By Harry Haun This time out The Terrible Teutonic Journalist is played by Ana Reeder, who is not German at all. "I'm from Mississippi. My whole family is from Mississippi," she said, presenting two cases in point: her stepmom and her little sister. She also presented her beau, Jason Bulter Harner, "a wonderful actor," and his resume: "He was in that Bill Irwin thing, Mr. Fox: A Rumination, and The Invention of Love on Broadway. And he's going to do The Glass Menagerie down in D.C. He'll be Tom to Sally Field's Amanda."
With all the Southern belle introducing, Reeder had to be reminded this was her Broadway debut. "It does feel a little bit different," she allowed. "It's a slight altitude change, but the work feels essentially the same. I'm real honored to step into this."
Byron Jennings, ordinarily the most urbane of Barrymores and Cowards on stage, plays Linney's art-hating archeologist hubby—his thickest Brit, yet! "I'm having a shamelessly good time," he admitted, reveling in the unexpected casting. "I love this kind of role, and the more of these roles I can do, I resist being pegged as far as what kinds of things I'll be asked to do. I'm always on the lookout for roles that will show different sides of me."
He credits his inclusion in this production to director Sullivan, with whom he started some 30 years ago in Shakespeare. "With Dan, I don't audition. He called me up. I will do anything with him at anytime anywhere. He's one of the greatest directors working."
26 May 2004
"It is quite exhilarating and still quite scary [to do this play]," the actor confesses. "I think all of us have talked about this. I know that Laura feels this way—that, after two weeks of previews, it's rare to feel so nervous and unsure of your footing this far into a run each time you do the show. But this is a good thing because the show is so delicate and nuanced it has to be genuinely discovered and explored each time. And this means that there may be moments that you love that don't necessary come back each time."
Shenkman is the other cast member who has to roll with the big age punches. The actor is 35, comes on as 39 and ends up 22—a roller-coaster ride if ever there was one.
Next order of business for the busy Sullivan is the L.A. transfer to his recent hit, Intimate Apparel, to the Mark Taper Forum with the entire cast intact. (And, yes, he does feel some vindication when, after Margo Jefferson's pan in The New York Times, the rest of the critical community rose up as one and named it The New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play of the Year.) "We'll go in July, and we'll open there at the end of the month.
"And the very next day after we open that, we will start the next Donald Margulies' play, Brooklyn Boy. It's about a midlife Jewish novelist. Adam Arkin is going to do it. We'll start it at South Coast Rep in September, and then we'll bring it to MTC in January."
Whether he's Brooklyn Boy or not, Margulies has a home at Manhattan Theatre Club.
