Greta Lambert

The love affair with her Alabama audiencehasn’t lost its spark

By Robyn Bradley Litchfield

Montgomery, Ala.: Work in Alabama?

Absolutely not, Birmingham-born actor Greta Lambert decided early in her career. Once she’d completed graduate school, she couldn’t wait to get the heck out of the South and head north, first to Washington, D.C., and then on to New York City.

“I was one of those people who tries to run away from her roots,” says Lambert, the only actor in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival family who has been with the state theatre since its 1985 move from Anniston to Montgomery. “It’s interesting because once I was back here, it was like a spiritual homecoming.”

Over the course of the past 21 years, this “homecoming queen” has earned her crown, captivating audiences in one ASF production after another, playing such theatrical grand dames as Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Blanche DuBois and Hedda Gabler, to name a few.

Lambert flashes a smile as she remembers each of those landmark roles. A petite but striking woman with chestnut hair and brilliant blue eyes, she stays fit not only by walking, gardening and performing stretching exercises but by multitasking at the theatre, where in addition to acting she teaches and directs the occasional production.

Lambert isn’t keen on sharing her age, but these days she isn’t shying away from more mature roles. “When a play comes around again the second or third time,” she reasons, “you get to move into older roles—it’s an interesting cycle.” Lambert has graduated from such ingénue characters as Viola and Rosalind to figures like Gertrude, Shirley Valentine and the adult Jean Louise Finch, whom she portrayed in ASF’s powerful 2006 repertory production of To Kill a Mockingbird.

But at any age, Lambert is completely committed to each role, whether it involves tackling a new dialect or learning to style hair, which made her Truvy even more credible in ASF’s 2004 Steel Magnolias.

Just ask her fans. Rick Harmon, features editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, has followed Lambert’s career since her move to Montgomery. “For more than 20 years, she’s given us performances so diverse that they’ve been linked only by their brilliance,” testifies Harmon, who frequently reviews ASF productions. “She’s been cruel, kind, regal, uncultured, witty, humorless, passionate, cold, young and old—but always believable. How many times do you have the rare and wonderful opportunity to have a long-term love affair with a superb performer?”

ASF subscriber Joy Blondheim is another of the actor’s most dedicated admirers. “Greta brings such life to every character she plays, whether she’s starring in something or playing a supporting role,” she says. Blondheim, a breast cancer survivor, and her husband Richard worked closely with Lambert and her husband, fellow ASF actor Rodney Clark, on a 2001 production to raise money for the Blondheims’ Joy to Life Foundation, which provides free mammograms for medically underserved women in the Montgomery area. Clark directed and Lambert starred in the one-woman show When Life Doesn’t Turn Out the Way You Planned, written by oncology nurse Kevin W. Sowers.

The experience brought Blondheim and the actress even closer, but there are countless theatregoers from central Alabama and beyond who also feel as if they know Lambert intimately.

“It’s funny. People think we know each other because they’ve seen me on stage,” Lambert acknowledges. “They talk about the plays and tell me what they like—and what they don’t like. They don’t mind sharing negative comments with you,” she laughs. “It’s just part of being in the spotlight.”

Still, Lambert, who can be as unassuming off stage as she is commanding on, doesn’t think of herself as a “star”—her goal is simply to be the best actor she can be. She certainly ranks high on ASF producing artistic director Geoffrey Sherman’s list. “Greta is one of the best actors I have had the pleasure of working with,” says Sherman, who has cast her as Linda Loman in this season’s Death of a Salesman, as well as Appalachian woman Ivy Rowe in the upcoming remounting of Fair and Tender Ladies. The latter drama had its world premiere in 1998 as part of ASF’s Southern Writers’ Project, then toured in 2000.

To say that Lambert is eager to revisit her old friend Ivy is an understatement—the opportunity to reprise that role in the popular piece based on Lee Smith’s critically acclaimed novel has the actress on cloud nine. “Some roles I know bone-marrow deep, like Ivy Rowe and Blanche DuBois. Maybe it’s because of my regional knowledge, but with Ivy, it’s like plugging into a historical me,” Lambert enthuses.

Lambert has hopes that Fair and Tender Ladies may go to New York in the fall of 2007, as she would like nothing more than to introduce New York audiences to the special mountain woman she has come to love. “Playing Ivy Rowe is like walking into a room I had forgotten about—like finding a missing puzzle piece of myself that I didn’t know I was missing,” she avows.

That’s not to say that Lambert doesn’t take pleasure in portraying classical literature’s greatest characters—and, in fact, it was juicy roles from Shakespeare and Ibsen and the Greeks that lured her home to ASF and Alabama, “kicking and screaming” all the way. Before she knew it, though, 10 years had passed, and she was happy. She still is.

Lambert and Clark, who met in 1995 during a production of Mockingbird in St. Louis and married in 1999, have had numerous opportunities to work together—Clark was Atticus Finch opposite Lambert’s Jean Louise in ASF’s Mockingbird, which closed at the end of July; in 2005, they portrayed Joe and Kate Keller in an emotionally explosive staging of All My Sons; Sherman has cast them together again in Salesman, with Clark as Willy Loman, this coming March.

When she directs, Lambert’s mild manner and kindness puts actors at ease, says her husband, who starred in the 2004 production of Proof his wife directed. She never raises her voice, never puts anyone down—that’s just not her style, he attests. And as a performer, “I firmly believe that Greta would grace any stage in the country. Just because she does not make her home in New York City doesn’t mean that she is not on the same level as every actor we import from there,” he adds.

In addition to performing and directing, Lambert serves on the University of Alabama/ASF master of fine arts/professional actor training program faculty. She has done some film and TV work, including roles on “Picket Fences” and “Young Riders,” but her heart is clearly in the theatre. “I’m doing great theatre with great artists, for the people of Alabama—and the fit is right,” she declares. “I grew up with the myth that success meant Broadway and suffering before getting great roles. But there’s so much more. It’s being here that’s allowed me to keep growing and changing.”

And working—no, thriving—in Alabama.

Robyn Bradley Litchfield covers food and the arts for the Montgomery Advertiser.