By Harry Haun
22 Dec 2006

Lincoln Center's invited audience was low-key, back-burner stuff — mostly artists heeding the LCT role call —Parade's Alfred Uhry, Contact's Susan Stroman and John Weidman. O'Byrne had three of his former leading ladies at his table — Swoosie Kurtz from Frozen and both Cherry Jones and Heather Goldenhersh from Doubt.

"I'm here for Brian and O'Brien and Lincoln Center and half of the world," qualified The Swoose, who just wrapped Roundabout's Heartbreak House on Sunday. "I mean, thank God we have places like Roundabout that does Heartbreak House and Lincoln Center that does an epic like this. Where else could we see things like this? In England they do this as a matter of course, but here the first thing that producers ask you is, 'Is it one set and two characters?' One character would be preferable. Thank God for Lincoln Center!"

Julianna Margulies, of "E.R.," who did time at Lincoln Center, too (Ten Unknowns) and Broadway last spring (Festen), was Ehle's cheerleader for the evening. "Yes, I am also biased, but I think it's a spectacular theatrical experience." She hopes to be back on the boards herself soon. "I'm looking for something, but I always need a break in between."

Ehle, who copped her Tony as another of Stoppard's chaotically married women in the revival of The Real Thing six years ago, would be more than at home in the role without the little summer brush-up she did as Lady Macbeth opposite Liev Schreiber in the park.

"I have never been as happy on stage saying a playwright's words as when I am playing a Stoppard woman," she declared. "It's true. I just adore attempting to embody them."

Accent on "body." She does a nude scene here, and O'Brien has directed it with great delicacy and discretion. (Actually, there are so many other things going on in the scene that you bearly/barely notice.) "I've only done one nude scene when I was 21," she recalled, "and I haven't done any since. But this particular one wasn't an issue."

Amy Irving, who played the ramrod-tough matriarch in the first installment and will be sitting out the third installment, has a single scene with Ehle in Shipwreck that runs maybe eight to ten minutes and is one of the evening's dramatic highlights. She plays Hamilton's estranged wife, and Ehle has been dispatched to return her to the fold.

"I've never timed that scene, but it's all I need," admitted Irving. "That's why I signed on, to tell you the truth. I enjoy it immensely. It's a scene in a play where there aren't a lot of opportunities for two women to have it out. I love working with Jennifer. It's been heaven."

Another who won't be around for the third opus is Crudup, whom you may recall was coughing kinda tubercularly in the first play. In the second, he doesn't quite make it to intermission — but he is allowed an eloquent send-off by Stoppard and O'Brien.

What does he do after intermission? "I think of the scenes I messed up in the first act," he joshed. "Maybe I should take up knitting." He doesn't know what he'll be doing when his confreres charge into Salvage (Installment Three), but, he hastily added, "These plays are an exciting event, and I'm just so happy and delighted that I get to be in the midst of it."

David Pittu, who does a little French bit here and a little Italian bit there, will be one of the first Russkies to defect — to be German: Bertolt Brecht, no less, in Uhry's LoveMusik, which bows May 3 at the Biltmore, "but," he said, "I'm going to be in this show for what I was signed on for — till the extension. They always knew about my other thing."

Pittu will be playing to Michael Cerveris' Kurt Weill and Donna Murphy's Lotte Lenya. "I think they've done some work on it since the last time we've read it, but it's like a kind of collage of their lives, with his music woven through it. I think it's going to be like Hal Prince going back to his essential roots of that influence — that Brechtian style. He loves that stark thing. And I think Donna Murphy's a perfect choice for Lotte Lenya and Michael's wonderful, too. I'm going to get more into Brecht when I finish this third play. We'll start in about a week and a half. We have a shorter rehearsal time for the last one so we have to get it up pretty quickly. We'll be in tech the third week in January."

Harner's role is growing with the plays. In Shipwreck, you see Turgenev and the romantic conflicts around him, writing his best-known work, "A Month in the Country." Coming next: "I have three scenes, and it's right before I write 'Fathers and Sons,' and he meets his lead character for 'Fathers and Sons,' and then there is some more stuff with Herzen.

"I'm having the most amazing time," beams the actor. "It's the kind of acting job you always wanted and then can't believe they don't quite exist. It's exhausting. This play we rehearsed 45 hours, like, before we ran tech. When a lot of the press came on Friday, Tom Stoppard had just come back, and we went back in, and we were sorta peeling the onion even more — but you're doing it in front of an audience, which is exciting, but it's a little scary — especially since the plays are so dense anyway. You think, 'I hope we're getting it.'

"Jack O'Brien is just amazing. I don't know how he has so much energy. Just the amount of communication to make everything up is amazing. He tells a story like no else can. I'm having the best time. We're all looking forward to getting the third one up so we can have a party again because we want to see each other again out of rehearsal and performance mode. Backstage life is a joy. There are nightly dances under the surf — under the black silk. It reminds me of dance-offs. We want to make sure we give good waves."

Billy Crudup, Jenifer Ehle, and Amy Irving at the opening night party for Shipwreck, Part Two of The Coast of Utopia
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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