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Kathleen Turner makes her New York directing debut when Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart opens at the Laura Pels Theatre.
An interview by Diane Snyder.
Among Kathleen Turner’s many projects these days is a New York University seminar she calls “Practical Acting: Shut Up and Do It.” She takes a similarly no-nonsense approach to directing. Her first venture into that sphere—Beth Henley’s 1981 Pulitzer Prize winner, Crimes of the Heart—opened to acclaim last summer at the renowned Williamstown Theatre Festival, where Roger Rees, Turner’s Broadway co-star in Indiscretions, was the artistic director. Interestingly for an actress who’s spent a large chunk of her career playing femme fatales in films like Body Heat, Prizzi’s Honor, and Romancing the Stone, Turner wanted to explore the way women relate to each other. And she seems to have succeeded.
Entertainment Weekly praised Turner for “unearth[ing] every nuance of this deceptively complex drama,” a Three Sisters-like dark comedy set in 1974 Mississippi. The Magrath women, as the title suggests, haven’t been terribly lucky in love. Spirited Meg (Sarah Paulson) has had more than her share of male companionship, while anxious Lenny (Jennifer Dundas) has barely had one beau. The only sister to marry, Babe (Lily Rabe), just shot her husband. It’s this last incident, along with eldest sister Lenny’s 30th birthday and their grandfather’s hospitalization after a stroke, that reunites the women, who are still haunted by the suicide of their mother—and the fact that she hanged her cat along with herself.
Whether you call it a dramedy or a tragicomedy, Turner emphasizes the laughter that comes with the tears. And she should know. At the time that Rees enlisted her services, she was about to repeat her acclaimed Tony-nominated performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on tour. Soon after Crimes opens she’ll enjoy another first: her first literary venture, a memoir called Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love and Leading Roles.
Turner, whose own voice is a lush purr, spoke with Front & Center by phone while dealing with a cat yearning for attention.
FRONT & CENTER: How did this production end up moving from Williamstown to New York?
KATHLEEN TURNER: Roundabout had an opening, called up, and asked if I would be interested. And I said, “Ohhhhhhhh, I think so.” Everybody’s really happy to be back together.
How long have you had the desire to direct?
I think, honestly, most good actors are directors to a certain extent. We don’t get credit for it, but there you have it! No, actually, I’ve thought of it for years. It’s something I always felt I could do and should do. It was just a question in my mind of finding the right time and the right project.
How did you end up at the Williamstown Theatre Festival?
Roger Rees had been after me for ages to direct. He roped me in. I was going on tour with …Virginia Woolf, and he said, “How’s your summer?” And I said, “My summer is open because I finish the tour the beginning of June.” And he said, “Then you have no excuse.” (laughs)
Did he want to do Crimes of the Heart, or was that your suggestion?
That was the two of us. I’ve always been interested—more interested, actually—in the dynamics between women onstage. I just think it’s more interesting and less predictable than a lot of male/female relationships. I had said I was looking for some strong women interaction, and he suggested Crimes.
It seems like a hard show to direct—a comedy that deals with suicide, a shooting, sex with a teenager. What were some of the challenges that you encountered?
I didn’t find it that hard. Well, maybe I’m being a little arrogant. One thing I don’t do is maudlin or self-pity. That’s just death to me. I always saw this show as a comedy, as a really vibrant comedy, and Beth Henley seems to agree with me. So when I was talking to the art and marketing people, I said, “No pink, no lavender, no hearts.” This is a comedy, it’s fast-paced, it’s got a lot of great stuff in it, but we’re not going to sell this as some sort of sweet Southern I-don’t-know-what.
“I think, honestly, most good actors are directors to a certain extent.”
There are no Southern belles sitting on porches, drinking lemonade.
No. This is possible in any and every place, and the core and the heart of it is the way the women love each other and what they learn. To me, if you don’t learn something in the course of a play or film, why do you do it? So Crimes certainly fit all my requirements.
You mentioned the comedic elements, but the play also has its dark moments.
It does, but I find darkness very funny, too. I mean, take a look at my credits. I seem to get a kick out of dark humor. Yes, there are some tough moments, there are some hard lessons and there’s loss, but we learn much more from bad things than from happiness. So my theory is you learn, you laugh, you move on.
How did you cast the three sisters? When I saw the show in Williamstown, I was impressed with how well the actresses were able to capture the quirkiness of their characters while keeping them real and not turning them into caricatures.
I was actually on the road during the tour and in communication the whole time with the Williamstown casting people, who essentially sent me a lot of names and resumes. Then what happened was Sarah Paulson’s agent—we’re both at ICM—called and said that she was interested in being Meg, and I thought that would be fabulous. I think she’s terrific, and I’ve been friends with her partner, Cherry [Jones],for years.
She recommended Lily Rabe for Babe, and then going through all the resumes and talking on the phone to people I chose Jennifer Dundas, who’s just an amazing actress, for Lenny. It really started with Sarah’s proactive approach, and once I had the sisters, the rest followed easily.
“Yes, there are some tough moments, there are some hard lessons and there's loss, but we learn much more from bad things than from happiness.”
What was your approach to the project? When you went into rehearsals, did you have a sense of what you wanted with regard to the characters?
You always take what a good actor has to give you. You don’t start by saying, “I want you to be this in this scene”; you say, “show me.” Show me what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling, where your thoughts are here. In the reading and the early blocking, you find out their body rhythms, their physicality, their mental approach.… Speaking for myself, never throw out what the actor brings—that’s why they’re doing it. Then it’s really a question of finding the most important moments and the best way to coax the actors to take it further, to take it as far as they can.
The character of Babe goes through quite an emotional upheaval, from shooting her husband to trying to kill herself to trying to arrange the festivities for her sister’s birthday party. How do you help an actress create such a vibrant character as that without her seeming self-pitying or crazy?
I have to say that Lily Rabe is absolutely luminous in the role, and it’s one she’s always wanted to play, so that was a lovely serendipity. I held back a little bit from her when we were rehearsing the suicide, and the first time we had an invited audience, which mostly consists of the other actors and people of Williamstown, they laughed all through the suicide attempt. When she came to me later and said, “They laughed,” I said, “I didn’t tell ya–it’s funny!”
And it is! The character is so unselfconscious; she doesn’t think ahead, she doesn’t plan very well, so that was a lot of fun. I don’t know why people think this is such a maudlin play; I think it’s really entertaining. I must be weird.
Have there been any directors you’ve worked with that have inspired your own work as a director?
Definitely. In film, I think John Huston and Francis Ford Coppola were the most powerful directors that I learned a lot from because of their usage of camera, which helped to tell the story so vividly. I suppose I learned a lot from Anthony Page, who directed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Howard Davies, who did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. They’re just so smart, and they see what the actor’s trying to do and tell you “yes, no, more, less.” They don’t tell you what to do, they just bring it out of you, and I learned that from them.
Did you draw on any of your own stage or film roles for these characters?
No, I wouldn’t do that. I’m not the one onstage, I’m not interested in being the one onstage in these circumstances. It’s my job to watch, and I’m their best audience. The most amazing thing to me is I never get bored. I watch the show over and over and over, and I keep saying, “Oh, what a good idea! What if we took a beat there? What if you moved left there? What if…” I just think what they do is fascinating to me.
Diane Snyder covers theatre for Time Out New York and other publications.
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