When Alan Feinstein was picked by Pioneer Theatre Company to play the role of Eddie, proprietor of a bar in lower Manhattan in Herb Gardner's "Conversations With My Father," he arrived in a hit-the-ground-running mode with his lines already learned.
He'd been an understudy in the same role for a limited-run engagement in Los Angeles, where 1992 Tony Award winner Judd Hirsch was repeating his Broadway performance as Eddie.But Hirsch is a healthy guy, and Feinstein (where have I seen that face!) spent his time waiting in the wings.
So, when the opportunity arose to actually play the role of Eddie Goldberg on stage in front of a real audience, Feinstein grabbed it.
Directed by Tom Markus, the PTC version of Gardner's memory play is scheduled Jan. 5-22 on the Lees Main Stage of the Pioneer Memorial Theatre building on the University of Utah campus.
"Conversations With My Father" is the fourth production Markus has directed on the Lees Main Stage. He also directed another major Gardner drama, "I'm Not Rappaport," in 1989, plus Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" and Molier's "The Miser."
Markus first met Feinstein when the actor was playing Stanley in a 25th anniversary Broadway production of "A Streetcar Named Desire," which was being directed by Jules Irving, one of Markus' friends.
"He's had a good career in both film and stage," Markus said recently about Feinstein, "and I had no idea he was doing the show in Los Angeles. I sent a list to our casting director in New York and Feinstein's name was on it. She reported that he was understudying the Eddie Goldberg role in L.A. . . . so we made him an offer."
Feinstein is probably at that awkward stage of his career. You've seen his face in dozens of television and Hollywood film projects, but the name just doesn't connect.
He's had roles in such popular series as "Murder, She Wrote," "Falcon Crest" (where he played Malcolm Sinclair in seven episodes), "Santa Barbara" (a recurring role), and "Law and Order," plus featured roles in "Masada" and several movie-of-the-week productions.
On the big screen, you may have seen him in "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" (as Professor Engle), "Love and War," "Joe Panther" or "Madman." His Broadway roles, in addition to "Streetcar," include George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Marco in "A View From the Bridge," for which he received a New York Drama Desk Award.
Markus has assembled a strong cast for "Conversations With My Father," including three from the cast of PTC's most recent production, "Inspecting Carol" - Carolyn Hurlburt, Howard Samuelsohn and Margaret Crowell.
Hurlburt, who just recently moved to Salt Lake City and whose glowing performance as Zorah Bloch in "Inspecting Carol" literally charmed the audiences, will play Gusta (Gloria), Eddie Goldberg's wife, in "Conversations With My Father."
Markus noted that, with two children in the cast, rehearsals (at least until schools closed for the holidays) have been an exercise in creative scheduling.
- ABOUT THE PLAY: The key characters are . . .
- Eddie Ross, a hard-bitten, unsentimental man who has changed his name from Itzik Goldberg (because "Eddie Ross" sounds less Jewish and more American).
- Gloria Ross, Eddie's wife (who changed her name, reluctantly, from Gusta Goldberg). Their children are:
- Charlie Ross, their youngest son, 42, a successful novelist. (As an adult, Charlie, played by Howard Samuelsohn, narrates the play and is seen throughout the production. Nicholas T. Murdock will also portray Charlie at the ages of 11 and 13 in two of the play's flashbacks.)
- Joey Ross, older son and a boxer (depicted at the age of 17, played by Gordon Greenberg, and at the age of 10, played by Aaron Nelson.
- Anton Zaretsky, an actor and boarder in the Ross home, played by Jack Axelrod.
- Josh Ross, Charlie's 21-year-old son, played by Greenberg.
Other characters include three "regulars" at the bar: Nick, an Irish ex-cop; Hannah, a blind Jewish woman; Finney, an Irish bookmaker, played respectively by Bob Orsmby, Margaret Crowell and Chet Carlin, with Steve Sater as Italian gangster Jimmy Scalso and Frank Gerrish as Blue, an Irish thug who works for Scalso.
The drama is a "memory play," which begins in 1976 as Charlie is getting ready to sell the bar that his late father, Eddie, had owned and operated for many years. While Charlie's son, Josh, rummages through an upstairs apartment for mementos of his grandparents, Charlie - in flashbacks to 1936, 1944, 1945 and 1965 - reminisces about growing up in the same setting and tries to come to terms with his overbearing father.
Markus, who has directed works by both Neil Simon and Herb Gardner, notes that there are similarities in kinds of characters both playwrights focus on. Both write about people from their own experiences, "and there's certainly a similarity in the kind of mixture of comedy and humor and the very real situations of a somewhat moving nature."
But while both Simon and Gardner write about the Jewish-American experience, Markus sees Gardner's plays as being more "emotionally true" than Simon's.
" `Conversations With My Father' is a very strong play and a lot of it is very funny and, ultimately, it is a very powerful play," said Markus, who first saw it in Seattle.
Markus said audiences should be cautioned, however, that the play does contain some strong language. "It could be offensive for some patrons," he said.
The dialogue in "Conversations" also contains many Yiddish words and expressions, but theatergoers won't need a Yiddish dictionary to understand what's going on. Many of them are explained by Charlie as he narrates the play.
Successful as both a playwright and a screenwriter, Gardner adapted his stage productions of "A Thousand Clowns," "The Goodbye People" and "Thieves" for their Hollywood versions. He also wrote the screenplay for "Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?"
- DIRECTOR TOM MARKUS, in his director's notes for the "Conversations" program, comments that he, like central character Eddie Ross, came from a Jewish background. Just recently, while looking through a college alumni magazine, he said he was struck by the number of Jews who had changed their names since graduation.
"The Jews of playwright Herb Gardner's generation (and mine) find themselves caught between two eras, struggling to honor the past and build the future. We need to reconcile our conflicts and to understand why our parents were as tough as they were - tough enough to be survivors," he said.
The central message of "Conversations With My Father," according to Markus, is how to reconcile one's aspirations for the future with one's heritage from the past.
Markus, who describes himself as "a bit of a gypsy," has been in the theater department at the U. for six years.
Over the past 30 years, he's been involved in both professional and academic theater, including teaching at the University of California, Yale and the City University of New York. His professional work includes stints as artistic director of TheaterVirginia in Richmond and theaters in New Hampshire and Maine.
While Markus has no directorial projects lined up in the immediate future, he and PTC's resident costume designer, Linda Sarver, are co-writing a book, "A Novel Approach to Theater," scheduled to be published in June. It's a guide to various novels in which the central setting is theater, with short blurbs about the novels and humorous descriptions.
*****
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Ticket information
"Conversations With My Father" opens Wednesday, Jan. 5, at Pioneer Memorial Theatre on the University of Utah campus, 300 S. University St., after which the Pioneer Theatre Company production, directed by Tom Markus, continues Mondays-Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. through Jan. 22. For tickets, call the box office at 581-6961.
Warning: This production contains strong language which some patrons may find offensive.