INTERVIEW: Annette O’Toole plays Philadelphia matriarch in ‘Show-Off’ revival
The Peccadillo Theater Company is dusting off the George Kelly classic The Show-Off for a rare revival, which is currently playing the Theatre at St. Clement’s in Midtown Manhattan. Starring as the working-class matriarch of an Irish family in Philadelphia is theater, film and TV veteran Annette O’Toole.
Her character is Mrs. Fisher, a strong woman who is suspicious of her daughter’s potential suitor, Aubrey Piper. The mother figure is not impressed by Aubrey and smells a con man at work.
O’Toole is an Academy Award nominee and winner of the Lucille Lortel Award. She is a mainstay on New York stages and can also be seen in a variety of films and TV shows, including Halt and Catch Fire and Smallville.
Performances for The Show-Off run through Saturday, Oct. 21. Recently, Hollywood Soapbox spoke with O’Toole about the new show. Here’s what she had to say:
On what attracted her to the part of Mrs. Fisher …
“The fact that I barely leave the stage for the entire two hours plus of the play was a really interesting challenge to see if I was up for it, and I am very happy to report that I seem to be doing OK. The stamina that’s involved, not just physically but vocally and emotionally, it’s this wonderful test of your powers, and so I just love the idea of it.
“I didn’t know of the play before I had heard of it, but I thought it was an English play. I wasn’t sure what it was, and it was so interesting to find out a little more about it, about George Kelly, and his background, and where he came from and his connection to Grace Kelly [he’s her uncle]. It’s just very interesting, and I love working in New York. I love doing theater. It’s what I’ve been concentrating on for about the last 10 years I guess, and I just love being here. I love that feeling of working hard, and being in front of an audience, and then going home and being completely exhausted. I’m a glutton for acting punishment, and, boy, I’m getting my fill right now.”
On how the rehearsals went with director Dan Wackerman …
“The rehearsals have been great. I really love working with our director, Dan Wackerman, because he’s very, very good at this particular kind of work. He’s very precise. The movement especially is very choreographed, which normally I would find maybe inhibiting, but in this case, with this kind of material, it’s very freeing. … I think that’s where it has to be very precise. Comedy is pretty much the hardest thing you can do.”
On the background of her character …
“They’re a working-class Irish family in Philadelphia. I have a friend who grew up in Philadelphia. He’s a young man in his 40s, but he also was a history major. So he told me a lot about … the way Philadelphia grew up as opposed to New York and Boston. There was a very big Quaker influence, so it kind of affected how people looked at the aristocracy and the richer controlling families in Philadelphia. And they never had this animosity it seemed like between them, and there was this feeling of not getting above yourself, which fed very much into my character.
“She’s a woman who works very hard. She’s a homemaker when homemaker was really a full-time job. I mean, it still is, but she managed all the money. She did everything in her home, all the cleaning, everything, so she’s all over that set. We have stairs. I’m up and down, in the closet. It’s not frantic, but it’s very filled with her life. And it is her domain. The whole thing has been fascinating to look at the period in the mid-’20s and think about this time when my grandmother was a very young woman, and this character is very much like my grandmother. Although she was from Texas, she’s a very similar person: a very, very hard worker; loves her family; would die for her family as most mothers would I guess.”
On the variety of roles she finds on stage …
“I’m just always amazed when people ask me to do things, and I always try not to repeat myself if I can. This year, I have been very, very lucky. I started the year working at Second Stage on the Tracy Letts play Man From Nebraska with Reed Birney, David Cromer directing, and Tracy was with us the whole time. It was a play that he had written 15 years ago that he had revisited and had not even worked on at all in the 15 years in the meantime, and so to get to be asked to do that was a phenomenal stroke of luck.
“Then I worked on a new play at the O’Neill Center for three weeks up in Connecticut, and then I went into The Traveling Lady, which is a Horton Foote play. Everything I’ve done this year, each has been so different from the other, and I just feel so lucky to be able to stretch in that way, especially in such a short period of time and work with all these brilliant people I’m working with. I couldn’t be happier right now.”
On the differences between theater work and film/TV work …
“When you do film or television, you know, so much is done to it afterward that you don’t even have control of which take they print. And so they do all the futzing, and cutting and all that stuff. When you see it, it’s sometimes unrecognizable, and this is me out there. This is a collaboration with the director, and the other actors and the audience, and each night is different. And it’s thrilling. I used to be a lot more … nervous about it just because I hadn’t done it as much. I started out doing it, but still when I go back and do a film, like a day on a movie or something, it’s what I know. It’s in my bones. I mean, the schedule, the way it’s done, I know it so well. Theater is so much more dangerous, and immediate and exciting.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Show-Off by George Kelly is currently playing the Theatre at St. Clement’s, thanks to the Peccadillo Theater Company. Click here for more information and tickets.
