it would require for me to take an actual bath. Hence, when the moment came, I staggered offstage in my uniform, hastily cast it off, jumped down into the empty tub and began a bizarre bath-pantomime. Except for the absence of water, it was accurate in every detail. I crouched stark naked in the tub, pretending to scrub myself clean. I dipped my head under invisible water, ran my fingers through my dry hair, and frenetically rubbed imaginary mud and sweat off every inch of my body. Three or four fully clothed crew members stood above me in the semidarkness, watching indifferently. One of them was Annie Keefe, holding a stopwatch and timing me. I was a naked man in an empty plywood box in an empty theater on an October afternoon in New Haven, Connecticut. I was the main character in a strange, surrealistic dream. For a fleeting moment, my brain departed my body. It floated above me and looked down at this naked, ludicrously contorted young man. A conscious thought formed itself, one that has passed through my mind a hundred times since:

What am I doing with my life?

I was acting, of course.

And not just acting. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was also preparing for my first major breakthrough in show business. And by glorious good fortune, that breakthrough was linked to a stunning work of dramatic art. The Changing Room fulfilled the promise of theater like nothing that I’d ever been in. It had an overwhelming impact on our audiences. On several occasions, spectators needed to be literally helped out of their seats. As emotional exercise, it was visceral and cathartic. The show was an instant success at Long Wharf and the subject of glowing national press. Lavish praise was heaped on the play, the production, and the entire company. I was one of the few actors singled out. For the first time I was mentioned in the pages of Time magazine, where I chose to ignore the fact that I was referred to as “George Lithgow.”

We began our run at Long Wharf with the sense that, for nearly all of us, this was the finest piece of theater we had ever been a part of. But the best was still to come. After one of our last performances, we were summoned into the empty theater. An elegant, expansive man named Charles Bowden introduced himself to us. He grandly announced that he had assembled a team of producers to transfer the show, exactly as we were performing it, to the Morosco Theatre on Forty-fifth Street in New York for the following March. We were going to Broadway!

The notion of acting on Broadway had been almost as foreign to me as acting in movies. Years before, I’d filled out my application for a Fulbright grant. One of the questions on the form asked how I would apply my experience if I were to study abroad. I had written three words: “American repertory theater.” This was the world I’d come from and where I intended to return. At the time it represented the extent of my ambitions. My one vainglorious flirtation with the movies had done little to broaden those ambitions. My career at Long Wharf was only a couple of months old, but I’d felt no need to seek a better setting elsewhere. It felt like home. And now one of my very first Long Wharf productions was propelling me to another level of the business, one that I had thought I would never attain. I was astonished and I was elated, in equal measure.

The next few months passed quickly. The timing of our projected Broadway opening allowed me to perform in two more Long Wharf shows. Several actors from The Changing Room acted in those shows as well, so for all of us the air was charged with electric anticipation. Jean and I retooled for another big move. Most of the company showed up at our Branford apartment for a pre-matinee brunch celebrating Ian’s first birthday. In February the Changing Room cast regrouped in a New Haven rehearsal studio. It was Valentine’s Day and, by chance, Michael Rudman’s birthday. Charles Bowden and his producing team were on hand with an enormous birthday cake. Bowden had secretly slipped the actors sheet music for “My Funny Valentine” and we surprised Michael with a hearty rendition of the song. Spirits were soaring as we set about putting the show back together for New York.

Jean, Ian, and I took up temporary residence in the Upper West Side apartment of a touring actress friend. Under Michael Rudman’s stewardship, the company installed the show in the venerable Morosco Theatre, where it looked better than ever. The Morosco has long since disappeared, making way for an enormous Marriott Hotel on Times Square, but back then it was a prime legit house in the heart of the midtown theater district. The old building resonated with American theater lore, having been the site of the first runs of such classics as Our Town, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Death of a Salesman. That season our show was within shouting distance of Pippin, That Championship Season, and A Little Night Music. Heady with excitement, we moved into our dressing rooms, linked up with working pals in adjoining theaters, and staked out our favorite restaurants and bars. We previewed. We opened. That night we gathered at Sardi’s after the show to celebrate. The New York Times review was read out loud. We were a smash.

Opening night was March 7, 1973. Less than three weeks later, on March 25, in what was surely the shortest period of time between a Broadway debut and a Tony victory, I won that year’s Tony Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a play.

Sure. Acting awards are trumped-up, corrupting, meaningless, and unjust. They are anti-art. In a profession that relies on a collaborative spirit, they pit artists against one another. They are the wellspring of more envy, anger, resentment, and covetousness than anything else in show business. Awards turn us into appalling hypocrites. We airily dismiss their importance but we secretly long for them. When we win them, we are often at our very worst. Our acceptance speeches are generally a graceless cavalcade of pomposity, crocodile tears, and egregious false modesty. An award winner is usually the only person in the room who is genuinely pleased by his prize. By varying degrees, everyone else is bitter, begrudging, and judgmental. Often this even includes the cast of a winner’s very own show. All things considered, it is far better to never win an award for acting.

That said…

Winning a Tony Award was the happiest moment I’d ever experienced in a theater. Nanette Fabray opened an envelope and read my name. Applause exploded all around me. I lurched up the steps to the Imperial Theatre’s stage in my rented tuxedo, my ruffled shirt, and my black velvet bowtie. I stared out at the brightly lit mass of beaming faces, my heart racing like a hummingbird’s wings. By some miracle I managed to recite every word of my carefully wrought speech. Seeing a grainy tape of that moment a couple of years ago, I saw none of the elation I remember feeling. I looked like a tremulous, stammering schoolboy. And with the lingering traces of my unwitting British accent, I sounded like a pretentious fop.

Oh, but it was wonderful. All actors strive for that elusive moment when the quality of their work is matched by the measure of its success. Such an occurrence is all too rare. Many of us go through our entire careers without it happening once. And here it was, on my very first outing. Between a Broadway debut and a Tony Award, I barely slept for the entire month of March.

The twin events ushered in a springtime full of sparkly new pleasures. The city, so recently an impregnable fortress of rejection and failure, suddenly flung open its doors. I and my Changing Room cast mates became fixtures at Downey’s, Luchow’s, Jimmy Ray’s, and Joe Allen. The play won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and we hobnobbed with the likes of Clive Barnes, John Simon, and Walter Kerr. We formed an unbeatable softball team for the Broadway Show League in Central Park. Our press agent cooked up a publicity stunt pitting us against a squad from the star-studded all-female cast of The Women (Alexis Smith! Rhonda Fleming! Myrna Loy!). I was sprung loose from our show for three days for my network TV debut, appearing in a tiny role with the great Jason Robards in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production of The Country Girl. Blessings rained down on me.

One day halfway through our time at the Morosco, an envelope arrived for me at the stage door. It contained a kindly note from John Stix, from Baltimore Center Stage. Without a trace of sour grapes he congratulated me on The Changing Room. In particular, he complimented me for having made such a wise decision in choosing to accept an offer from the Long Wharf Theatre.