Saturday, October 26, 2013

Stricken, an Actor Stays in Character - NYTimes.com

If an actor is going to collapse onstage in the middle of a performance, he might as well pick an appropriate moment.  It happened to Jerry Lanning at the Oct. 18 performance of “And Give Us the Shadows” at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls. Mr. Lanning was supposed to look ill anyway. He was playing Eugene O’Neill, and at the time of the play (1949), O’Neill was 61, alcoholic, and washed up professionally, with a Parkinson’s-like tremor that made it impossible for him to write.  So near the beginning of Act II that night, when O’Neill complained, “I can barely walk,” and suddenly slumped, most people believed that the physical action was part of the play.  Hollis McCarthy, the actress playing O’Neill’s third wife, Carlotta, knew better. But strangely, the line was delivered exactly as written.

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