Looking Back, An Interview With Actress Marlo Thomas For John Guare's Hit Play "Six Degrees of Separation"

By James V.  Ruocco

Even the famous get pigeonholed. Just ask Marlo Thomas.
"You wait and wait and wait for the perfect part to come your way," she explains. "And then you finally realize that there are all these wonderful parts that are absolutely perfect for you, waiting for you to play.
"Then, all of a sudden , the whole world opens up. Instead of being someone who can't find something to do, you find millions of things to do."

Thomas, of course, is perhaps best known for the ABC series "That Girl" and dozens of network telefilms.

The turning point in her career came a couple of years ago when she decided to play the part of the eccentric mother Beatrice in a Cleveland production of Paul Zindel's "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds." That was followed by the part of Martha in Hartford Stage's revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" last season.

In her current role, she plays Ouisa in the national touring company of John Guare's "Six Degrees of Separation." The two-act play, directed by Jerry Zaks, includes a one-week run engagement at the Stamford For the Arts Center, Feb. 16-21.

Assessing her career rebirth, Thomas says she feels completely liberated. "The joy of life," she says, stems from making choices."
Doing theater the last few years, the actress says that people began to look at her very differently.
"I have found that, in theater, people are much more open and fresh in their approach to casting. With TV and film, the things I get offered are always some kind of throwback to whatever."

Thomas says she likes the challenge of an audition.
"With 'Virginia Woolf,' I had to audition. I not only felt confident about it, but the director saw what I could do as an actress rather than just hearing about it from someone."

Still, Thomas, like others before her, faces typecasting.
"Once you play something in film, television or whatever, people add that to the list of things they now think you can do. Up till that point, they're not always sure about it until they see you do it.
"When I did 'Nobody's Child' (the actress won an Emmy Award for her portrayal of a woman who spent 20 years in a mental institution), everybody sent me every 'woman going crazy' movie,"she recalls.
"Then, you being to wonder if they can see you playing a crazy woman, why can't they see you as an alcoholic in 'Virginia Woolf? ' "

In "Six Degrees of Separation," the actress finds herself cast as a woman who has put aside the parts in her life that don't work in favor of the charming, more social aspects that do.
"The play is based on the real story of a young black man who pretends to be actor Sidney Poitier's son in order to mix with the rich, famous and self-involved.

"Ouisa and her husband are the couple he scams," she explains. "But as the story develops, we see that he's just someone who wants to get to know them because he wants to belong to a family and a better class of people."

Thomas quickly points out that "Six Degrees of Separation" is really a comedy.
"There's more laughs in this play than any comedy you'll see," she says."You've never heard so much  laughing."

As she tells it, that's because John Guare is a genius.
"With all this laughing, what you're actually seeing is a slice of your own life and the fact that you'd probably do the same thing as Ouisa."

Being the daughter of television star Danny Thomas, the actress says didn't exactly open doors when she decided to enter the business as a teenager.
"He would have helped me," she recalls, "but I didn't want that."

What she does remember was that her father was very much concerned about the whole idea of her becoming a professional actress.
"Much later in life, he told me that he was afraid I wouldn't make it, and he didn't want me to relive his first years again, which were very difficult."

After doing several college plays at the University of Southern California, Thomas was  discovered by Mike Nichols who cast her as Corrie in the London production of Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park."

Then came "That Girl, the smash ABC sit-com which the actress developed using her own life and family relationships as inspiration.
"That was a show about a girl who didn't want to get married and had just graduated from college, whose father was scared she was going to lose her virginity.
"All of the things I was going through with my father," she muses.

Once Thomas believed "the show had run its course," she took it off the air, moved to New York and studied acting with Lee Strasberg.
"I always knew I could do comedy but I wanted to see what else was out there. With the benefit of an early success with 'That Girl,' the right people saw me and I was on my way."

Today, Thomas says, she's expanding and developing her options as an actress.
"Right now, I'm stretching and stretching but opening up my whole perspective on things."

(This interview was originally published on February 7, 1993)

Looking Back, A Review, Direct from London, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sweet, Beguiling Musical "Aspects of Love" starring Michael Ball, Ann Crumb, Kathleen Rowe McAllen and Kevin Colson Opens On Broadway

By James V. Ruocco

Love is never easy.

Because people get more complex as the years go by, they have more sharply defined pyschological peaks and valleys. Therefore, the true romantic believer finds real-world air harder and harder to breathe. Yet in the back of his  mind, he is still obsessed with finding the perfect love - one that will fill his heart with joy and last forever.

With "Aspects of Love," composer Andrew Lloyd Webber  - taking a breather from stories about dancing cats, rollerskating trains and phantoms of the Paris Opera - has written a musical about real people who look at love and (naturally) sex with a practiced and understanding eye.

All four - Rose, Alex, George and Giulietta - hold up a wise mirror to life and love as we all know it can be lived, singing the merchandisable words and music of this passionate, uplifting and tender-hearted Andrew Lloyd Webber/Don Black-Charles Hart score.

In assembling "Aspects of Love," Andrew Lloyd Webber uses David Garnett's 1955 novella as his inspiration. The never-ending aspects - heterosexual couplings, lesbianism, voyeurism, promiscuity, May-December romance and obsessiveness - are entertaining, sexy, clever, amusing and never buffoonish or infantile. They are just passionate enough  to get under our skin and get us thinking.

When compared to Webber's previous works - "Evita," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Cats" and the West End production of "Starlight Express"- "Aspects of Love" is in a class by itself. It is catchy. It is fast-moving. It is charming. It is appropriate. It is direct. It is by no means awkward or silly as it dances about, working from a romantic, breezy musical blueprint where nearly every song and sequence is memorable.

 In the past, Webber has paced his songs - solos, sextets, romantic duets, ballads, upbeat chorus numbers - in accordance with the show's structure and central theme. Here, that signature effervescence and tempting melodrama is present throughout each act as Webber rotates the action from each scene seamlessly with songs that heighten the story's momentum and give each of the leading players some of the best-sounding material to sing and perform.

The production opens with the hauntingly beautiful ballad "Love Changes Everything," a song that Webber uses to address the ever-changing aspects of love. "Seeing is Believing," a romantic ballad where Alex and Rose express their love, is yet another gorgeous romantic tune that beguiles, charms and leaves you breathless as does "Anything But Lonely," which is sung by Rose in Act II. Other standouts that are given the full melodic treatment by the composer and his dual team of lyricists are "There Is More to Love," "Hand Me and Wine and the Dice," "A Memory of a Happy Moment" and "The First Man You Remember." All four are pleasantly assured, emotionally effective and lyrically pungent.


If there is a secret to the charm and freshness of "Aspects of Love," it's the way director Trevor Nunn sweetly blends the predictable with the unexpected surprise. Although "Aspects" presents lovers who everyone knows are meant for each other, the joy for the spectator comes from watching how Nunn orchestrates this wild, impromptu, arresting game of musical chairs and beds. How it all comes together romantically piques interest as does the musical's surprise ending where Alex makes his final choice in the name of love.

Michael Ball makes his Broadway debut after creating the role of Alex in the West End production of "Aspects." The boyish and personable Ball offers a splendid, polished performance that is sure to capture the attention of Tony Award voters in the months ahead. As evidenced in the London production of "Les Miserables" (he originated the role of Marius), Ball's singing comes straight from the heart. Every one of his vocals is rich, effective and expressive and showcased to the fullest throughout the two act musical.

Ann Crumb is a revelation as Rose Vibert. She sings with poise, command, vigor and sophistication, all befitting the character she is portraying. She has immediate chemistry with Ball, which works wonderfully well, given their very passionate, torrid onstage romance. As "Aspects" evolves, Crumb is also just as effective - both musically and dramatically - in subsequent scenes involving the show's other main characters, played by Kathleen Rowe McAllen and Kevin Colson.

 
McAllen, in the role of free-spirited, bisexual sculptress Giulietta Trapani, brings the right level of passion, humanity and boldness to her character. In Act II, she delivers her two big musical numbers numbers - "There Is More to Love" and Hand Me the Wine and the Dice" - with such natural strength and invention, they quickly become showstoppers that are not easily forgotten. Kevin Colson is well cast as Alex's uncle George Dillingham, who is also the former lover of Giulietta Trapani. It's a part that is instinctively emotional, cynical, poignant and righteous. In character, Colson hits all of these marks splendidly using his own propulsive energy and creativity to full advantage.


The Broadway production of "Aspects of Love" opened April 8, 1990 at the Broadhurst Theatre and ran through March 2, 1991 for a total of 377 performances. It starred Michael Ball as Alex Dillingham, Ann Crumb as Rose Vibert, Kathleen Rowe McAllen as Giulietta Trapani and Kevin Colson as George Dillingham. It was nominated for six Tony Awards including  Best Musical and Best Original Score, but didn't win any.

(This review was originally published on April 27, 1990.  Additional changes including minor edits, cuts, new commentary and verbiage were incorporated on June 18, 2020)

Looking Back, A Review, The Tony Award-Winning Broadway Production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Sunset Boulevard" Starring Glenn Close and Alan Campbell

By James V. Ruocco

Amidst the hype, advance ticket sales of $37.5 million, the ugly firings of Patti LuPone and Faye Dunaway, and reported backstage mishaps with scenery and costumes, "Sunset Boulevard" has finally arrived on Broadway.

And, it is a class act, so sophisticated and emotionally moving, it may surprise anyone prepared to hate it or hurl daggers at Andrew Lloyd Webber for tampering with Billy Wilder's celebrated 1950 film of the same name.

To Webber's credit, he not only retains the dark, sardonic tone of Wilder's hypnotic tale of broken dreams, but creates a musical drama with none of the soppy sentimentality of  "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Cats."

"Sunset Boulevard," through grand in scale, is a musical of ideas, nuances and intense intimacy. It asks much of its audience and it challenges them to think.

If anyone was born to play the faded, delusional, aging silent film screen star, immortalized on film by Gloria Swanson, it's Glenn Close.

Her Norma Desmond, a proud relic of Hollywood's glorious past who actually believes she hasn't been forgotten, is yet another one of those legendary stage performances theatergoers won't be able to stop talking about for years to come.

Close is an enthralling actress who takes hold of the part and makes it her own, but eerily conveys the sumptuous past of her character's glory days as "the greatest star of all."

At the center of the story (circa, 1949) is hapless screenwriter Joe Gillis (Alan Campbell), who, after fleeing car repossessors,  accidentally drives right into the estate of 50-ish film star Norma Desmond.

A strident women prone to "moments of melancholy," she is lovingly cared by Max von Mayerling (George Hearn), a former film director who acts as her trusted confidante and lackey.

However, once she learns that Gillis is a screenwriter, she engages him as her "script doctor" for "Salome," a silent movie with which she plans to make "her return" to the movies.

"Shouldn't there be some dialogue?" he asks.

"I can say anything I want with my eyes," cries Norma.

In exchange for free lodging, full salary and house privileges, Gillis eventually becomes her lover and kept man.

Closely modeled after Wilder's brilliant 1950 film, "Sunset Boulevard" is retold from Joe's point of view and retains most of its sterling catch phrases and scathing show biz observations.

Given the musical's shrewd, elaborate and seamless set-shifting of hydraulic mechanisms, director Trevor Nunn adapts a fluid, involving cinematic style that befits the impending dramatic action, plot ambiguities and musical numbers.

Here, as in Webber's beguiling "Aspects of Love," Nunn is a fiercely focused auteur highly sensitive to emotion, interplay, expression and piercing dramatic clarity.

Musically, Webber's "Sunset Boulevard" score (Don Black and Christopher Hampton did the lyrics) is his most thematically integrated work since "Aspects of Love."

From Norma's haunting ballads "As If We Never Said Goodbye" and "With One Look" to the jazzy irony behind Joe's "Sunset Boulevard," every song has been rigorously planned by Webber and his songwriting team.

Even the musical's romantic melodies ("Too Much in Love to Care," "Girl Meets Boy"), comic turns ("The Lady's Paying," "Eternal Youth Is Worth a Little Suffering") and vibrant ensemble numbers ("Let's Have Lunch," "This Time Next Year") are unobtrusively weaved into the storyline.

Kent resident Bob Avain, who staged "Sunset Boulevard's" musical numbers, is a sizeable talent whose choreography is extremely pictoral, ingenious and sensitive to the story, the period and its Hollywood surroundings.

As Joe Gillis, Alan Campbell is an exciting, charismatic performer with a strong stage presence who catches every nuance and mood swing of his character.

He's completely convincing as the youthful screenwriter-turned-gigolo. And when he sings, he brings bite, dimension and character to Webber's music, enunciating  every clever syllable of Black and Hampton's lyrics.

George Hearn, who portrays Max von Mayerling, looks a lot like Erich von Stroheim, who played the same part in the movie. He too brings a sense of mystery, dignity and creepiness to the role. His "Greatest Star of All" tribute to Norma will bring tears to your eyes.

The Broadway production of "Sunset Boulevard" opened November 17, 1994 at the Minskoff Theatre and ran through March 22, 1997 for a total of 977 performances. It starred Glenn Close as Norma Desmond, Alan Campbell as Joe Gillis, George Hearn as Max von Mayerling and Alice Ripley as Betty Schaefer. It won seven Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Actress in a Musical, Best Featured Actor in a Musical, Best Direction of a Musical and Best Original Score.

(This review was originally published on December, 4, 1994)