This was the missing dimension. Unquestionably, my siblings and I had a wonderful father. He loved to read us stories, tell us jokes, show us magic tricks, and impart to us great chunks of his endless supply of quirky, eclectic knowledge. He loved to entertain us, and we loved to be entertained. But when I was growing up, there were countless moments when his paternal guidance was virtually nonexistent. The trauma of starting seventh grade in a new town halfway through the school year? Not a word of reassurance. The chaotic arrival of puberty and the onset of feverish sexual urges? Not a scrap of information. The worrisome notion of marriage at the tender age of twenty? Little more than disgruntled silence. And worse was to come: halfway through that season of plays at McCarter Theatre, I experienced the first genuine tragedy in my life. Jean gave birth to a son nine weeks early. For a few hours the little boy struggled for life and then gave up the ghost. It was a devastating loss for both of us. My mother was deeply comforting. My little sister wept compassionate tears. Actors in the company clasped me in long, heartfelt embraces. I honestly cannot remember my father registering the slightest reaction.
In good times my father was effusively present. In hard times he was bafflingly absent. But I never judged him harshly for his abstraction and aloofness. How could I? In so many ways, he reminded me of me.
So what happened when this father and this son, these two genetically connected souls, faced hardship together?
When I set out to direct Much Ado About Nothing for my father that autumn, I had a problem on my hands. As with every production in McCarter’s repertory, the play was cast entirely from members of the resident company. At its best, this system leads actors to stretch their abilities and discover new strengths. At worst they simply end up miscast. Sadly, the latter case applied to the actor playing the role of Don Pedro in my McCarter production. In the play, Don Pedro is the commanding officer of a band of returning soldiers. The role is a little thankless but extremely important, since he sets in motion the entire comic machinery of the plot. An avuncular figure with a devilish streak, Don Pedro devises an elaborate prank to trick the caustic, quarrelsome Beatrice and Benedick into a passionate love for each other. Beatrice and Benedick are the flashiest and funniest roles in the play. But without a strong, stylish Don Pedro functioning as their impish puppet master, their comic romance doesn’t stand a chance. In London the year before, Albert Finney had played the role.
My Don Pedro was no Albert Finney. I’ll call him Biff Richards. Biff was a very nice guy. He was tall and rangy, with an easygoing masculinity and movie-star good looks. Rare among rep actors, he seemed destined for screen stardom. He had already gained a certain prominence in the business: everywhere he went he was recognized for a series of TV commercials he had done. In these ubiquitous ads, he smoked a stogey in dramatically lit close-up while someone else’s resonant off-camera voice extolled the virtues of a certain cigar. My father had been delighted to land such a splendid figure of a man for his company, blithely disregarding Biff’s meager list of stage credits. At first this enthusiasm was justified. Early in the season, Biff was broodingly effective in the role of Slim, a plainspoken mule skinner in Of Mice and Men. He played the part without a trace of artifice or histrionics. Neither was there a trace of nuance, variety, emotion, humor, or even energy. No one seemed especially bothered by this. No one but me, that is. I was sick with worry. After all, Much Ado About Nothing was just around the corner. I would be in charge, and Biff would be Don Pedro.
As we gathered for the first rehearsal of Much Ado, everyone felt the first-day-of-school giddiness that accompanies the start of any new production. Lots of chatter, lots of coffee, then we all took our places around a long table. I expounded at length on my concept of the play — its late-nineteenth-century setting, its airy high spirits, its sexual sparring, its Mediterranean machismo, its military culture under assault by dizzy small-town romantics. I had a word or two to say about every character, right down to the clownish members of the Night Watch (one of whom was played by an eager sixteen-year-old local boy named Christopher Reeve). I passed around reference materials and costume designs. I unveiled a model of the set. I did everything I could to project my own enthusiasm and bring the cast on board. Everyone seemed charged with anticipation.
After a break, we launched into a read-through of the text. Halfway through the first scene, the soldiers make their bravura entrance. The first of them to speak is their commanding officer Don Pedro:
Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.
Uh-oh.
These were the words of William Shakespeare as spoken by a mule skinner named Slim. A dense fog of unease slowly descended on the whole company. None of them looked up from their scripts. They didn’t have to. The sound of that monotone voice told them all they needed to know: Biff was going to weigh down the show like a flatiron. But their distress was nothing compared to mine. As I listened to the poor man struggle through his lines, an appalling thought took hold of me. Not only was I saddled with Biff in the role of Don Pedro. Later in the season I was set to direct William Congreve’s The Way of the World, a Restoration comedy that’s fiendishly difficult to perform, even by trained English actors. And who was already cast in the huge role of Mirabell, the dashing leading man with the voracious libido and the quicksilver wit? This well-intentioned lug, this sodden no-talent, this latter-day Tom Mix. Biff Richards.
For the next few days of rehearsal, I struggled mightily to raise Biff’s energy level and help him through the tricky syntax of Don Pedro’s speeches. Nothing worked. Every time he spoke, the energy would leak out of his scenes. As a result, the play felt like a dirigible that stubbornly refused to leave the ground. My anxiety was shared by everyone in the company — everyone, that is, except Biff. He was cheerfully oblivious to all the eye-rolling, foot-tapping, and teeth-grinding around him. He was having a fine time.
More days passed. A catastrophe was slowly unfolding in front of me. I continued to go through the motions of directing the play, but inside I was in agony. A few weeks hence I foresaw a disastrous opening night of Much Ado About Nothing. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about The Way of the World. Something had to be done. For everyone’s sake (including his own), Biff Richards had to be replaced. I had to speak to the boss. I had to go to my father. I didn’t have to go far. He was playing Friar Francis.