Some Encounters With Christopher Plummer, Dead At 91.
Photo By T.Charles Erickson
Some more sad news: Christopher Plummer died today at the age of 91 at his home in Weston.
I interviewed him several times over the decades — the first when he was at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford in the early ‘80s. The last when he received the Monte Cristo Award from the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in 2013. Below is my coverage of that event in NYC.
BY FRANK RIZZO
Oscar and Tony Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey gave a wild, rollicking andheartfelt tribute to Christopher Plummer at Monday night's gala for Waterford's Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Plummer, 83, received the Monte Cristo Award at the New York-held event.
Spacey downed two triples of Jack Daniels in Plummer's honor as he told anecdotes and kidded the actor, including sharing one tale of an alcohol-inspired night that Jason Robards and Plummer brought a policeman's horse into the Palace Bar and Grill on Broadway "and having a much more difficult time getting horse out of the bar." Spacey also said he also shared a role with Plummer -- "That's right. I played Captain Von Trapp in my high school production of 'The Sound of Music' co-starring the wonderful Mare Winngham as Maria. This is true."
Spacey also kidded the physical award. "Although it is one of the most beautifully designed awards, it is also one of the most [expletive] heaviest awards you'll ever see in your life.You'll need a [expletive] fokr-lift to get it home."
More seriously he said: "There's no finer recipient of the award. You and your spirit define the spirit of Eugene O'Neill and this award. You re-invent classic roles into fresh, exciting, dangerous and riveting portrayals. And you instantly make a new play a classic when you originate a role. As an audience [member] I have been astounded and as an actor I have learned so goddamn much because, as you know, us theater rats, we never stop learning.'
Also paying tribute to the actor was Tony Award-winner Nikki James, who played opposite him on "Caesar and Cleopatra" in 2008, pianist Inon Barnatan,documentarian Ric Burns, actor Daniel Breaker, O'Neill executive director Preston Whiteway and producer and O'Neill board chairman Thomas Viertel.
Zoe Caldwell was also at the event and paid tribute to Plummer: " "I have known Christopher Plummer for a very long time. I mean. I've known him longer than I've known Eugene O'Neill...or the Gelbs [biographers of O'Neill]. I have played with him as an actor, I've been directed by him and I have directed him and watched him like a hawk in every medium and he never ceases to amaze me. Now he's gone too far. He doesn't get older like the rest of us. He gets better. Simpler. More powerful and more capable of removing his armor. That's a great actor. What do you think of that, Eugene?"
When it came time for Plummer to speak, he was charming, gracious and touched. "The cause is so worthy and it makes me feel young again like I'm starting over. I hope to god it postpones a little of my own long day's journey into night...i am humbled and proud and grateful, to all of you for such a lovely night and making the whole thing go to my head. And grateful, too, that in the arts there is always some summit to attain, to conquer, a summit far higher than Everest, perilously inviting, if only we could reach it. Well, I guess we'll just have to try."
Off stage, I asked him if there was any possibility of him plying James Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" on stage. "A long run in as Tyrone would be suicidal," he said, laughing. When asked if he might do it on film, he deferred answering , saying "It's a wonderful work. We'll see."
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I also reviewed his (almost) solo show, “Barrymore at The Shubert Theatre in New Haven in 1998.
By FRANK RIZZO
"Barrymore," Christopher Plummer gives a performance of two lifetimes.
In the William Luce play, which opened Tuesday at the Shubert Performing Arts Center in New Haven for a one-week run, Plummer brings John Barrymore back to life in full glory, with all the ribald humor, the acting brilliance, the witty irreverence and the cynical self- awareness that made up the actor's self-destructive life.
It's an amazing performance and one that earned Plummer his second Tony Award when he played the role on Broadway several seasons back. (His first was in the musical "Cyrano.")
But it's also a pinnacle of Plummer's own career, one that has been seasoned with great Shakespearean and classical roles, along with varied forays to Hollywood, and even a personal demon or two. But it is a lifetime of art and craft and living that makes Plummer's performance nothing less than dazzling.
Watch Plummer on the Shubert stage, where Barrymore himself once played his great roles, and you witness a true master of the theater. How easily the part could have turned to parody of ham. But Plummer is spellbinding as the grand man who wears a jaunty Fedora and a kingly crown as if he were born for both. Look deep into Plummer's eyes and you see the depth of complexity he brings to the role, the frightened man hiding behind the bravado, the loneliness and regret, the look of a living ghost.
The piece is directed with a perfect sense of theatricality by stage veteran Gene Saks. And there's lots of juice in the script by Luce, who has made one- person shows a cottage industry, with works such as "Belle of Amherst," "Lillian," "Lucifer's Child" and "Zelda: The Last Flapper."
Luce is a skillful writer who knows that actors need more than interesting people to play, they need interesting moments to play.
And in "Barrymore," he gives Plummer an endless series of moments to remember, from his first entrance -- where he is clearly in high spirits and in danger of crash-landing right on the stage -- to his final exit, where he leaves not with a wimper but a flourish. Everything in between is endlessly entertaining, revelatory, disturbing, charming, heartbreaking and fine. If the play doesn't transcend the limits of the genre, then at least it gives Plummer every opportunity to be glorious in ways that are special to the theater.
The play takes place during the last days of Barrymore, just before his death in 1942. He has rented a stage where he goes over lines with an off-stage prompter, hoping he can gear up to revive one of his great triumphs of his career, his performance 20 years earlier as Richard III.
But his memory for lines has been destroyed, but not his memory of his colorful life, or at least snatches of his life that come to him like hallucinatory flashes from a reveler's dream: the moment when a writer believes that his talent could be truly great and not just be seen in "the family business" of acting; his series of disastrous marriages ("all four wives were bus accidents"); tales of Hollywood highjinks; the recollections of a cold father, clever siblings and a caring grandmother who tells him to fight against the darkness and the demons with the brave cry: "I have a wonderful power."
It is quickly evident to all, --including himself, --that Barrymore's great roles are behind him: save one. Himself. His last hurrah is as a man who looks back at a rare talent lost beyond recovery or reform and waves a fond adieu.
John Plumpis, as the off-stage prompter, gives a solid a performance as if he were sharing the spotlight downstage center. Not that anyone could dare to share the light with Barrymore or Plummer. Theirs are two lives, two performances, two men of the theater that you meet just once in a lifetime. To see them both in one evening is a night to remember.