The Persistence of Memory

In July 2011, Austin Pendleton and Michael Wilson got on the phone to talk about their mutual friend, the late playwright Romulus Linney. A shorter version of this conversation appeared in American Theatre's September issue, alongside the script of Linney's final play, Over Martinis, Driving Somewhere. Linney wrote the play with Eleanor Cooney about Cooney's mother Mary, with whom Linney had a relationship in the 1960s. (For video of a lecture by Linney about the play's inspiration, and about his writing craft, click here.)

In the interview, Wilson and Pendleton discuss a hymn that is at the emotional center of Over Martinis, Driving Somewhere. To hear Romulus Linney singing "Fairest Lord Jesus," recorded for New York Stage and Film's workshop production in 2010, click here:  

AUSTIN PENDLETON: I love this play. Romulus told me about it. The last time I saw him outside of a hospital room, he'd come with his friend to see me in Rosmersholm in mid-November. We went out after the matinee up to the corner for a bowl of soup. He was robust. I remember thinking that, although he was 80, he was talkative and he looked great. This was two or three weeks before he found out he was quite sick.

I went on Christmas Eve to the hospital he was in. He had been diagnosed and thought he had six months to a year to live. He and I sat in his hospital room, into the evening, and for quite a while he talked cheerfully about how he was dying. He talked about a novel he was working on, and how the great thing when you know you're dying is that you don't care what the reviews are going to be like. And he said, "Because I have lung cancer, I don't think I can go to the theatre anymore, because I'll be coughing so much." Then he said, "But you know, Austin, I think I've seen enough plays."

WILSON: Oh God, that's just like him.

PENDLETON: And in the middle of it he started telling me about Over Martinis, Driving Somewhere. I don't know when he'd written it, but it sounded like it was recent.

WILSON: I think it was very recent.

PENDLETON: And then he talked about how he was going to get a 50-inch TV screen for his New York apartment and just watch movies. We started to plan what movies we'd see in the next six or eight months, however long he had. He was cheerful, but that word is only part of what he was. He was excited. He was looking forward–

WILSON: –to a whole different chapter.

PENDLETON: Right! He was talking about the whole new perspective he had, and he was witty and he was fun and he was communicative. Next thing I know, of course, he had that sudden turn for the worse.

WILSON: It was wonderful how you spoke at his memorial about all of the history you have with him, which I believe goes back to Williamstown Theatre Festival, right?

PENDLETON: When I was an apprentice there back in 1957, the first year they had apprentices, he was an Equity actor there. In those days there were, like, 12 Equity actors, 12 apprentices, 3 non-Equity actors and 2 or 3 designers there for the whole season. We all lived in a fraternity house and spent 18 hours every day together. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner together; we went out after the show every night. The first show we did was The Teahouse of the August Moon and he played Sakini.

WILSON: Oh my gosh.

PENDLETON: Of course it was a different era then. I remember the first day of rehearsal–the first professional show I was ever around, let alone in–thinking: Who is this guy? He was a brilliant actor. I had no idea he was going to be a writer; I'm not sure he had any idea he was going to be a writer.

WILSON: He became one of our great Renaissance men of the theatre. He was a brilliant actor, he became a brilliant playwright, and he was an amazing director, from what everyone told me. When I had him in the room there at New York Stage and Film at Vassar College–and I feel so blessed now to have had that glorious time with him last summer–

PENDLETON: When you did the reading of this play?

WILSON: When we did the workshop, yeah, of this play. We had about a week together. James DeMarse played Romulus and Neil Huff played both Mary's last husband and also Ellie's husband. And Lecy Goransonwas in it and Kathryn Meisle and Shannon Burkett. We had an amazing cast. James DeMarse had a wonderful kind of laconic charm. He captured Romulus, from that first scene where Ellie calls Romulus and is searching for anything she can find out about her mother that might be able to reach her. Of course Romulus had not seen or really, as he admitted, thought of Mary for many years. But he told us that when it all came flooding back, just as the character Romulus does in the play, he put down the phone and went out and got the book Death in Slow Motion and he read it in one sitting, and then he called Ellie back. He was on this Proustian journey, I think, to go back to his early beginnings. Ellie's search for Mary became Romulus's quest to retrieve his own memories.

The workshop was the first time he was hearing the play out loud. These actors were bringing these moments back to life–driving, antiquing, stopping for martinis along the way–and tears would come to his eyes as he watched them. He was, in his words, a rough and tumble, simple man from North Carolina, who had been thrust into New York and didn't have the sophisticated pedigree of the circle that Mary was in. Of course, as we all know, he's the grandson of senators; he comes with his own special pedigree and he belonged where he was.

PENDLETON: But he was a diamond in the rough.

WILSON: And he was living in a multi-floor walk-up above that market on the Upper West Side, when the Upper West Side was not what it is now.

PENDLETON: And that bar he would go to, with the jukebox no one ever played, where nobody ever talked, and he would just sit. You know, among the many things that are amazing about this play, apart from the sheer quality of the writing and its adventurous form, is that Romulus is so honest about himself. I really love it when playwrights do this, because often even some of the very good playwrights do not.

WILSON: That's just it. He's brutally honest and also directly and simply truthful throughout the play. I think the play flowed from him very easily. It wasn't emotionally and psychologically easy, but he was not trying to pull any punches about Mary, and especially not about himself.

PENDLETON: Absolutely. That whole episode in which Ellie as a kid had been in a car crash and Romulus tells the police he doesn't have any idea where Mary is. I mean, what playwright writes that kind of thing about themselves? The honesty! We've all done bad things. Those things don't tend to find their way into playwrights' plays about themselves.

WILSON: It's interesting that this is his last full-length play, and it's one of his most deeply personal.

PENDLETON: I acted in the play he wrote just before this, called Love Drunk. Have you read that? It's his take on The Master Builder. It's about a guy and the young girl he picks up; they're both sex addicts. We did it at the Abingdon Theatre Company in their small space. It's astonishing.

WILSON: So few people have written about sex addiction. I think Romulus understood it, on some level. One of the ways he and Mary came together was not only through their love of words and literature and language, but also they loved being sensual and sexual together. That was despite their age difference–or perhaps because of it, fueled by it.

PENDLETON: This play and Love Drunk–there's something about both plays that is, in the very best sense of this word, appalling.

WILSON: (Laughs.) Right.

PENDLETON: And it's so thrilling. He doesn't beat himself up, and he doesn't let himself off the hook. It's just this clear-eyed confrontation with himself.

WILSON: Because it's so clear-eyed and so sharply and compassionately observed, and completely observed, you're not only riveted by it but you end up feeling less alone, both in terms of thinking about affairs you might have had yourself, or choices you've made. The other great accomplishment here is that he's taken Death in Slow Motion, a gorgeously written book by Eleanor, Mary's daughter, and is able to dramatize episodes he wasn't, obviously, present for–the way Eleanor had to cope as Mary's descent became so relentless and irretrievable.

PENDLETON: What about that ending, when they play Mary the hymn Romulus has sent her, and she ends up in bed with the male patient?

WILSON: You know, when that scene happened at the reading at Vassar, a huge triumphant laugh rose out of the audience. Romulus brought tremendous humanity and humor to it. When she did that–that was the Mary he knew, that he loved. He knew part of Mary's vital spirit was very much alive. It was her own victory that she had a romp in the hay. The audience loved it, and it gave them some relief from the pain they had been observing and experiencing.

I find the play very gentle, and kind of picaresque too, in the way you go through these episodes of the past. You feel like the relationship is building, even though you know how it ends because of the phone call to Rom in the beginning. You somehow get so involved in their relationship that you begin rooting for them.

PENDLETON: How did you meet Romulus?

WILSON: I always had this great fascination with Romulus; we're both from North Carolina. He and Horton Foote were very close, and Horton and I were close collaborators. Romulus and I always talked about wanting to work together. When he called me and said, "I've got this play and I'd love you to work with me on it," I leapt at the chance. It felt like Romulus and I were continuing something together that had a long history. He was with us every day in those rehearsals. And Laura, his wife, was very present throughout the process. She knew how important the play was for him.

Even though it was a script-in-hand, music-stand kind of reading, we did have movement in it. We wanted to give some visualization to the audience of Rom on the East Coast, Ellie on the West Coast, memories in the center. I would turn to him during rehearsal and say, "Is this how you imagined us exploring these scenes?" He was so encouraging. If we were stepping aside from what he felt was the core intent of the scene, he would say, "Perhaps I've not written it clearly if you all aren't seeing it immediately; maybe it needs to be written a bit more specifically or vividly." Such a generous collaborator. I think that comes from the fact that, just like Horton, he started out as an actor. He was immensely respectful of actors and, having directed, he understood the director's process too. Not all playwrights do!

PENDLETON: When I acted in The Sorrows of Frederick at Signature Theatre Company and I learned Romulus was going to direct it, I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd never worked with a playwright directing his own work before. But he was a brilliant director. You forgot he was the writer.

WILSON: He was such a total man of the theatre. He really understood the collaborative art form that theatre is. If something could be better accomplished through a gesture, through a look, he was willing to pull back on the language. He wanted the play and the story and the feelings to be put forth.

PENDLETON: You referred to it a little while ago as a full-length play. Is it a full-length play?

WILSON: Well you know, it felt very much like a full-length evening. It felt like you wanted it to go straight through, no intermission, and it could play at a beautiful 80 or 85 minutes, and you'd have a very rich journey. There were some scenes Rom felt could be fleshed out, that I think he made longer in the draft published in American Theatre. He wrote me a lovely letter in the fall about what he'd done with the play after the workshop. I know it was his intent and passion to see the play produced. It is in the hands of some theatres that have history with him, and I think it will be done–I know it will be done.

PENDLETON: You know something about Romulus? This is true in all the years I knew him. He was obviously–in the very, very best sense of this word–fiercely artistically ambitious as a writer. Yet he was totally, as a writer, uncompetitive. He spoke respectfully of every other writer.

WILSON: Both things are true. First of all, this play shows how he's able to take the dramatic form, turn it inside out, put it into a crazy shape, and basically twist and turn it into whatever he needs to tell his story. To move so fluidly between present day and memory time...he did that so easily. He was so facile with it. That fluidity is so hard to achieve.

PENDLETON: Oh yeah, and it looks effortless in this play. You only realize how much he's accomplished when you get through to the end of it.

WILSON: And it's so clear to the audience where and when we are. But the thing about the non-competitiveness–what struck me that day at his memorial service was how much Romulus was, if you will, a community activist for other artists. He really wanted to bring unity among his fellow writers, almost as if he felt they were an endangered species.

PENDLETON: It was very moving what Edward Albee said at the memorial about how he and Romulus would be downtown, watching a new play by a comparatively new playwright, and Romulus was behind that writer even if the play wasn't working. He was on the side of the writer no matter what was happening on stage that evening. The way Edward selected that to talk about–it just spoke volumes.

WILSON: I think Signature Theatre Company was so fortunate to begin with Romulus, because he became that company's great ambassador. I think he helped attract Edward and Horton and Arthur Miller…he was a big part of it. I'm so glad that through some generous gifts they're naming one of Signature's new theatres after him.

PENDLETON: That's thrilling.

WILSON: It's great that our city is going to have a theatre named after Romulus. He would have loved that, as humble as he was. That would be a lasting legacy.

Clearly Romulus was writing for his own kind of uncompromising truth and he was not going to mold that into some kind of mainstream commercial form. I think he had such a clear vision of that. Would he have liked to have more plays on Broadway? Sure, but it was not meant to be for him. That became less important to him than being able to write the plays with the adventurous hand that he did.

PENDLETON: When we did Love Drunk at the Abingdon, he confided to the director that maybe that play was going to be his big commercial success. When I heard that, I thought: That is so touching, because that play is going to freeze the blood of about two-thirds of the audience. Which it did! It left no one indifferent. It was so sweet and honest and kind of innocent, almost, that he thought this was going to be his crowd-pleaser. (Laughs.) And then when he perceived the controversy about it, he never expressed any disappointment. He was excited people were having all these different responses to it.

WILSON: He always wanted to be engaged in work that mattered.

PENDLETON: And I don't think he ever wrote anything that did not matter.

WILSON: I was just struck by how you used those words: sweet, honest and innocent. There's this center of Over Martinis, Driving Somewhere that is so sweet, and it's always honest, and it's incredibly innocent. Them driving along in that car singing that hymn to one another, stopping off at those antique stores with the whole rest of their lives ahead of them–oh! It is so joyful. And then of course, he's going to ruin the relationship, and they're going to part ways, and he's going to have his ups and downs, and she's going to have this illness. That a woman of such creativity and imagination, who has thrived on her gift with language, would lose that ability–that's the great tragedy.

PENDLETON: Yet in the middle of that, she rediscovers her sensuality through a hymn being sung to her.

WILSON: You know, we have a recording of Romulus singing the hymn [see above]. Jim and Kathryn learned it and sang it live in the middle of the reading. But at the very end, when Mary gets that cassette tape, we played Romulus's voice. Thinking about it now gives me chills.

Romulus was a man of such vast intellectual capacity, but it did not exclude him from finding God in the everyday. I think he did. It was his version of God and faith and the spirit, but I think he believed in some force bigger than who we are that binds us together. He captures that so beautifully with what you just described–that hymn deep in the recesses of her mind that is able to awaken her sensuality. It leaves us with some kind of resilient hope.

PENDLETON: And something else that leaves us with resilient hope is that, at the age of 80, he was writing with a freshness of a person in the prime of his creative life.

 

 

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