John Lithgow, a Tony-winning actor and writer, will be regularly blogging on ArtsBeat as he rehearses “King Lear” for Shakespeare in the Park.
Yesterday’s day off fell just when we needed it most. The night before, we had a dress rehearsal, our one chance to run the show uninterrupted before our first performance tonight. It went fine but left me feeling like a truck had run over me.
The dress rehearsal brought an end to an arduous tech week. We finally put together all the bits and pieces that had been scattered throughout the past seven days. There were 40 or 50 people watching, filling a small percentage of seats in the huge theater, but they were all the audience we needed. At long last we felt like we were putting on a play.
A few days before, halfway through rehearsal on a scorching afternoon, I looked out into the empty house and saw a familiar figure sneak in and take a seat behind the director. We spotted each other immediately, exchanged silent greetings from afar, and at the first brief pause in the action, I climbed down from the stage, ran up the aisle and gave him a sweaty hug. It was Sam Waterston.
Sam is a New York actor’s New York actor, a modest, generous-hearted man with an unflagging loyalty to the theater. He is best known to the public for his roles on “Law & Order” and “Newsroom,” but not at the Public Theater. At the Public, he the one actor most closely identified with Free Shakespeare in the Park, for which he has played Cloten, Prospero, Duke Vincentio, Benedick, and both Laertes and Hamlet. When he was Hamlet, I was Laertes. In yet another production of that play, he was Polonius, and on that occasion I paid a similar visit to him during his tech week.
The last time I’d seen Sam was three years ago, backstage at the Public’s Newman Theater. I was there to congratulate him on his performance as King Lear.
With such an intertwined history, Sam’s surprise appearance at the Delacorte stirred instant reflections in me on the nature of the theater. As hard as this business is, we actors are lucky souls. The connection between Sam and me is typical of theater friendships. Ours may be maddeningly fleeting and sporadic, but it brims with shared memories and mutual friends. Now it even includes the parallel experience of playing the same monumental role, and doing so without a trace of rivalry on either side.
Sam took off after checking us out for a half hour. He promised to return to see a preview. In a droll farewell, he joked that he wanted to finally see how it’s done.
He’ll have his chance very soon. We start tonight. The next time I write, our “King Lear” will have been seen by over 1,800 people.