By Harry Haun
Considering that dizzy, depleting merry-go-round of men, McDonald reached the press line after the show looking impossibly beautiful in a black, off-shoulder gown by Tadashi. "It really feels like Bess came to me at the right time in my life," she said. "I'm the right age. I think I've lived enough — or started to live enough — and I'm ready to explore these colors. It's certainly a very fulfilling thing for me creatively to explore this woman and her psyche — to get down in there and figure out what it is that makes her tick. Every night I learn something new about who Bess is.
"I was saying to a really good friend of mine the other day, 'I've started to learn to love her. I was judgmental of her for a while, but I've started to learn to love her.' What I like most about her is her ability to survive. She will survive. She may throw away 'most everything else, but she will survive, and that's kind of an honorable thing. Given what little she has to survive with, she finds a way to survive."
Somehow, none of the controversy raging around her about the show seems to have gotten on her. "What it kinda did was make us isolate ourselves as a company and stay even more focused on the task and hold on to our beliefs and continue to evolve with this piece. We just stayed focused on that. In a way, the more the controversy started to swirl, the more it seemed like, 'Oh, well, let it swirl. It has nothing to do with us.' It got so big, we just thought, 'Okay, that can be that, but we have work to do.'"
13 Jan 2012
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In previous productions, the crippled Porgy negotiated his way around the stage in a goat-drawn cart. Here, he is allowed to walk with a cane, but it is an anguished, contorted shuffle that Lewis makes painful to watch. "We're doing physical therapy every week," the actor said. "The physical [therapist] actually gave [me] the muscles to use and not to use when we first started. These physical therapists work with people who are physically challenged so they told us what we should look out for and how to do it. I'm still actually developing it. It's still a process right now."
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| Director Diane Paulus | ||
| photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN |
Like McDonald, Lewis paid little heed to the war dances of purists. "We just decided to move forward and let the work speak for itself because we knew we had something special. We knew people would love it. We knew the integrity was still there. If anything, we thank the controversy because it shined a light on us. A lot of people probably wouldn't have heard about the show, had it not been for that."
David Alan Grier takes great pleasure in slithering through the snake-in-the-grass role of Sporting Life. "He's evil, and I get to revel in it," he gleefully exclaimed. "When we first started, I felt bad that I had to be so mean and cruel to Audra at the end. Now I just revel in it. It's fun to play a mean guy. Really, it's fun."
Sporting Life contrasts nicely with Grier's first role on Broadway — Jackie Robinson in The First —and the actor was the first of several hundred to audition for the part. The director-lyricist who gave him that part, Martin Charnin, had dropped by backstage the night before. "It was so wonderful to see him again and talk with him, very emotional. It really meant a lot to me. I got a letter backstage during the performance that he was here. He absolutely loved it, and he loved it like a father. He was, like, 'I'm so proud of you. Your voice sounds so great.' He told me how he came up to see me do a play at Yale before I started auditioning for The First, which I never knew. It was just great, man, great, great, great."
There have been three other Broadway roles for Grier in the past 30 years — Dreamgirls, Forum and Race — but it still feels like home to him. "When I come back, people that I've had a long history with look me up. I love Broadway for that. This is the only place where I hear 'Welcome home. Welcome back.'"
Continued...
