Will LeBow Reflects on 32 Years of Theatre
Seventeen of Them at American Repertory Theatre
By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 13, 2009
For his first of hopefully many seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival Will LeBow is a piano playing ghost in the attic. He plays Will in a new play by Melinda Lopez "Caroline in Jersey" In general it was the best received of the three world premieres in a shortened season on the Nikos Stage. Last year, artistic director, Nicholas Martin, in his first season at WTF presented five new plays in addition to the regular four Main Stage productions.
During 17 seasons at the American Repertory Theatre, in Cambridge, Mass. we came to know LeBow in many guises from comedy to drama in straight as well as avant-garde productions. We also enjoyed his performance in "The Cherry Orchard" at the Huntington Theatre Company in a magnificent production starring Kate Burton and directed by Martin. Over the years LeBow has been one of the most visible and respected actors in the Boston theatre community. One would never forget his narrow, plaintive face, bald head, and deeply resonant, booming voice.
This latest production, however, added yet another dimension to his versatile range. Who knew that he was such an adept piano player?
"I have been playing the piano since I was a kid" he said. We settled into a lounge at the '62 Center of WTF to discuss a 32 year long career in theatre. It started with 3 years at the old Boston Shakespeare Company. Then 13 years and 3,000 plus performances in "Shear Madness" which is still running at the Charles Playhouse. And 17 years at ART which has now ended with a new artistic director, Diane Paulus. While there is nothing scheduled for him at ART this season never say never.
"Overall I have played the piano in seven or eight shows" he said. "I love it. I am not a singer as such but an actor who sings. At ART we did a cabaret and I performed songs by Cole Porter and Noel Coward. I played blues piano in 'Henry IV Part Two.' Who would have thought." Yes, at ART one comes to expect the unexpected. He also played and sang during the WTF late night cabarets this summer.
What about that familiar deep and booming voice? "I don't know" he said. "Guess I was just born with it. My mother's voice is even deeper than mine. I remember as a kid hearing her answer the phone and saying 'No this is Mrs. LeBow.' It was always a surprise."
For several years we had season tickets to ART. It was always fascinating to see how the repertory actors would be used. The short and rotund Remo Arnaldi was so phenomenal as Pozzo in Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" that for several seasons we referred to him as Pozzo. But the gamut at ART was also dizzying. There were magnificent and inspired productions "King Stag" "Six Characters in Search of an Author" "Waiting for Godot" "Wings of Desire" "No Exit" this season LeBow as the gonzo judge in Mamet's hilarious "Romance." But also too many clunkers.
The last straw was reached with the truly awful holiday show "Peter Pan and Wendy." After that we did not renew our season tickets. We kept getting calls from ART trying to lure us back. Eventually we returned on the ART press list. It didn't make the clunkers any easier to take but at least we were comped.
Were you in "Peter Pan and Wendy" I asked somewhat bravely? Fortunately, Will smiled and agreed. "I was Captain Hook. It was night after night of us having a boring 90 minute conversation. But it wasn't the worst turkey I was ever in. There were others." More on that later. We wanted to know his thoughts on working with the ART repertory company and the sense of loss now that it has ended.
"Every year when we would learn what plays we would be together in there were different rules. As I learned later in the run at ART. You get familiar with each other. There is an intimacy among the actors that develops over time. It takes the work to another level. When you are learning a play and rehearsing it this makes it easier. You know subconsciously what to expect from the other actors. There is an instinctive sense of timing working with Remo (Arnaldi), Karen (MacDonald) and Jeremy (Geidt). It is better than having different actors in each new play. It was an amazing dynamic to be a part of although it wasn't always fulfilling for so many years. Tommy Darrah was another great member of the company."
Some of the ART deconstructions and avant-garde experiments were apparently just as difficult for the actors as they were for often bewildered audiences. He asked if I had seen the "Communist Dracula Pageant?" No but Mark Favermann reviewed it. We were unfortunate this season to cover "Trojan Barbie" which was also presented at the Arrow Street Theatre. There was a knowing look about that one.
"We hit more than we missed" LeBow stated. "It was different under (Artistic Director) Robert Woodruff than under Robert Brustein." The tenure of Woodruff lasted six years at the end of which it was discussed that Harvard intended to close down ART. Paulus takes over with a mandate to balance the books and get ART back on track. "The way I heard it" LeBow commented "Is that ART had run up a significant deficit and Harvard bailed us out but made it clear that this was a one time deal."
While he conveyed some misgivings about the Woodruff era we asked for his thoughts on Brustein. "I would say that Bob Brustein is one of The major players in Theatre in America" he said. 'I owe my career at ART to him. He was dedicated to and insisted on having a repertory company. He cared deeply about all of us. He still does. I am supremely grateful to Bob. Mostly because he could see me and what I could do."
Looking back some 17 years LeBow remembered in detail how it started. "I came to audition in one of the classrooms upstairs in the Loeb Drama Center. It was for a part in Steve Martin's play 'Picasso at the Lapin Agile.' Alvin Epstein dropped out because he needed an operation. So I tried out for the part of Sagot. The director David Wheeler was behind the desk along with Paul Benedict and Brustein. After I finished Benedict pointed to me and said 'You're funny.' Then he turned to Bob and said 'He's funny.' To which Brustein responded 'Oh well, let's have him.' That's how it started." Benedict's last ART production was Pinter's "No Man's Land." Mark Favermann wrote an obituary for BFA.
Recalling the Mamet play "Romance" this season I commented that he was very brave to perform in his skivvies. But LeBow went one better. "My last nude show was Adam Rapp's 'Animals and Plants' in 2000. The show ended with me taking all my clothes off. In the final scene I picked up a potted cactus plant and exited into a blinding snow storm. We had a great special effect. But don't ask me what it means."
That describes at lot of ART productions. I asked if he had been in "Six Characters in Search of an Author" by Pirandello. It is surely one of the great ART productions. "Yes, we did five or six versions of that. I was in a couple. In one I was the father and in another one of the six characters. It's one of the shows we toured with in Taiwan and Moscow. I also toured Russia with 'Schlemiel' a musical with a Klezmer band. We toured in San Francisco in '96 and LA in '97."
Now that the ART repertory company is being disbanded we asked if there was a sense of loss? "It has been a gradual process which has been going on for awhile now. When I first joined ART there were 11 actors in the company. This past season there were just five. I do miss what we had in the '90s. But that started to change under Woodruff. And now again (under Paulus). For the past 7-8 years it has not been a true company. We had been losing ground over the years. But over the past few years I also did six plays for the Huntington. So I expanded my work."
In addition to acting he also teaches. This fall he will teach at Emerson and has two classes at Harvard in the Spring semester. "I don't think I have done my last show at ART. Diane Paulus is a different kind of Artistic Director and the work she does is not my strong stuff. She will be doing primarily musicals and there is only one drama next season 'Paradise Lost' which is a depression era drama. Paulus is planning 'Shakespeare Exploded' and the 'Donkey Show' which she is best known for. It ran for six years Off Broadway. And 'Sleep No More.' Which is a reference to that Scottish play."
This brought us around to "Caroline in Jersey" which has many lines that refer to "That Scottish Play which we are forbidden to say by name. It begins with an M and is written by Shakespeare." There was a lot of ambivalence in "Caroline" and plot points that didn't connect. "We talked a lot about that in rehearsals but Lopez liked that quality."
Returning to the transition at ART I dug a bit deeper for his responses. "To be candid" he said. "When a company has a new artistic director they have the right to use whatever resources they need to put their vision into effect. I am grateful for the long run of years I had at ART. Overall I have been very fortunate to have 32 years of regular employment. With three years at Boston Shakespeare Company then 13 years with 'Shear Madness' and 17 with ART. 'Shear Madness' started on January 29, 1980 and I joined in August. After I was in it for a couple of years another version started in Philadelphia. I became the Boston director for 11 years. I would appear in the show about 20 weeks each year. Overall I did more than 3,000 performances but Michael Fennimore has done it 7,000 times and is closing in on 8,000 performances. From that I learned timing. It was a set up and punch line comedy."
We asked what being at WTF this season had meant for him. "Nicholas Martin (Artistic Director of WTF) is my favorite director of all time. I've loved every minute of the shows I've done with him. Melinda (Lopez) is a great friend. A couple of years ago she mentioned 'I'm writing a role for you.' We had a reading of it at the Huntington a couple of years ago. That's how I came to do it here. The character is named Will and he's a ghost. Strange. There are no distractions here. There is nothing but the work and nature. It allows you to focus in a way that is not possible in the city. The focus is easier and the work is better."
He added that he would love to come back. In a couple of years he and his wife are thinking of purchasing a house in the Berkshires. Now 60 he has several retirement funds that will soon kick in. So the end at ART is not that drastic. He talks about a "couple of jobs" that will come up in Boston including a gig in November. In the past he has often appeared as a narrator with the Pops. But he does describe this as a "transitional period." But he is connecting with an agent and wants to start auditions in New York. Perhaps this includes more movie work. He described working a scene with Ethan Hawke that entailed having his ear twisted and his head shoved into a table. "My ear was real sore after that."
Looking back at some 55 shows over 17 years at ART I asked about high and low points. He was quick to respond that his fondest memory was performing Shylock in the "Merchant of Venice" directed by Andre Serban in 1999. It earned a rave review in the NY Times of which "I made many copies." And what about the duds we asked. What is it like to be stuck in the run of a bad show? "You do your role each night the best you can" he said. "You are so focused on the work that you get to reflect on it much later. You have to focus on the show as a whole. I've been in a couple of turkeys. A couple at ART and a couple elsewhere."
With great humor he described a production of Chekhov's "Three Sisters" at ART by the Polish director Christian Lupa. "We took it to the Edinburgh Festival. He had a sense of how Chekhov conveys the passage of time in the play. To maximize that sense of movement and time on stage we went into super duper slow mo. There was like a thirty second pause between lines. The audience really did not like it. They hated us. Lupa seemed to like that and he wanted to stick it to them. They shouted at us. About four hours into the play there is a line 'I don't know what to say.' Someone shouted 'Say your line.' Someone else shouted 'We can't hear you.' It was very disruptive."
In addition to theatre LeBow has made some 350 industrial films and more than a thousand radio commercials. He has appeared with the Boston Pops a number of times as a narrator. "I do lots of different work" he said. "Overall I've done very well."
Having performed all of those roles I asked with some irony "To whom and I speaking? Is this Will?" I was touching on the myth of a loss of self as an occupational hazard for actors. Do they become a composite of all of their characters? Or a kind of empty shell waiting for a part to fill them? He revealed one of the tricks of the trade.
"In each part I try to find something that is like myself" he said. "Then I expand on that. I have been criticized that all of my characters are alike." But it seems to work as I found LeBow remarkably down to earth, warm, and accessible. Perhaps it is the technique but then he added the kicker "And 23 years of therapy." My goodness. He ended with the thought that "Acting is the art of behavior. Therapy is the science of behavior."