THIS column is always open to those who feel they or their shows have been unfairly maligned.
Boy George, Mary-Louise Parker, George C. Wolfe, producers Elizabeth I. McCann and David Brown (to name a few) all have had a chance to rebut, debate and vent in this space.
Today it’s Terry Kinney‘s turn.
He’s the director of Neil LaBute‘s “reasons to be pretty.” Last week I reported on the changes Kinney was making to the play during previews, including doing away with the intermission.
I cheekily said the play was suffering from “impressionism,” a syndrome I named after the play “Impressionism,” starring Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, which also underwent radical surgery in previews.
(“Impressionism,” by the way, is being put out of its misery today by the critics. See Elisabeth Vincentelli‘s review below. Ouch!)
Kinney left his response to my column on my voice mail. I’ve saved the recording and plan to donate it to the theater archive at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
Kinney, I should point out, is a co-founder of Chicago’s fabled Steppenwolf Theatre Company, which, in the ’70s, was home to intense actors such as Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. They did intense plays like Sam Shepard‘s “True West” and Lanford Wilson‘s “Balm in Gilead.”
From the tone of his voice on the recording, I’m pleased to report that, 30 years on, Kinney’s lost none of that Steppenwolf intensity.
Here he is, unedited, venting, as Al Capone might say, “the Chicago way.”
(Note to young actors who might want to use this monologue as an audition piece: It’s best to start off with controlled fury, letting the intensity and the anger build until the last few lines, when you should be practically unhinged.)
Michael Riedel, this is Terry Kinney. You wrote an article about my play today that is absolutely full of bulls – – t and lies, and I have no idea what you are talking about.
We have canceled two performances TWO performances! because of my and [actor] Steven Pasquale‘s shooting schedules.
We were trying to take a look at, which we were always planning to do, whether we wanted to keep some monologues in the play from off-Broadway or take them out. We tried it both ways, and we tried it with and without an intermission to see which worked better.
We’re just working on our play, man. Nobody’s walking out of it. It’s not in trouble. I don’t know who your source is, but it’s a terrible source, and I want you to correct this because, because we’re having people jump to their feet at the end of this play.
Have you seen it? Have you seen this play? Or are you just going on hearsay?
You’re very corrosive to theater, and this is absolutely uncalled for.
If we had cut a chunk of a play out and made it one-act, then you could call it the ‘impressionism syndrome’ or whatever the
f – – k you want to call it.
But we didn’t do anything like that. We’ve always meant to do this in front of an audience, this work. And people do it all the time. Have you ever heard of something called REHEARSAL?
It’s ridiculous and it’s corrosive and it’s misleading for a little play and an unknown cast, for you to try to kill it in this way, so quickly, without any evidence of what you’re saying.
You’re going on a very bad source. You’re full of
s – – t, and
Here, I’m afraid, the tape ran out.
But call me back, Terry!
You’ve certainly got my number.