The Play Goes On: A Memoir

LIFE REVISITED

1

EVERYTHING STOPPED. The sun came up, the clocks ticked on but nothing moved. I was always a morning person: the first one up in the house, the first one dressed, the first one down in the kitchen, the first one at breakfast.

But now I was still in bed, without a clue as to what time it was. I could hear the hum of the air conditioner, feel a chill in the room and yet my pajama tops were drenched through with perspiration. Were the girls upstairs in their rooms, silently waiting for me to come up to tell them what we would do with this, the first day of our lives on our own? I was fighting the act of awakening. I kept my eyes closed in hopes that sleep would overtake me once more, buying me more time before I would have to take a deep breath and then release it, acknowledging that I was alive. The future was a totally unpleasant prospect and I wasn’t quite ready to deal with it. We had buried my wife, Joan, the day before at the Pound Ridge Cemetery in New York. She had just turned forty and had died of cancer, the most surprising thing she had done in a life filled with surprises.

I clung tenaciously to the darkness behind my closed lids, trying to keep the daylight at bay, much as I had as a boy when it was time to leave the local movie house, knowing that I left Humphrey Bogart or Errol Flynn still battling villains on the screen, while outside I squinted at the glaring harshness of the four o’clock sun and faced the heat of another endless summer’s day.

Nancy was ten and Ellen was fifteen. It was July 12, 1973. Eight days before, on the Fourth of July, I had turned forty-six. It might as well have been sixty-six for all the lethargy and despondency I felt in my aching mind and body on that dreary morning. I pushed myself out of bed and crossed to the closet, looking for a robe that I almost never wore. Robes always made me feel either sick or old or both. Mine was a gift from Joan’s mother, and I had feigned delight and pleasure when I opened it in front of her at an earlier birthday, knowing that I would never wear it, that it would only take up valuable space in my small closet. How ironic that I would be putting it on today, the day after her daughter died. But I needed a robe that morning because I did not want to face the girls in sweaty pajamas, although I had neither the strength nor inclination to get out of those pajamas, nor could I imagine myself doing so in the foreseeable future. What for? There was nothing outside that small town house on East 62nd Street that I wanted or needed to see. Nor anyone besides my daughters. I neither asked for nor invited friends or family to pay us a condolence call. At least not on that first day. The few really close friends I had would call later that morning, but they understood when I said, Not yet. Give me today alone with the girls. Despite the fact that I had been aware for the past year and a half that Joan was going to die, I was unprepared for what I experienced on that first morning. It was not exactly grief, because, in a sense, I had been grieving those last few months of her life. This was a feeling of numbness, inertia and confusion, leading to a frightening inability to make a decision, trivial or otherwise. I have no memory of when I first saw the girls that morning, but Nancy told me recently that for some inexplicable reason, what she pictures in her mind today was the three of us in semi-darkness, sitting on the steps leading from the kitchen down to the basement. An implausible place to meet, and yet, for that morning, as plausible as any.

The thought uppermost in my mind was to distract the girls from dealing with the past, and to get them busy with getting on with life, making some small attempt at normalcy. I am always amazed at the resiliency of the young. They looked at me, waiting to hear what my plans were, ready and eager to comply. Neither girl had intended to be home that summer, both having made plans, not fully realizing the graveness of Joan’s condition. Nancy was summoned back from camp when Joan passed away sooner than I ever imagined, and Ellen had canceled a student trip to Europe to be with her mother for her last few months. I suggested getting away from New York, as far away as possible, distancing ourselves from loss and sorrow. The summer house in Pound Ridge, New York, that I had bought expressly as a gift to Joan, where I hoped she would recover from her illness, was just a marginal choice to revisit. I offered to take them both to Europe, reasoning that traveling and being together would be, if not a fun-filled vacation, at least a chance to heal ourselves in new surroundings, in a place with fewer memories. Nancy surprised me when she opted to return to camp. It also gave me a sense of relief to know that this ten-year-old knew what was best for her. Ellen and I left together for Europe a week later.

I made the mistake of returning to all the same hotels that Joan and I had stayed in, something that proved harder for me to deal with than for Ellen. But slowly, day by day, I began to see a change in Ellen, a maturing, perhaps growing up faster than she normally would have if Joan were still alive. She started to point out things in shops in London and in Paris that might go nicely in our house. As it had been with Joan, who always brought home pretty and useful items from our trips, it was now with Ellen, who kept her eye open for unusual pieces I never thought remotely interested her before. In a sense, she was emulating Joan, perhaps not consciously, but in the normal way that a child takes on some of the traits of the parent of the same gender. By the time we returned home in late August, Ellen walked into our kitchen, opened the cabinets and said, You know what, Dad? We need new dishes. Nancy came home a few days later, taller, tanner and a good deal happier than when she left. We were all so glad to see each other, and our conversation that night was about what we had done that summer and not about the tragedy we left behind. But it was certainly not gone from their minds; I noticed that clearly as Nancy climbed the steps that night and glanced quickly in my bedroom to see the made-up bed which Joan had occupied for so many months during her illness.

Later I heard laughter from their rooms and then the sound of tapes playing the Broadway musicals they loved so much, and their singing the lyrics to their favorite songs, loudly and slightly off-key. Eventually they switched to television and called down to me, Dad, come on up and watch with us. I knew once I got in their room, they would bar me from leaving, forcing me to watch every fashion show, sitcom, summer rerun and old black-and-white movie. As I ascended the stairs, smelling the fresh popcorn they had just made, while scorching the bottom of the pot, I said to myself, Thank you God for making daughters.

THE WANDERER

2

IN THE DAYS and weeks following, I walked through the streets of New York like a somnambulist, having to look up at corner signs to see where I was. Not that I was walking in any particular direction, or with any specific destination in mind. I walked through Bloomingdale’s, fingering shirts or jackets without the slightest intention of buying anything. I was constantly looking at everyone who passed by, with the preposterously illogical hope that I might see Joan. There was always the possibility that the doctors had been mistaken about her death, or, just as unlikely, that I merely dreamt she died, which would explain the foggy, half-awake state in which I existed. The memory flashed in my mind how sometimes, before Joan ever got ill, I would be walking down a street and would glance up and see her looking in a store window. She would turn and see me, and we would both smile, thinking the same thing: We just had a free one—meaning an extra time of seeing each other, one we hadn’t planned on.

I climbed the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, and wandered through the great exhibition halls, delving into Egyptian antiquity. Then I went up the stairs to the paintings of Matisse and Renoir, Van Gogh and Rembrandt; I stared at the John Sargents I loved so well, remembering when I first saw them with Joan. With her at my side, I had the added advantage of having her fill me in with minute details of the painter’s art, most of which I might not have noticed on my own. For me she was like one of those tape-recorded talking guides you rent as you enter the museum, except with this one, you were allowed to hold the hand of this guide, or watch her hair bobbing up and down as she tried to peer over the crowd to see the museum’s latest and most talked about acquisition.

On the day I chose to revisit the museum alone, I suddenly heard a voice directly behind me.

Neil?

I turned and looked.

I’m Carol Mantz.

She said her name as though I should know it, but I didn’t have a clue as to who she was. Or maybe I did know her, but like everything else in my life at that moment, I couldn’t fit the pieces together.

I think you knew my husband, Mark. He said you both grew up together in Washington Heights.

Mark? Oh, yes. Mark. Of course. I had no idea who Mark was. Well, perhaps it sounded vaguely familiar, but if I was struggling with my own identity, I couldn’t blame myself for not remembering a boy I knew thirty years before.

I was sorry to hear about your wife. I read about it in the paper.

Yes. Thank you. Wanting to get off the subject, I went back to hers: So, how is Mark these days?

He died six months ago. Heart attack.

Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Was he ill?

Never sick a day in his life. Just keeled over in his office.

Oh, no. How terrible for you.

My words of comfort seemed as empty as the ones I had been hearing myself every day for the past three weeks. You appreciate them, but you don’t quite know how to deal with them.

When you started writing plays, Mark told me he was a friend of yours. He was so proud of you. I think we’ve seen all of them.

I could see the tears welling up in her eyes and I was suddenly jolted back to the past. A picture of Mark Mantz as a teenager came vividly into my mind: outgoing, funny, friendly; had to be about my age. I looked at her and this time I actually saw her. She was about thirty-six, a few years younger than Joan. She told me they had a little boy who was seven. Then, for no apparent reason, the conversation stopped. There was an awkward silence because neither one of us wanted to talk about death and losses. I wanted to walk on but didn’t want to appear unsvmpathetic to her troubles nor self-involved by talking about mine.

So, I guess we’re sort of in the same boat, aren’t we? she said. I nodded, sensing what her next line would be.

I don’t know how you feel about it, but if you’d like to talk about—well, you know. If you’d like to have coffee or a drink or dinner, I could give you my number.

The mood changed in an instant. We had moved from tragedy to new beginnings. In a sense, whether it was coffee or a drink or whatever, it was still a date, and I was not only unprepared for a date at this time, I was also not sure I knew my way home from the museum.

Thank you, I said. That’s very kind of you. To tell you the truth, I’m not quite—

Oh, I understand. I wasn’t either at first.

Then you know what I’m—

I do. Honestly, it was just an offer. If you change your mind, my number’s in the book. Take care of yourself. Your girls are going to need you now.

She turned and walked away. Interesting that she even knew about my girls. Here was a date that was being contemplated by her, not necessarily by mutual attraction, but by mutual tragedy. By the rules of natural selection, people have been bonding that way since the beginning of man’s time on earth. However, the thought of moving on with my life as yet hadn’t even occurred to me.

She had six months of mourning behind her. I was hardly out of my first three weeks.

I realized I could no longer find refuge in department stores, bookstores, movies or museums. My only salvation was to get back to work. Throughout my career, whether in moods of quiet despair, painful back spasms, a high-grade flu and, amazingly, even during Joan’s illness, I was able to continue working, albeit only a few hours a day. I had the ability to block everything else out of my thoughts and focus completely on the work at hand. By picking up a pen and gazing at the blank pages of the spiral notebook in front of me, I suddenly lost sight of my surroundings and circumstances, and entered the world in which the characters I created were living out their own problems or good fortune. They had no interest in my immediate woes, no knowledge they even existed. Which led me to think: Did they know I was there, in their place, their room, sitting in a dark corner witnessing the most personal moments of their own inner conflicts? Did these characters even care that I was committing their words, their thoughts, their actions to paper? Were they oblivious to the fact that I might one day share their lives with total strangers, who were privy to this information only by my invitation? Since they never brought it up, I didn’t bother mentioning it to them.

In the year and a half of Joan’s illness, I had completed the screenplay of The Prisoner of Second Avenue, which was to start filming in Hollywood in a matter of weeks. It was to star Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft. I also had completed a new play, The Good Doctor, based on short stories by Anton Chekhov. Warner Brothers and director Mel Frank wanted me to attend two weeks of rehearsals in Los Angeles to do any last-minute rewrites on Prisoner, the kinds of changes that would inevitably be needed once the actors started digging into their roles. The Prisoner of Second Avenue, although a critical and commercial success on stage, worried me as film material. It was a serious comedy or a funny drama, a sort of hybrid form of play, atypical for most playwrights in the 1970s. Eugene O’Neill wrote drama/tragedies. George S. Kaufman wrote comedies. Samuel Beckett wrote poignant humor laden with a sense of anguish and loss, while Eugene Ionesco wrote abstract farces with strong social overtones. Tennessee Williams wrote poetic tragedies that managed to have a great deal of ironic humor. What they all had in common was that they did their work masterfully. These were the greats that I wanted to emulate. The problem was that I wanted to emulate them all at the same time, and often, all in the same play. What was odd about my plays was that when they were funny, they were true comedies, and when they were dramatic, they dealt with everyday people faced with serious dilemmas. What was confounding and somewhat annoying to many critics was that I was attempting to do both things in the same play. They felt I was being neither true to the comedy nor true to the drama. Since most audiences seemed to like what I was doing, however, there was the paradox of my having a great many hits that critics did not praise. It’s hard to sell tickets to plays that critics frown on, yet the audiences came anyway. Since I was committing the cardinal sin of being popular without their stamp of approval, the critics (not all, but a lot) banished me to the Devil’s Island of the Arts by designating me Not Important.

In the case of Prisoner, I worried that the moviegoing audience wouldn’t be as accommodating as a theater audience. The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park, both true comedies, were successes in both mediums. The darker my plays became, however, the more lackluster the results when they were transferred to the big screen.

Despite my eagerness to get back to work, I soon realized I was in no emotional shape to handle two projects at one time, no mind to do rewrites and little desire to fly to Hollywood for two weeks, leaving the girls behind. Yet I needed to occupy myself before the girls became caretakers to the one person in the world who should be taking care of them. Foolishly or not, I plunged into work, hoping somehow to keep my head above water.

As for the new play, I left that in the hands of my more than capable producer, Manny Azenberg. He started the wheels in motion, prepping The Good Doctor for production late in the fall. We hired a director, scenic designer and costume designer and began casting. I sat through auditions with director A. J. Antoon in a darkened theater, wondering what I was doing there, unable to concentrate on the actors, while I played mind games with myself, something in the order of I’d give two years of my life if I could make just one phone call to Joan wherever she was in the universe that day.

Christopher Plummer accepted the starring role playing both Chekhov as narrator and as principal actor in Chekhov’s creations, as interpreted by Neil Simon. Other fine actors like Barnard Hughes, Frances Sternhagen and Rene Auberjonois were soon added to the cast. What we were missing was one young, attractive, funny, touching, serious, seasoned and delightful new actress who could play five completely different roles in one evening. You could search for three years and still not find someone like that. We didn’t have years; I was to leave for California in two weeks, and in that time we auditioned thirty or forty actresses. Many of them could do one, perhaps two of the roles, but not a single one could come close to doing all five roles, being convincing in each one of them.

I was worried about not being able to ever find the right actress, and being in the fragile state I was in, I wouldn’t have minded if we canceled the entire production either forever or, more reasonably, until I became something more than just the shadow of my former self.

A few days before I was to leave for California, I received a call from actor’s agent Phyliss Wender. She said she was representing someone very special and asked if I could see this actress in the next day or so. Phyliss was someone I respected and liked, and the fact that she called me personally and avoided going through the normal channels of calling our casting director first was a signal to me that this person was someone I should pay attention to. I told her I was about to leave for Los Angeles and asked if I could see her client when I returned in two weeks.

She’ll be gone in two weeks, Phyliss answered. "She’ll be gone in two days. She has to be in Seattle to start a new film. Neil, I’m asking you to trust me on this one. This is someone you should really see."

Phyliss, I trust you, but I don’t trust me right now. I don’t think I’m clearheaded enough to make a good judgment. I paused while I tried to force reason through the cementlike block of protection that the mind sets up while one is healing. When is the last day I could see her? I finally asked.

Tomorrow. I feel terrible about pushing this, but after this movie, I may never be able to get her out of pictures.

In my silence, we could both hear my brain trying to fight through to a decision. She tried to find a way around it: Would you leave the decision up to Manny and A.J. Antoon?

I would, but Manny would never sign anyone if I didn’t see them first. Do I know her?

I’m not sure. Her name is Marsha Mason.

No. Not familiar to me.

"She did The Indian Wants the Bronx off-Broadway with Al Pacino. She got great reviews. I could send them to you."

I can’t audition reviews. I can’t even remember if I saw the play. Probably not. I trusted Phyliss too much to pass and I knew she wasn’t just trying to get a client a job. She was too earnest and smart for that.

All right. What about tomorrow afternoon? About four.

Could we make it at two? Actually, she’s leaving tomorrow night.

I smiled. You really love pressure, don’t you? And there’s going to be a lot of it, if we all come down to audition just one girl.

She was ready for that one. I thought of that. I’m bringing another girl as well. She’s good, but this part belongs to Marsha.

Phyliss, you should be running MGM and Paramount.

No, thanks. I love New York, and I’ve got my kids in a good school. I’ll see you tomorrow at two.

Tomorrow sounded like a thousand years away. I hung up and took Ellen and Nancy out to the same Chinese restaurant for the third night in a row. I had no idea it was the third night until Ellen opened up her fortune cookie and read aloud, Hello Simon family. We were expecting you. Nancy laughed before I realized it was a joke. I was glad that someone in the family still had a sense of humor.

NIGHT VISITS

3

I BEGAN PERFORMING a ritual each night before I went to bed. I had read a good deal about meditation but found it very difficult to keep my mind and thoughts still enough to receive any benefit from it. With Joan’s passing, I now had a reason to go back to meditation, not for quieting my restless mind, but to somehow find a way of keeping Joan’s positive and reassuring qualities still alive within me. I was afraid if I lost contact, not with her, but what she meant to me, I would lose an important part of myself. I believed in our marriage so firmly—the give-and-take between two loving people, the bolstering of one’s spirits when the other one’s were flagging—I desperately needed to keep the memory of what she contributed to my life, some way, somehow, always there beside me.

Each night, after the girls were asleep, I put my favorite picture of Joan on a small table and lit a candle on each side of it. Then I sat on the carpeted floor, my back against the small sofa in the room in which I worked; with all the lights off and the shades drawn, I stared deeply at the face of Joan as I remembered her best: I was trying to burn the image of her face into my mind, burn it so deeply that it would never fade and always be there at any time of the day or night that I summoned it. After a while, I began to talk to the picture in a whisper, although low enough not to be heard by anyone (including myself) for fear I would feel foolish, embarrassed and self-conscious. Hence the drawn shades. It even occurred to me that Joan might be watching this ritual from the place in the room that she still inhabited, and that she was surprised to see a part of me she. never knew existed. For that matter, neither did I. I wasn’t sure if she was amused by it or simply appreciated the fact that I was making a kind of person-to-person call to her each night.

I was not looking for help to assuage my pain: I counted on the pain to assure me she was still in my thoughts. What I wanted was guidance in becoming both a father and a mother to my two daughters. I needed someone to show me the ropes, to whisper in my ear those things girls growing up needed to hear. It soon occurred to me that it wasn’t Joan that I was talking to at all, but rather it was me appealing to and summoning up the best parts of me, using the image of Joan, who knew me so well, as a guide to help me to find my own answers. These sessions became such a habit that I couldn’t fall asleep without them. If I had forgotten somehow, I’d get up in the middle of the night, like a fan devoted to his favorite program, cross into the session room and tune her in. After a while, the sessions became lighthearted and conversational chats rather than the earlier solemn, ceremonial and reverentially clandestine meetings. Sometimes they began with, Hi, Joan, and how was your day today?

Miraculously, it worked for me. If I had a problem at night, then sat down for a quiet midnight tête-à-tête with my deceased wife, more often than not I awoke in the morning having resolved the problem while I slept. For example, as I woke up early one morning, I answered my own question: You can’t be a mother to your daughters. Just be a better father. I never had to deal with that one again. The days were slowly getting better, but the improvement rested on the premise that I was looking forward to chatting with Joan that night—and every night. Without my realizing it, the more I held on to Joan through our talk sessions the more I was impeding my own recovery from the grief, a situation that was to remain constant for a very long time.

I ARRIVED at the theater for the audition promptly at two o’clock. I am almost never late for anything. Actors generally get there earlier than their appointed time to go over the pages they’re going to read and to try and settle their nerves. As I entered the stage door, I saw one actress sitting on the steps that led up to the dressing rooms. I had no idea if this was Marsha Mason or the girl that Phyliss sent along to read as a backup if we didn’t like Ms. Mason. As I passed her, the actress looked up from her pages, smiled at me and nodded. I returned the nod. Not good to get too friendly with them, I always thought. Be polite, yes, but not amiable. It makes it that much harder when and if they got rejected, which was ninety percent of the time. I was never very good at this auditioning business anyway. I was always grateful that the director or casting agent was the one to say, often before they were through reading, Thank you very much. We appreciate your coming in. That was the standard line for, No. Not you. The actor knows it immediately and will either look up surprised or disappointed, or will just take it in stride and leave. I always found the longest and most difficult few seconds were when he or she walked off the stage, usually having to pass the other actors who were waiting their turn. Sometimes they made casual comments to each other in passing, other times it was a quick walk out the door in silence, and if they were lucky, off to another audition. Twenty-five years ago, when the New York theater had an abundance of new plays, an actor could go to two or three auditions a day. Today they’re few and far between.

Very often an actor I knew, liked and had worked with before came out to read. When it was clear that he or she was not quite right for this role, the thank-yous and goodbyes were more pleasant. There might be some funny exchange about the good times we remembered on that other play. Oftentimes, they would remark as they left, Good luck with this. It’s a great play. A generous thing to say. This despite the fact the actor always thinks he’s right for the part. They should feel that, otherwise why would they be there? And if he thinks he’s not right for the part, he should believe that with enough work he could make himself right for it. Only once in my life did I hear an actor stop himself in the middle of his reading and say, You don’t want to hear any more of this, do you? I’m stinking it up. He did eventually go on to win an Academy Award as Best Actor in a film that also won as Best Picture. It was F. Murray Abraham and the film was Amadeus and his award was well deserved. And in case Murray wants to know, he did not stink it up that day. I think he decided he just didn’t want to do that particular play.

This auditioning business works both ways, of course. Once, an actor who had just won the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Play a few weeks before he came to audition, sat in a room with us and thought carefully before he said, Do you think the time will come when an actor who just won a major award doesn’t have to audition?

I said, Tell me something, would you want to do my play if you hadn’t had the opportunity to read it first?

He smiled and said, No. But you’ve seen my work.

You’ve seen my work too, I added.

He decided to audition, but his heart wasn’t in it. He took another job before we ever came to a decision about him. The truth is, yes, there comes a time when an actor doesn’t have to audition. If he’s Tom Hanks or Jack Nicholson or Barbra Streisand, ad infinitum. I always have to audition. No star will do my play until he reads it first. Jack Lemmon was the only actor ever who said yes to doing a film of mine after I gave him a mere five-sentence description of the story.

But back to the audition at hand. As I started for the door that led from back stage to the theater, I saw the second actress sitting on a chair, studying the pages. She looked up and smiled at me, as the first girl had, but there was something in this smile that was different. There was a warmth and intelligence and confidence in her face that left little doubt in my mind that this was Marsha Mason. It was also a face I had seen before—but where? In a play? A film? On television? Wait a minute. I think this is the girl in that commercial. Manufacturers Hanover Trust, I think. All she did was look straight in the camera and recite the copy the ad agency had written. About higher interest rates, more convenience, better locations. The usual boring patter that we, the viewers, dismiss out of hand. Until they show it often enough and you absorb it by repetition. But as I watched her in that commercial, the writer in me knew that the actress in her was adding a subtext to what she was saying merely by the way she looked at the camera. What was the subtext was her secret, and we could only guess. To me she was saying, All else aside, if you come down to our bank, you’ll have one hell of a time. Well, obviously the delivery was not that overtly sexual, but I found myself waiting for that commercial to come on again soon. And suddenly her name also seemed familiar. I had read it in a review. Now it was coming back. That movie with George Segal and Kris Kristofferson … Damn, what was the name of it? And as it came to me, I found myself blurting it out.

Oh, I said in recognition. "You’re that girl from Love in Blume, aren’t you?"

Blume in Love, she said, correcting me. Yes, that was me.

Then she laughed and there was that smile again. I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to go down to a bank. Subliminal advertising had worked its powers on me again.

Right, I said. I thought you were terrific.

Oh? Thank you, she said, surprised at the good review I had just given her. I’m glad you liked it.

I had just made a mistake. I was being chatty. I was being amiable. I had told her she was terrific in the movie I had seen. Turning her down for the play after such a positive connection would be tantamount to saying, Amazing. You were so good in that movie, but your reading for the play was lousy.

Inasmuch as she hadn’t heard what I was thinking, I continued being chatty.

Well, I’ll see you again in a few minutes, won’t I?

She laughed in agreement. Yes, I guess you will.

As I walked into the darkened theater, I remembered more clearly why I liked her performance in Blume in Love. She first appeared in the film coming out of an arrival gate at the L.A. airport. Coming from the opposite direction was a glum and recently separated Blume, played by George Segal. She sees him and calls out to him, an old friend she once dated. He turns, surprised and happy to see her. Strangely, so was I. What struck me most about her, aside from her being very pretty, warm and vivacious, was that she didn’t seem like an actress at all. She wasn’t acting. She was talking. When she started to talk to Blume, I thought to myself, Oh, no. This woman is interrupting the movie. She must know George Segal. Maybe she’s just a fan. She’s not even aware there’s a camera around. The director will probably shout ‘Cut’ and have her ushered away. But their conversation continued. Perhaps the director thought, Say, this is good. This is like real life. I don’t know who this woman is, but she’s so good I’ll just leave it in the picture.

Well, since I’m not a total dummy, I soon realized this was the movie and she was in the movie. And that’s pretty much how I had felt when I saw Marsha Mason sitting back stage a few moments before. She’s someone you connect with immediately, whether she’s in a film, in a play or sitting in a chair preparing to audition. She’d even be nice to run into at a grocery store. She also had coloring I was very partial to. Reddish hair, light skin and a hint of freckles barely concealed by the small amount of makeup she was using that day. Anxiously, I took my seat next to A. J. Antoon and Manny. Manny whispered to me, I was going to leave for the country last night. This better be good.

Good would have had a better chance if he had seen Blume in Love, but Manny spent less time in movie theaters than I did. And I knew I couldn’t very well say, Hey, have you seen that Manufacturers Hanover Trust commercial? She had a terrific quality in that. That quality would be fine if we were doing a play about high interest rates in a bank, but this was Chekhov, and for Chekhov, you’d do best by having a classically trained actress.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Phyliss Wender quietly take a seat about eight rows behind us, giving silent support to someone she truly believed in. The first actress, not Marsha, was introduced to us by our stage manager, who was going to read with her. We exchanged pleasantries. This young woman had the disadvantage of not being in Blume in Love; therefore, although she had my attention, she did not have the benefit of my anticipation. Before she began reading, she stopped for a moment to prepare. She paused, looked away and apparently moved