Quick Q&A: Malcolm Gets

I talked with Malcolm Gets about working in the theatre, not reading reviews, and his performance in Morris Panych’s Vigil.

Were you familiar with Morris Panych when you took the role?

I wasn’t. I’m fascinated by him now. Stephen (DiMenna, the director) first brought Vigil to me a couple of years ago when they first thought they were going to produce it. But the venue didn’t work out and it all went away as quickly as it came. When Stephen emailed me to say that they were dong it in New York after all I realized that it didn’t surprise me. I knew intuitively that it was going to come back into my life. That first time it came up I was in Williamstown for the summer and was reading it at the one coffee shop there that everybody goes to. Dana Ivey asked me what I was reading and I told her it was impossible and practically a two-act monologue. “Well then you have to do it,” she said. “Sometimes we have to do the things that scare us”. There were days when I thought I was never going to learn the play; it’s just so dense.

Besides the density, did anything else scare you about doing the play?

I don’t think I go on stage to be liked. Kemp is an extremely unpleasant, hostile, furious individual and given that I’m playing against a sympathetic older woman I wondered if the audiences would stick with him or want to stone him after 25 minutes. As Olivier used to say you can’t think of characters as good or bad, you have to bring humanity to all of them. I don’t judge Kemp. But there were moments in the first couple of performances standing next to the beautiful, lovely, diminutive Helen Stenborg tearing her head off when I thought “Oh my God, I am screaming at a dear old woman!”

While playing him, are you conscious of the goal to “make it funny” for the audience?

That’s interesting, because when I read it and when we were rehearsing I thought it was hilarious. I’ve just come to understand that it’s a very specific kind of humor and that some of it is controversial. We have audiences that are on the same page and willing to laugh at jokes about the Catholic Church and audiences that are quite silent at those times. What’s apparent to us is that almost all the audiences are coming along for the ride and becoming invested in a very felt way about these two people. Morris’ writing is so good that it’s a drama and a comedy to varying degrees depending on who is in the audience. It’s not Neil Simon.

production photos: Carol Rosegg

How do you relate to Kemp?

I don’t know where to begin! Kemp, through Morris, considers everything in life. On the simplest level he’s shut down and incapable of accepting love, both things I relate to and am fascinated by. The piece is so rich and we’ve only been performing it for a week now after three weeks of rehearsal. Every night there are new things I’m meditating on, or I’ll be walking through my day in the city and thinking about three or four lines. The process is ongoing. I suspect it will be throughout the run because there’s so much to explore.

Without sounding arty-farty, the old Moscow Arts Theatre used to rehearse plays for six months to a year. I’m not saying I want to rehearse Vigil for that long, but with a piece as dense as this in this environment of the commercial theatre in New York, I feel like we had three weeks of rehearsal before our first performance which went straight into being reviewed and opening. It isn’t enough time. I hope the producers won’t get mad at me for saying that, I do understand how difficult it must be, except I’ve been up against it with other jobs this year also. I think actors and creative people are not given the time that’s needed to get in there and explore. I’m looking forward to living with it during the run.

Have you always felt that the process is rushed in commercial theatre?

When I was younger I used to get off on the idea of “let’s just throw it up and see what happens” but I don’t feel that way anymore. I also ask questions now I didn’t used to: do we get benefits and pension? I’ve done workshops in New York where they don’t even pay that, which is horrifying. I’m not trying to sound like a victim, but it isn’t always easy for actors.

I’ve seen you in a dozen things at least but when you first made your entrance in Vigil I didn’t recognize you. Can you tell me about your characterization work?

To be honest the first thing I thought about, as superficial as it may sound, was my hair. I’ve had strangers come up to me on the street and say “wow, you have great hair” – if I could have made a living off my hair I’d be a rich man by now! So I had to do something about that – I got a haircut, and then a second haircut, and then a third. I had this image that the first time you see Kemp it would be like he’d come in from the snow and someone had poured a bucket of water over his head so he looked like a drowned rat. I started putting this awful greasy stuff in my hair and then right before first audiences I cut my own bangs in this bad bowl cut around my forehead. In that moment I thought “oh my God, I’m going to have to walk around the streets of New York like this”. I knew the hair would change a lot – it flattened out my face. Then we got frumpy clothes that are too big, and in terms of physicality I thought of him as being sucked into the ground by gravity. I will say also that I’m a fitness fanatic and I haven’t been throwing the weights around – Kemp can’t look like he’s sneaking out of Grace’s house to go to New York Health and Fitness.

When I was at drama school I didn’t play Romeo, I played Polonius, I played Buckingham. In the real world I’ve played leading man parts but I have the instincts of a character guy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone in for character roles and they say I’m too good looking, and when I go in for leading men they don’t say I’m not good looking enough but they say I’m too quirky, whatever that means.

Besides Vigil, when have you felt that you were perfectly matched to a role?

The first time was when I got my Equity card playing Mozart in Amadeus. Also, absolutely, was Franklin Shephard in the revival of Merrily We Roll Along. I felt that way about playing Gould in the movie of Grey Gardens also.

“The Story Of My Life” photo: Joan Marcus

Can you think of a time you were disappointed with the response to a show you’ve done?

I have the perhaps dubious distinction of having been in a number of those. Both A New Brain and The Story Of My Life were heartbreakers. Audiences went crazy for them and then for whatever reason the press didn’t go for them and that was it. The proof is in the pudding because A New Brain has gone on to be produced a million trillion times and I think in a few years people will be doing The Story Of My Life again. I believe very strongly in both those pieces. I think this system we’ve created for this city is insane and ridiculous, the idea that a show will run based on what the papers say. I feel like the community is partly responsible because we give these men and women that power and I don’t think they even want it.

Do you think that is changing?

I wouldn’t know because I stopped reading reviews about 3 or 4 years ago. First I stopped reading my own because it was taking too much energy, and then I stopped reading other people’s too because it would piss me off too much. I’d see things based on reviews and I wouldn’t like it and then I’d spend time trying to get inside the heads of the critics and I’d think “oh, this is really perilous”.

Some actors work in television, as you have, and then never come back to the theatre. Why do you come back?

I would say because of the specific work – Vigil, The Story Of My Life. There’s a part of me that tries to keep working in it because it’s what I come from and want it to continue. I’ll always believe in it the most and I’ll always know in my heart that I am first and foremost a person of the theatre.