I would love to know the story behind this story.
I would love to know what exactly happened during rehearsals to bring the show to such an impasse. I’m kind of annoyed with James Cromwell, actually. You get the opportunity to play King Lear … and then you can’t get in sync with the director’s vision? You have “your own vision”? And … who asked for your vision? You’re an actor, my friend. You serve the director. Serving the director’s vision is not just a huge part of your job, it is one of the essentials of your job.
Did Cromwell not like the director’s concept? Did Cromwell not trust the director, and so felt he needed to fight back, in order to save himself from a trainwreck? I’ve done that. You have to, because – after all – you’re the one who’s UP THERE. You are the one who will take the fall in the reviews, even if the director gets bad notices too. It doesn’t matter. YOU’RE the one whose ass is on the line.
That’s why I would like to know the story behind that story.
Bummer, too. Wouldn’t it have been so cool to see James Cromwell do King Lear???
Cool, yes – but I’d spend the whole show waiting for…
“That’ll do, Cordelia. That’ll do.”
It’s incidents like this that remind me of The Goodbye Girl, where Eliot comes to NY to play Richard III—with a director who thinks that Richard was most assuredly gay and should be played that way.
While I take your point, I wonder if it was something like that. Something so antithetical to Lear and Shakespeare’s depiction that Cromwell felt he had no other option than to bail.
Kathy – totally. That’s what I mean when I say I would love to hear the story behind the story.
If the director is obviously incompetent, then I think an actor has to protect himself. I have blatantly ignored what I knew to be bad direction – because I could tell the director didn’t know what he wanted, what he was doing, and I needed to protect myself.
I highly doubt that ACT would have a blatantly incompetent director, though.
I know someone who used to work at ACT – I’ll ask them for the scoop, if they know it.
Kind of reminds me of that whole MacBeth creative differences thing. :b
“Okay, so I would like you to play MacDuff as well as Witch #6.”
Long pause.
“You know what? I really think I’m too busy to be in this project.”
LOL, yeah totally.
“Yeah, you can be MacDuff, who also happens to be one of the six witches.”
“Oh, yeah, no. Do you smell something?”