An 84-Year-Old Wisecracker Keeps Trucking
Friends of Elaine Stritch, the Broadway legend, have expressed surprise that, at 84, she is acting this summer in a small role in “The Full Monty” at the Paper Mill Playhouse in suburban Millburn, N.J. One friend asked her how things were going at “the Paperback Playhouse,” to which she replied, in true Stritchy style, “No, we’re first edition.”
But after performing for the last several years in her autobiographical, Tony Award-winning show “Elaine Stritch at Liberty,” Ms. Stritch says the “Monty” role of the hard-drinking piano player Jeanette Burmeister has been an inspiration and a blast.
“I’m so happy to be working, and to be doing something that wasn’t all about me,” Ms. Stritch said in the restaurant off the lobby of her home, the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “I was longing to do something fresh. This has made me think about how I want to find someone to write a great straight play for me about an older woman who has feelings for a younger man, like these cute guys who strip.”
The guys, of course, are her fellow actors in “The Full Monty,” the musical (based on the British film of the same title) about a group of out-of-work friends in Buffalo who perform a strip show to earn money, woo their wives and recover their self-esteem.
That last motive held great appeal for Ms. Stritch as she considered doing the show this spring. She said she felt tremendous fear about performing for most of her life and coped by drinking shots before shows until she began her widely known battle with alcoholism. Asked if that fear lingers at times even now, Ms. Stritch, a former parochial school pupil, replied, “Is the pope Catholic?” (Actually, there was an expletive between “pope” and “Catholic.”)
“Everyone thinks that a wisecracker like Jeanette is right up my alley, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, not at all,” said Ms. Stritch, wearing girlish short shorts and a sweater vest as she drank a Buckler nonalcoholic beer. “The closer a part is to you, the harder it is to play. Anything else is just imitation. If I’m playing a Russian countess, I get the hat, the accent, the outrageousness. Easy. Playing a murderess? Perfect.”
As for working in her mid-80s, she said: “This age thing is all up to you. It’s like happiness is up to you. You just have to understand what it is before you get it.”
Besides, unlike Estelle Parsons, who, also in her 80s, spent 90 minutes onstage in the role of Violet Weston in the recently ended Broadway production of “August: Osage County,” Ms. Stritch spends a relatively brief 20 minutes of the two-and-a-half-hour show onstage.
Mark S. Hoebee, the director of “The Full Monty” and the artistic director of the Paper Mill, said that the biggest surprise about working with Ms. Stritch came in their first conversation - when she accepted the role.
“People keep asking, ‘How did you get Elaine Stritch to do this?,’ and the answer is that I asked her,” Mr. Hoebee said. “We had a meeting, and she loved the show, loved the role. It’s still a little unbelievable being in the same room. She is a theater legend. But she is also perfect for this part, living the life that she has lived.”
He said he had no difficulty directing Ms. Stritch, who made her Broadway debut in 1946 in the play “Loco” and appeared in her first Broadway musical, “Angel in the Wings,” in 1947.
“What’s been essential is that, as much as I have great respect for her, I’ve felt that she has respect for me as well,” Mr. Hoebee said. “We’re open and frank with each other about the things we wanted and needed. She demands thoughtful explanations about the character, about directing choices. There are a lot of performers who, when I want something, say, ‘Fine.’ Elaine works through everything.”
Wayne Wilcox, who plays Jerry Lukowski, the central character in “The Full Monty,” said that he knew from the first day of rehearsals that audience members would burst into applause for Ms. Stritch at her very first line.
“Given who she is,” he said, “given the way she says her lines and makes them all her own, she kind of commands a laugh and interest from the audience.”
Indeed, in reviewing the production for The New York Times, Anita Gates called it “sweet and lively,” adding that, “as might be expected, Ms. Stritch’s star power throws the production a bit off balance, but it’s an enjoyable ride.” (The show is to close on July 12.)
Mr. Wilcox shrugged off any notion that the lead cast members might feel overshadowed by her featured role. “She looms large and does not hold anything back,” he said. “I respect her for that, because I believe in arguing for my character and speaking up for myself too. It’s been a lesson to see how she made a career herself by standing up for herself.”
Not that Ms. Stritch is all iron. The New Yorker writer John Lahr recently filed a lawsuit against her over their collaboration on “At Liberty,” apparently, she said, because he felt he was not adequately compensated for his work. (Mr. Lahr did not respond to requests for comment.) Ms. Stritch said that the lawsuit was “terribly scary” and that she hoped it could be resolved between them.
For now, though, “The Full Monty” is her preoccupation. Ms. Stritch complained that the Paper Mill allotted only about three weeks for rehearsal and that she is only now feeling that she owns her role. (The rehearsal time was typical for a regional theater, Mr. Hoebee said.)
Though Ms. Stritch does not go on until 50 minutes into the musical, she arrives at the theater early and has her hair and makeup ready by call time. On show days, she said, she usually does nothing but eat, sleep, watch television and perform. She has no exercise routine to build stamina, she added, though she carefully watches her health.
“I’m a diabetic, so if I get home at midnight from the Paper Mill, I have to stay up till 3:30 or 4 a.m. to take my proper doses of insulin and my proper amounts of food,” Ms. Stritch said. “My days begin at 3 in the afternoon. But no complaints: I’m working.”
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