Mainly on Directing by Arthur Laurents (read more books .TXT) 📕

A director has to be a seducer. Before rehearsals of Whistle began, Angie sent me a letter from Hollywood withdrawing from the show because her house was in danger of mud-sliding off a cliff, because her children needed her home, because she wanted out. Fear, I decided, rightly or wrongly. I wrote her a letter reminding her that she had made a commitment, that commitments must be honored, that she was an honorable woman, and so forth, but not too much and so on. I meant all of it, but I do good letters, and as this one went on, it became a seducer's letter. And it worked. (Several years later, the situation was repeated with a play of mine she asked to be in and then pulled out of; that time, the seduction didn't seduce. Consistency is a hobgoblin.)

She came to New York; we met at Steve's house to discuss the show. Quite quickly the actress who was not appreciated at MGM and had to battle for roles worthy of her displayed what she had learned from the battles. As calm as Lee would be later at that lunch—where do movie actresses learn the code of behavior?—she stated she wanted another song to show another side of the mayoress. Steve and I were so happy to have her back in the show, we would have agreed to a hymn. Of course, it was he who had to do the work, and he did. She got her song: “A Parade in Town.” It's one of the best in the show.

Lee knew none of this, fortunately. It would have intensified the already intense tension in her dressing room that day when I told her I wanted to cut “Trumpets.” As it was, she sat very still, her face the face from our first lunch. I shut up and waited—a long, silent wait. Then: “I'd like to be alone,” she said, and I left. After an interval, a flurry of mink coats and blue suits from William Morris arrived and marched into her dressing room. Another wait; then a mink emerged.

“The song's out,” she said. “Don't mention it. Don't even talk to her for the rest of the day.” Then a smile: “She'll be fine.”

A good agent. Her name was Phyllis Rabb. No relation to Ellis Rabb, the most imaginative and underappreciated director in the American theatre. If PBS reruns its filmed version of Ellis's production of The Royal Family (it's available on DVD), read the play and then watch what a magical director can do with it. Nothing seemed contrived, because everything came from the heart. What a pleasure. What a lesson.

With Tyne Daly in the 1989 revival of Gypsy, the defining moment between star and director happened, not in her dressing room, but in the rehearsal room. From the first day of rehearsal, it was apparent she and I were headed for that Showdown at the OK Corral.

I liked her from our first meeting, which was at her audition on the stage of the Imperial Theatre. She had an irresistible smile, a lust for life in the theatre—and great legs. I was surprised how well she sang; the timbre of her voice was oddly similar to Ethel's. This Rose could be sexual, a motor I could use to drive the whole production. From what I had seen of her work, I assumed she was a good actress—perhaps a questionable assumption, since I'd only seen her on TV. She'd begun in the theatre, though, and came from a theatrical family. As it turned out, my assumption was justified: she was a very good actress—a stubborn one, but a damn good one.

She arrived for rehearsal with her beamish smile and armed: she called me “Mr. Laurents.” While she didn't overtly question any direction I gave her, there was always the slightly raised eyebrow, the polite question, the little grin that came and went like a sudden threatening cloud on the beach. Unexpressed challenge was always polluting the air, filling the rehearsal hall; the whole company was waiting for the gas to catch fire and explode. Which it did, when we came to the last scene of the first act, where Rose reads June's letter of defection.

Every actress who plays Rose approaches that moment as though she's crawled across the Sahara and seen water at last. She wants to cry and blubber her way into the lead-in to “Everything's Coming Up Roses,” even though Rose explicitly says, quote unquote, “This time I'm not crying.” Actresses, however, point to the text when it suits them; when it doesn't, they discover subtext.

I had told Tyne Rose is totally without self-pity: she never cries, not a tear, until the final scene of the play, where, in dialogue added pace Ethel Merman, Rose realizes she has never given her daughter the love she wanted. Then Niagara, Victoria Falls—go for all of it. Holding back on tears is unnatural for actresses. Wait two and a half hours before being allowed to go mad with waterworks? Very hard, and Tyne wasn't about to wait. She started to cry at the first rehearsal with the first words of the letter speech. The moment had arrived and we both knew it. So did everybody else in the room.

“I told you Rose doesn't cry” was all I said, but it was a fire alarm. Actors, pianists, stage managers, assistant stage managers, all went hurtling for the exit. In thirty seconds, only Tyne and I were left, mano a mano. In retrospect, it seems funny; at the time, it was scary, because it was the moment of Hemingway truth in the bullring for the director and the star. The director loses, he loses control of the show.

A director often has to be a psychologist, or lucky; I was both. I intuited Tyne was challenging me because she wanted me to be strong. This was