What’s sexier than success?

Sarah Jessica Parker is one of many PSC stars who have gone on to perform on bigger stages. “What do I remember about Portland? The houses, the streets, the restaurants, the muffins!”

BY Cathy Nelson Price

If you’re a theater company, you don’t measure 30 years with coffee spoons. You mark them thrill by thrill, disaster by disaster, triumph by triumph, 30 seasons over. In some rare cases, rising star by rising star.

Portland Stage Company, at 25A Forest Avenue, holds that distinction. Some of today’s hottest stars are alums of Portland Stage productions, and to a person, they all avow they’d come back when possible. Though we might not have recognized them the first time through, the list of stars we’ve seen parting the curtains at Portland Stage includes performers such as Sarah Jessica Parker.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER, currently filming her final season of HBO’s Sex and the City, has a stellar track record on Broadway, starring in Annie, Sylvia, and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (with her future husband, actor Matthew Broderick). In 1982, she appeared in PSC’s production of Paula Cizmar’s Death Of a Miner. The award-winning actress is full of energy as she chats with us from the Manhattan home she shares with Broderick and their son, James.

SJP: I was 15 when I came to Portland Stage and tremendously excited to keep working, having just finished Annie. It doesn’t seem like 20 years ago! That time of life can be challenging for a young actress; you’re feeling physically awkward and unsure of yourself generally. I was so lucky to be a part of that company, including Cotter Smith, Mary McDonnell, and David Florek, with Barbara Rosoff directing. They watched over me, and it gave me a safe place to learn about the craft.

I recall staying in an apartment house with Cotter Smith and Mary McDonnell. I think I was paid whatever scale was at that time (a minimum of $282). And I can’t remember what I wore, except that I was playing a coal miner’s daughter!

When we took the show to New York, I got the offer to do Square Pegs and I had to drop out. I was really conflicted, because a television show is very different from stage work. Strange as this sounds, the stage is more intimate but more private at the same time. I didn’t know if I wanted to be exposed to the pressures [of network television] and the scrutiny that’s based on your looks rather than your work.

That’s why I go back to stage work whenever I can; it’s really the actor’s medium as opposed to television and film, where once you finish your work it can turn into anything [in post-production]. It’s incumbent on serious actors to try and do stage work, although I certainly understand why many shy away. The money is terrifying, for one thing; theater is getting to be the rich man’s hobby. Then there’s the fear of live performing, because you can’t rely on anybody but yourself.

But we have to cultivate audiences and do whatever it takes to get our young people interested, whether it’s Federal funding or recognizable faces. I’d love to come back and perform at Portland Stage again, especially if there is a new play to work on. I loved the city then and still do; even though it was cold. It was a very special time, being on my own. The houses, the streets, the restaurants, the muffins.

I hadn’t heard about Barbara Rosoff and of course I’m so sorry to learn of her accident [a tragic, career-ending fall while climbing at the Sundance Film Festival, Utah]. She was remarkable. You always hold the director accountable for what goes on; they’re at the top and everything else comes down from there. I’m sure she was the main reason why that experience was so fulfilling for me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been so sorry to leave.

Jennifer Grey

Ironically, an earlier flame of Matthew Broderick’s, Jennifer Grey, appeared in a Portland Stage production a year after Sarah Jessica Parker’s performance. Jennifer Grey came here to Portland to for a turn in PSC’s 1983 production of Ecco, just weeks before landing a string of supporting roles in the 1984 movies The Cotton Club, Reckless, and Red Dawn. In 1986, she played Matthew Broderick’s jealous sister in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Grey, daughter of Cabaret co-star Joel Grey, went on to co-star with Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. Recent credits include It’s Like, You Know, the ABC comedy series where she played herself.

ALICIA (LECY) GORANSON

Becky from Roseanne at Portland Stage? Didn’t you bring your opera glasses? As Henry James might say, “Endeavor to be the kind of person on whom nothing is lost.” Alicia (Lecy) Goranson created the role of the brainy runaway teenage bride Becky Conner Healy in 1988 on television’s Roseanne. She left the show after a few seasons, returned, and then left for good as the series wound down to pursue a degree in English at Vassar. In 1997, she appeared in the allegorical drama Iphigenia and Her Daughters at PSC.

Two years later came her acclaimed turn as doomed young mother Candace in Boys Don’t Cry, for which Hilary Swank won the Oscar.

With shooting just beginning for her current film, Death 4 Told, with Margot Kidder, Lecy chats from her Brooklyn, New York, home.

AG: It was my very first play out of college, and I did it because the director, Christopher Grabowski, was my professor and friend at Vassar, and he had friends at Portland Stage. I’ve done about 10 plays since, but I’ll never forget that one.

It was my first stage job, and I had to join Equity, so they took my dues out of that. I’m not sure how much I was actually paid, maybe $400 [a week]?

I stayed at the Eastland. We used to have some great times at the Top Of the East. Ron Botting [not in the cast but Anita Stewart’s husband] and I took long walks along the beach and dropped in at a couple of seafood places. I don’t even eat seafood and I loved it! We were such a great group. I think I slipped on the ice once and it didn’t even matter.

My favorite individual 30 seconds came at the end of the first act, when the lights went out and the audience gasped. The play itself was so thrilling, so lyrical and poetic.

One critic wrote that I was shaking like a leaf, and I’ll bet I was. I wore a simple white high-waisted dress. I had to perform this long monologue perched on a swing high above the stage – I was a lamb being led to the slaughter – and the trembling hasn’t subsided yet! It kicked off a series of victim roles, although in the horror flick I’m doing this time I’m behind the gun. One of these days I want to do a play where I’m at stage level, with men feeding me grapes.

But thanks to that experience, the stage really has become my passion. As a youngster, I was trained in improvisation by teachers from Second City. There’s a big difference in the physicality you can use in theater, where you don’t have four cameras between you and the audience. You can play different roles and the caliber of writing overall is so much higher. Audiences come to see a full story; there’s a wonderful flow that you don’t get anywhere else. Even with the pressure of earning money, my career is in a much different place thanks to that experience.

And yes, I’d love to come back to Portland Stage, anytime, just ask me! It’s a great city, and my time there is one of the reasons I’ve got more aspirations in theater.

I did another play with my Portland Stage co-star Hamish Linklater, Good Things, about two years ago. So good things tend to happen once you’ve appeared at Portland Stage.”

CLAUDIA SHEAR

Claudia Shear got her start in theater at PSC in 1993, writing a then-unknown monologue, Blown Sideways Through Life. Little did anyone know, including Shear, that this one-woman show would find its way back to the New York Theatre Workshop [birthplace of Rent] and rake in an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award nomination, not to mention rave reviews across the country.

Shear went on to write and perform in Dirty Blonde, a play about diva Mae West, which earned Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations.

“ I did nothing before Portland,” says Shear. “There was a haze of uncertainty and discovery. I had no connection to theater; there was a sense of legitimacy at PSC. Jim Nicola [artistic director at NYTW] said, ‘Write a play,’ so I wrote a play.”

Shear has since made a guest appearance on the sitcom Friends, played Ruth Ann on Earthly Possessions, the drunken fan in the film Living Out Loud, and is now in the process of writing a British TV series.

“I love Maine,” Shear says. “Eat a lobster roll for me.”

– John C. Schoen

Polly Pen

“ I was surprised at how beautiful Portland was. It wasn’t as cold as I thought it would be,” Polly Pen says about her winter visits to Portland Stage from New York, once in 1987 to act in The Hostage, and again in 1988, for Hard Times.

“ I first came to Maine when I was in college, doing Shakespeare in Monmouth [at The Theater at Monmouth]. What a great atmosphere for doing Shakespeare.”

Her first experience at PSC was an audition for Hostage. “I remember the audition being fairly hilarious. Richard Hamburger was the director. He went to Barnum and Bailey’s school for clowns, so you can imagine how funny he was. I came back because the work was interesting. They weren’t doing things every regional theater was doing.”

In later years, Pen focused on writing music for the stage, but that didn’t end her involvement with PSC. She saw the company produce Goblin Market, one of her own works (based on the Christina Rossette poem) in 1992. Pen puts Goblin Market into that category of things every regional theater doesn’t do.

“ The fact that [PSC] showed such an arcane work gives them a lot of credit. I admire any theater that does something even if they don’t know if it’s going to work out. It’s a brave place.”

In fact, she hungers to return.

“ I’m wishing I was there right now instead of rainy upstate New York. Is The Good Egg still there? That place had the best breakfast in America.”

– Andrew Colvin

DON HARVEY

Don Harvey counts Die Hard, Die Hard II, and Die Hard With A Vengeance – as well as Eight Men Out (with fellow PSC alum David Strathairn), The Untouchables, and Casualties of War (with Michael J. Fox, who has tagged along to PSC events to watch buddies perform) – among his credits.

Like fellow PSC alum Tony Shalhoub, Don started at the University of Michigan and went on to Yale Drama School. He’s just finished shooting Plainsong, a Hallmark film with Aidan Quinn, due on CBS this fall.

This past February, he took a break from movies, returned to Portland, and starred in PSC’s production of True West by Sam Shepard. From his home in Los Angeles, he tells us why.

DH: Thank God for Portland Stage and the work they do. In an ideal world, there would be a minimum of 20 to 25 new plays every year and theaters like PSC would introduce them. It’s not easy to get good theater opportunities.

In New York, it seems to be either Disney or Vegas, and it’s falling to regional theaters to do what New York used to do. Portland Stage Company is the best I’ve ever seen. The audiences here are really receptive, not at all jaded. They get it. And that wonderful raked space.

My recent True West experience was the first performance I’ve ever done where I was completely satisfied every time I came offstage. I felt like I left my whole performance out there.

For my part, I was dressed sort of like a homeless person – shiny black dress pants turning green, and an old shirt that was really too big and hung loose.

The director was Paul Mullins, who’s also an actor. He played Iago in PSC’s production of Othello. Paul is a craftsman who really wants the actor to get involved in what he’s doing. Some directors don’t want to talk with the actors; Paul talks about everything and I appreciate that.

With True West, you start off with an immaculate kitchen and by the time the play ends, the whole set is trashed. It was hard to rehearse because there are a lot of props. We started off rehearsing slowly and then got up to speed. Once you got all the way through, it was exhilarating.

That’s not to say there were no surprises. We could always count on the toaster popping out toast at odd moments, and the champagne bottle cork occasionally popped out at the wrong time. With so many props getting thrown and smashed, I’m still amazed no one got hurt!

As for Portland, life [elsewhere] doesn’t compare to Maine lobsters and J’s Oyster Bar. Someday I’d like to buy a house there. But it’s cold! The walk from Portland Stage to the Eastland Park Hotel – it was icy. And I’m originally from Michigan.

How much were you paid?

DH: I don’t remember exactly what I was paid, but it was in the hundreds.

Have you kept up with your fellow players from True West?

DH: I saw Ron [Botting] and Barbara [Mather] a few months ago when I was back. I just sent Todd a check for the triathlon he’s doing in New York to raise money for leukemia research.

First Die Hard, now True West. Do you simply enjoy destroying things onstage?

DH: My favorite moments were when I got to smash the typewriter, or perhaps when Barbara made her entrance as the mother and saw the destruction of her kitchen. Nobody could get a line out because the audience was reacting for such a long time.

ROSEMARY PRINZ

Rosemary Prinz dazzled Portlanders in 1998 with her performance as opera diva Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Master Class. And today she’s doing just fine, thank you very much! Prinz first earned daytime drama fame in the late 1950s – when soaps were broadcast live – as the original teen queen, Penny Hughes, on CBS’s still-running As The World Turns.

RP: Portland Stage Company was a nice launch for Master Class. I wound up playing it in three other venues over the next two years.

But Portland Stage Company really did it up right, with good production values. The show required screen projections of La Scala in Milan, and audio tapes of Callas actually singing, and they weren’t afraid to tackle it. That hasn’t always been true in the productions I’ve done since!

I had a wonderful cast [including Maine State Music Theater’s Ed Reichert as Manny] and I learned so much that helped me in subsequent productions. We need more theaters like Portland Stage where actors can work on quality plays in front of knowledgeable audiences. I’d love to come back if I’m asked.

Hamish Linklater

Hamish Linklater tell you that you’ve never heard him play the guitar. “It was the Sid Vicious version of Romeo and Juliet,” Linklater says about the time he played Romeo at PSC. “Very rock and roll. Very loud. Very sexy.” Well, tone that last one down a bit for when the kids are around. “I was nude in the bedroom scene, but for the Catholic school boy version, I was suddenly wearing boxer shorts.”

Out of all the places he’s worked, what makes PSC stick out most for Hamish is the theater’s relationship with kids, especially the discussions they’d have with students after performing for them. “It was great that the theater went out to the schools to talk about things, hard things like suicide. Very responsible of them.”

Since his two appearances at PSC, once in 1996 for Iphigenia and Her Daughters, and in 1997 for Romeo and Juliet, Linklater has been keeping busy. He’s appeared in theatrical productions on both coasts, in ABC’S Gideon’s Crossing, and in several movies, including the acclaimed indy film Groove, a story of San Francisco’s underground rave scene. No doubt Linklater got his groove on right here in Portland. “What was that place with the funny name? The Great Lost Bear! The cast went there one night… I don’t think we were allowed back.”

– Andrew Colvin

Israel Horovitz

“ I’ll never forget it. It was amazingly tragic,” is the first thing playwright Israel Horovitz had to say about his time spent working with Portland Stage Company. Horovitz is most recognized as the playwright from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who has produced more than 50 plays, and won the OBIE [twice] and the Emmy. However, few are aware of Horovitz’s ties to New England.

“ When I did Year of the Duck in Portland, the city reminded me a lot of Gloucester, but without all the urbanness.”

With that said, Horovitz still remembers the tragic incident that occurred after Year of the Duck’s Portland production.

“ I decided to run the show in the construct of three smaller theaters in order to have a bigger appeal. I started at Portland Stage, continued to Gloucester Stage, and would finish at a small theater in New York. I wanted to start in Portland because it was a very professional theatre, which is so unusual for a theater that far from New York. I was also drawn to the can-do attitude Portland Stage possessed. I remember a great board of directors there who sit around with pizza and soda, and just make calls for donations. That’s how they built their endowment… The seeds went in the ground in the 1980s. But then, in between Portland and Gloucester, the director of our show, Barbara Rosoff, went to Sundance, where she decided to go rock climbing. She had an accident; she fell from a cliff and tumbled into a coma. It was such a loss for us, and Portland Stage.

Horovitz hasn’t been back since, but when he does return, maybe he can drag along son Adam Horovitz and the rest of the Beastie Boys.

– Cory Fox

Nilo Cruz

The poetical and magical playwright Nilo Cruz is the 2003 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his script Anna in the Tropics. And, yup, you missed the chance to see him at Portland Stage. Cruz, the first Hispanic to receive such this prestigious award in playwriting, had his script A Bicycle Country performed at PSC in the 9th Annual Little Festival of the Unexpected.

– Cory Fox

©2003 Portland Magazine Colin Sargent, Editor & Publisher editor@portlandmonthly.com Click here to subscribe

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