By Harry Haun
29 Jun 2007

Keeping such intelligent and inventive actresses on track was the challenge for director Michael Wilson: "Oh, my God! It was a wild and crazy ride. They kept me on my toes. Harriet would come in with some idea, then Margaret would want to try something."

One bit of business from the Colin camp: slipping into her lover's oversized shoes and clomping about her apartment delivering exposition dialogue. "Margaret found that once we were on stage," he said. "That didn't even happen until we were in tech. It used to be a much longer bit, but we kept cutting and shaping it together to get it just right."

Harris' contribution occurs during one of her volatile tantrums. She rips up a book, flings it at the wall, picks up the phone to do the same — and it goes off in her hand. She answers it instantly in mid-ring. It brings the house down. "When she came up with this idea, I just looked at her and asked, 'Is that in the world of our play?' She said, 'Well, we could try it in previews and see.' We did just that, and it opened up a whole new world for us."

The rarity of a three-act play on Broadway was no problem for him. "I didn't get any pressure about it at all. Roundabout was lovely. They were willing to go with whatever we wanted to do. When we did the reading, we did it only in two acts. At first, we tried to do it only in two, but it didn't work for the structure of the play, because van Druten wrote towards the curtain. Each act has its own ending so we ultimately stepped back."

Wilson's next New York assignment is Dividing the Estate, the Horton Foote play at Primary Stages. "I have till Aug. 19 off," he said. "I'm going back up to Hartford Stage [where he is in his ninth season as artistic director]. We close Lynn Redgrave's Nightingale tomorrow night — that's her play about her grandmother. Joe Hardy directed it, and quite nicely. We've had a plethora of New York producers up, and I think that you're going to see it on Broadway next season."

As one of the men straddling the Kit-Milly fence, the sharply tailored Bogardus looks like he just stepped out of GQ — the man in the gray flannel Speedo. "Well," he shrugged, "when they spend a couple of thousand and measure your body, you tend to look good."

Stoll, the other man in their lives, enjoyed not being pestered by the press at the party. In real life, his head is clean-shaven. "Everybody is looking for someone with floppy hair."

Technically, he made his Broadway debut — not so you'd notice — in the spectacle of Jack O'Brien's Henry IV: "I had a number of roles. Mouldy was the only one that had any lines. It was pretty much spear-carrier. I'd definitely say this was my Broadway debut."

He got this plum long-distance — by submitting an audition tape — and Roundabout flew him in from L.A. to meet with director Wilson and read with both Colin and Davis.

The cad potential in the part is pretty pronounced — dumping our heroine for firmer flesh — but Stoll skates through with the greatest of ease. "The hair goes a long way in keeping the audience on my side," he was quick to confess. "My character is so in-the-moment at any one time that his inability to actually see how much pain Kit is in is something the audience can — and, I think, do — overlook. He's just a guy in love.

"I knew Diane before we did this show, and it's fun. With Margaret, it's a very different sort of thing. In fact, it's different every single night with Margaret. She can't do the same show twice, and I just have to sorta be open and there with her. It's exhilarating."

Darlow, a gifted comedienne, doesn't have many actual laughlines but gets giggles when she strolls across the back of the stage to answer the doorbell. "My agent said, 'You're the only person I know who can walk across the stage and get a laugh.'" And why is that?, I wondered aloud. "I'm just as cheap as Christmas trash, Harry. You know that."

Paul Rudnick could feel some special pride for having put Harris on the theatrical map, having written her a multi-character tour de force in Jeffrey — but he declined the honor: "Nobody needed to put Harriet on the map. Harriet is the map. Harriet's the capital. I kept writing more roles for her in Jeffrey to make sure she stayed on stage. I'm not joking. Harriet did all the early readings. I just put a gun to her head and said, 'Harriet, I will write 50 roles, whatever it takes.' She is just an inspiration. She's beyond sensational."

Numbering among the season's first first-nighters: Joan Copeland, John Lee Beatty, Tommy Tune, Lynn Nottage, Anne Jackson, Andrew McCarthy, Warren Leight, Kathleen Marshall, Ron Raines, Penny Fuller, Eve Ensler, Andre Bishop, Bernard Gersten, Lisa Emery, Scott Ellis, Richard Ferrone, Richard Poe and arriving late from their own shows, 110 in the Shade's Audra McDonald and Inherit the Wind's Beth Fowler.

The cast of Old Acquaintance takes their opening night bows.
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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