INTERVIEW: Ernest Thompson revisits ‘West Side Waltz’ for L.A. revival
Photo: From left, Ellen Geer and Melora Marshall star in The West Side Waltz by Ernest Thompson. Photo courtesy of Ian Flanders / Provided by press agent with permission.
Ernest Thompson, the writer known for On Golden Pond, had more than one hit with the late, great Katharine Hepburn. The iconic Hollywood actor gave an Oscar-winning performance in the cinematic version of On Golden Pond, based on Thompson’s play, which began its life off-Broadway. Around this time period in his life, Thompson also had the play The West Side Waltz circulating, and Hepburn agreed to star in the theatrical vehicle, eventually bringing it to Broadway. For the writer, this most famous of all performers proved to be quite the muse in the early 1980s.
“I wrote the play [The West Side Waltz] in 1979, and when I wrote it, I had no high expectations for it,” Thompson said in a recent phone interview. “I was given the George Seaton Grant for Playwrights. I’m not sure many other writers have ever received that because George died shortly afterward, but I just wrote the play. When I submitted it to the Ahmanson [Theatre], Bobby Fryer, who used to run the place, said, ‘Whom should we send it to?’ I said, ‘Anybody you want.’ So they sent it to Hepburn, and that began what I called the Hurricane Kate effect because once Kate Hepburn would get involved with something, it would become her project. And more power to her. I am the great beneficiary of that with both On Golden Pond and The West Side Waltz.”
Now, The West Side Waltz is back for a Los Angeles revival, directed by Mary Jo DuPrey, at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga. This Waltz stars “Theatricum artistic director Ellen Geer as Margaret Mary Elderdice, an aging concert pianist living alone on New York’s Upper West Side. Geer’s sister, Melora Marshall, takes on the role of Margaret’s spinster neighbor, the violin-playing Cara Varnum, and her daughter, Willow Geer, plays Robin Bird, the would-be actress who comes into their lives,” according to press notes. All in all, it’s a family affair at this picturesque outdoor venue.
To prepare for this revival, Thompson decided to scan through the text again, and he made some changes to the dialogue. He dropped some humor that is now dated, and he sets this revival in 1985, with the HIV/AIDS crisis serving as an off-stage counter note to the comedy of the proceedings. The original version was set in the early 1980s.
“So that’s really significant because it just brings a sort of seriousness to a very, very funny play,” the writer said. “It’s not as if I put dynamite to it, but it was really fascinating to go back 43 years later as a theoretically wiser person and just take another look.”
Thompson was commissioned to write the play after Seaton, the director of Miracle on 34th Street, decided to set up a grant for playwrights. Thompson remembers meeting with him when the famed movie director was quite ill.
“He died way too young, but he said, ‘Ernest, write whatever you want.’ I said, ‘OK, I will.’ So there were no stipulations, and the furthest thing from my mind was that Katharine Hepburn wanted to do a play of mine,” he said. “In fact, when they sent her the script, I received a phone call one day, and I thought it was someone doing a not-very-good Katharine Hepburn impression. And I hung up, and when she called back and said, ‘Don’t ever hang up on me again,’ then I thought this is getting real. And I think my life is going to change.”
On Golden Pond, Thompson’s better-known work, is about a love story that lasts nearly 50 years. The movie is now considered a classic of cinema, and the show is revived on stages around the world. The West Side Waltz was Thompson trying to explore the other side of the pond, so to speak.
“I wanted to talk about the flip side of what it is like for those of us who don’t have the luxury of having someone there for us all the time,” said Thompson, who has a novel coming out later this year. “That was really the kernel of West Side Waltz, aided by my love for music, and my mother was both a pianist and a violinist. The two characters that Ellen and Melora Marshall play are a pianist and violinist, so I wanted music to be the metaphor of the play.”
It’s something of a rare treat to have a high-profile revival of The West Side Waltz, which is in stark contrast to the perpetuity of On Golden Pond. As of early June this year, Thompson said he had seen contracts for more than 50 productions of On Golden Pond in five countries. That’s not the case for The West Side Waltz, and he has a theory why.
“I think part of it was that Kate Hepburn left her very visible fingerprints all over it,” he said. “It’s challenging because of the music requirements that the two actors have to pretend to play violin and piano if they don’t actually, but also I think it just wasn’t right. … We can make it better. I had a conversation with the director, Mary Jo Duprey, with Ellen’s blessing, and I said, ‘Let me see what I can do.’ And that’s what I did. We did a reading on Zoom a couple months ago, and it just played like gangbusters. A few more adjustments after that, and that’s the play that people will see.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The West Side Waltz, written by Ernest Thompson, will play June 25 to Oct. 1 at the Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, Los Angeles. Click here for more information and tickets.
