Jessica Lange
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Jessica Lange is one of the defining actresses of her generation: a great beauty who was quickly revealed to have the talent to match. Minnesota-born Lange made her screen bow in the 1970s remake of King Kong, but followed this rather inauspicious debut with a sequence of acclaimed films that won Oscar nominations, and on two occasions, the Oscar itself: for Tootsie and the little-seen if much-admired Blue Sky. Since her 40s, she has embraced the theatre, most notably with her portrayals of three of the 20th-century American drama seminal roles for women. She was Blanche in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway and in a separate production in London; the morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night, for which she received an Olivier nomination for Best Actress; and, currently at the Apollo Theatre, as another Williams heroine, Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, revised from her initial performance in the role on Broadway two years ago, and with a separate cast. Unlike, say, Meryl Streep, who trained in theatre before moving almost exclusively into film, Lange has had to do her training in front of an audience, in three of the most testing roles for an actress. It can't have hurt that her longtime partner is Sam Shepard, who occupies his own distinguished perch in the American theatre. Soon to be 58, Lange was agelessly vibrant and funny in conversation prior to a recent evening performance of Menagerie, seated in the bowels of the Apollo Theatre in the dressing room she calls her "lair." She was relaxed and quick to laugh as she chatted about the ups and downs of her Hollywood career and the newfound rewards of acting great roles on stage in two theatre capitals.
I suppose there's nothing quite like playing the Haymarket (where Lange did Streetcar). The playhouses along Shaftesbury Avenue can't really compete.
I guess not, certainly not this group of theatres here. It's pretty rough out there some nights. But compared to the Lyric (next door, where she did Long Day's Journey), this theatre feels a little more intimate. It feels as if the audience is right up there with you. I mean, sure, all the different levels mean that the audience goes up up up—but [laughs wryly] we haven't filled that top tier too often.
I preferred Rupert Goold's production here to the David Leveaux’s staging in New York—as I guess everyone has who saw the two Menageries.
We had a lot of bad luck on that first production. It was just Murphy's Law—whatever could go wrong went wrong. The whole thing left us struggling behind the eight ball for the entire run, and it's hard when you don't get it right and you're still up there. The actors were so committed and working so hard