By Monty Arnold
11 Jul 2008

	Walter Bobbie with Christopher Durang
	photo by Aubrey Reuben

Christopher Durang rattled his own family tree to get this achingly sad-and-silly assault on the vanities, insanities and inanities of domestic life. As if his text weren't soul-bearing enough, in the original production — at Joe Papp's urging — he found himself literally and physically bearing witness to his parents' deteriorating dreams.

The fact that Durang can't — thank God! — go home again cued Bobbie to his approach. "I didn't want to see Chris, at this point in his life, playing scenes with a father 20 years younger. This role exists in the early part of the man's life. The issues he addresses are the issues of a young man and a younger playwright. With someone other than Chris cast, it's a different part. Suddenly, the part has to exist as a role."

In his Times review, Frank Rich described the work as "Durang's Glass Menagerie," foreshadowing a Tennessee Williams spoof the playwright would do nine years later: For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls turned Laura into Lawrence, a repressed, mama-dominated, lavender wallflower. Under Bobbie's direction, it bowed among the one-acts in Ensemble Studio Theatre's 1994 marathon, then broke into a regular Manhattan Theatre Club run with other antics, umbrella-titled Durang/Durang.

There's a zigzaggy history to Durang/Bobbie, too: Bobbie performed in Durang's Broadway debut, A History of the American Film, and Durang performed in Bobbie's Encores! edition of Call Me Madam. This two-hat trick works for Bobbie: "Sometimes I feel that, as an actor, there are many people who can do what I do just as well if not better, but every once in a while a project will come to me as a director and I will go, 'This is mine. I really feel more useful here.' I love helping a writer tell a story."

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