2-17-09
Surviving the Long Run
Actors, like Francis Guinan and Rondi Reed (below in August: Osage County)
talk about keeping it fresh.
Guinan and Reed in August: Osage County
The Witches of Wicked packed up their pyrotechnics at the Oriental and finally left town last month. But though the show gave Broadway in Chicago bragging rights for the longest-running musical in local history (three and a half years, 1,500 performances), Elphaba and Co. aren’t the only ones who have learned to defy gravity and keep shows aloft for much longer than the customary six-week run at subscriber-based regional houses.
Steppenwolf now uses its Upstairs space for productions in the regular season, which means that in order to fit in all their subscribers, those shows must run several months, as with the current production of Yasmina Reza’s Art. And of course many regulars in the Steppenwolf ensemble have moved with August: Osage County as the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning show played in two different venues on Broadway (the Imperial and the Music Box) and then at the National Theatre in London. Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe runs a couple of shows a year in their original space—the tiny backroom theatre at Books on Vernon—which also means keeping a show up for nearly six months at a stretch. Their current production of Jean Genet’s The Maids, which closes on April 5, has been up since November. And there are shows not part of a subscription season, such as Neil Gray Giuntoli’s Hizzoner (in which playwright Giuntoli also portrays the first Mayor Daley) that strike a chord with audiences and keep running at various venues for years at a stretch.
In the “really big show” category, however, the next contender for the Wicked crown (economic uncertainty notwithstanding) appears to be Jersey Boys at the Bank of America Theatre, which has been running since October of 2007.
Michael Ingersoll has been playing Nick Massi in Jersey Boys since October of 2006, when he first began rehearsing for the national tour. After stints in San Francisco and Los Angeles, he ended up in the sit-down production in Chicago. And he couldn’t be happier. Ingersoll and his wife, Angie, moved here in 2005. When it became clear, before the national tour even began, that there would be enough demand to justify a sit-down company in Chicago, Ingersoll campaigned to be a part of that company so he could be back home with his wife. He admits, “If the opportunity had not arisen to come to Chicago, and there was no other way for [my wife and me] to be together. I wouldn’t have made it this long.”
Ingersoll is now the only member of the original Chicago cast still with the show, and dealing with that turnover is one of the hurdles that come with the long run territory.
“When we get a new person, they rehearse in New York ahead of their Chicago arrival,” Ingersoll explains. “They are taught the choreography and their part. They do some scene work, but it’s harder to do that on their own.”
That means that creating that onstage relationship with each new actor keeps Ingersoll on his toes. “It usually takes a couple of weeks to get used to each other. You have your own idea of what the show is, how it works best, of who the characters are, and so what you have to do is relax that idea and be open to an entirely new interpretation. If you stay rigid, you stay disconnected.”
Rondi Reed has spent the last few years bouncing between two long-running hits: Wicked and August: Osage County. She just finished playing Mattie Fae Aiken, the part for which she won a Tony as best featured actress in a play last year, in the London production of August, and heads back to Broadway in March to play Madame Morrible once again in Wicked. (The producers of the latter let her out of her Chicago contract to go to London, as long as she could make up performances in another production.)
Prior to these two shows, the longest run that Reed, a Steppenwolf ensemble member, had logged was in the 1990s with Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, directed by fellow Steppenwolfer Randall Arney. She estimates she did 838 performances in four cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. “I learned an awful lot about long runs in that particular scenario,” says Reed. “Randy came in at every incarnation and tuned it up. If you can get a periodic tune-up from the director and not just the stage manager, it makes a difference.”
For a show like August, which, as Reed notes, Tracy Letts “intricately crafted for the ensemble,” cast changes can be more jarring. “Nothing against the ones who replace [the original actors], but it’s a hard job,” she says. “You have these subtle things you share with an actor and then all of a sudden, it’s like being married to somebody else.” And in Wicked, Reed notes that there were a few times when the actress playing Elphaba would change at the intermission. Like Ingersoll, Reed stresses flexibility. “You have to be flexible or you’re in big trouble. Be able to bend it and play with it. It’s a great thing for me because it forces me to go back to the script and get off my bag of tricks and go back to the real basics of who I am in the show and what I’m doing.”
Reed’s “husband” in August, Francis Guinan, opted not to go with the London run because of his family in Chicago. But he has been working nonstop at Steppenwolf since coming home, and is now in the long run of Art—but with a twist. He plays Marc (the cynical critic of his friend’s purchase of an all-white painting) through April 5. He then steps into the role of Serge, the buyer of the painting, currently played by John Procaccino, for the remainder of the run. Ian Barford, who played his sweet but hapless son, Little Charles, in August, takes over the role of Marc. The show goes through June 7.
“Ian felt that after playing Little Charles, he needed something with more of an edge,” says Guinan. “It seemed a good fit for Ian, and it sounded like fun to try another role. That should actually help with the long run, especially for a play that I’m not terribly fond of yet, but perhaps I will be in time. It’s just a little chilly to me.” In addition to Barford, Joe Dempsey will also be moving into the cast to replace K. Todd Freeman as Yvan.
Guinan will be changing roles in Steppenwolf's Art, to keep things fresh.
Though the New York run of August was demanding, Guinan notes, “The thing I found most challenging wasn’t so much the taxation on my stamina. It would have been if I’d been doing Amy’s [Morton] part. It got to the point where she knew exactly how long she could collapse on a cot backstage until her next scene. The important thing for me was to try to find some fresh way of approaching what we were doing. I have a tendency to hit a wall around every six weeks, and it usually takes about a week of performances to get my head back in the game. But I didn’t quite find it happening with this show. Ian and Rondi and I all made a very serious commitment to every night stepping out on stage and trying something new, while staying in the play. We kept trying to find something revelatory about the characters.”
Penny Slusher has done several long runs with Writers’ Theatre, and is in their current production of Brett Neveu’s Old Glory. She notes that even the runs at Writers’ mainstage on Tudor Court tend to be longer than many other companies—Old Glory has a two-month run, through March 29.
“What happens, if you really keep yourself on track, is to think that once you’re open, it’s still a process and not an end product. If you set it in stone and think ‘that’s that,’ it can be a good show, but it won’t be anything that grows and gets any deeper or richer. Once you’re familiar with the material, then you can play. It’s one of the things that keeps me interested and on point—listening and enjoying it.”
And of course long runs, even at smaller Equity houses such as Writers, provide financial boons—one show on an Equity contract at the Vernon space can generally provide all the AEA weeks an actor needs for their insurance for the year. Slusher also enjoys getting to know the audience from doing several shows over long runs in Glencoe—Old Glory is her fourth mainstage outing.
“Writers’ is really good about doing face-to-face conversations with audiences and board members, if you’re comfortable doing that. I really enjoy doing it because you can fill people in. It gets them intrigued by the process and they want to see more.”
Finding other things to do when not on stage is also useful for not getting burned out in long runs. Ingersoll has been developing a solo cabaret show, The Long Road Home, which he first performed at Metropolis in Arlington Heights and has since brought to the Noble Fool in St. Charles and the Acorn Theater in Three Oaks, Michigan, on off nights.
“I had not sung anything other than Four Seasons music for over a year and a half,” says Ingersoll. “It gave me a chance to step out of the psychological comfort of doing the same thing every day. There are very few ways to scare yourself. It’s easy to stop learning new things. So this gave me a chance to be a front man again and get those kinds of chops back.”
Both Reed and Guinan managed to squeeze in some film and television work during the run of August, though Reed says, “I probably drive my agents crazy [during long runs] because I very rarely go out for stuff. But I came to New York to do Tracy’s play. Part of it is that it is a three-and-a-half hour show. A two-show day, you’re there for nine hours. You don’t phone it in. I’ve seen people do that on Broadway and it makes me furious.”
Giuntoli had to take an unexpected break from Hizzoner last summer because of a strep infection that nearly turned fatal. But the actor/writer, who moved to Los Angeles from Chicago in the late 1980s and came back to town specifically to do this show, even told his doctor in the ER, “You’ve got to make me well by Friday. I have a show.” After taking some time off (he is now fully recovered), Giuntoli is back in the mayor’s office. Since his play also features a supporting cast, he too has had to adjust to changes in the ensemble.
Giuntoli is back on stage, and travelling all over Chicago.
Did he suspect that the show, directed by Stefan Brun, would do so well before he brought it to his old friends at the Prop Thtr? Giuntoli says, “I thought if we executed it correctly, we would have a modicum of success. To say anything more than that would be arrogant.” But the show, which has brought in a lot of people who are not usually theatregoers, hasn’t shown signs of slowing down. It just finished a run at the Skokie Theater and moves to the Theatre Building in April.
“What blew my mind in the first winter of 2006 was when I started seeing real fur coats in my crowd,” Giuntoli says with a laugh. “The marketing was viral. They would call four or five friends who would never go to theatre and say, ‘You’ve got to see this.’”
He credits the success of the show to the fact that the play “isn’t a hatchet job. That’s not what I’m into. People have a whole plethora of entertainment options, so why would they want to go to theatre to be preached at or brought down? If you entertain them, you can slip your message in there so seamlessly they won’t know it.” Giuntoli also says that his favorite part of the show remains “working the rope line” afteward and greeting audience members.
In the end, remembering that the show is for the audience, not the actors, may be the best way to keep a performance fresh through all the cast changes and time on the road away from the comforts of home, family and friends. Ingersoll says, “The world is a difficult place to inhabit, but when you see all those people at the end of the shows who come from different walks of life and probably disagree wildly on many things in life, when you see them on their feet and cheering, it reminds you of why you do it. Especially men my dad’s age who will come up to me and say ‘I didn’t think I’d like this, but…’”
For those actors who worry that they are losing their edge over a long run, Ingersoll reminds them, “What you feel about your own performance on a day-to-day basis is really largely irrelevant. It’s so magnified in your own mind and doesn’t really have nearly as much to do with you as you think it does.”
And of course, in the uncertain world of theatre, there are far worse fates than doing the same show (or shows, in Reed’s case) for years at a stretch. Says Reed, “People who don’t ordinarily go to theatre would go to see Wicked or August and it would shake up their sensibilities. Some things are put in your life and you just have to go with them. I don’t feel stuck. I am aware that they are both great creative projects and I’m lucky I get to go back and forth. How many actors get to do that?”
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