Christopher Durang: The Family Feeling of Bette and Boo

About the author:
For Christopher Durang fans—and that's anybody who has seen his impossible-to-summarize dark comedies—it's a happy summer. Beyond Therapy, perhaps his most accessible play, has received a fun and funny new production that jumped from the Williamstown Theatre Festival to Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, NY, starring Kate Burton, Katie Finneran and Darrell Hammond, among others. Meanwhile, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Durang's most autobiographical work, is getting a welcome off-Broadway revival at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre. Still to come next spring: the Public Theater's world-premiere production of Durang's latest black comedy, Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them. Theatergoers fortunate enough to have seen the Public's original production of Bette and Boo fondly remember Durang's performance as the narrator of his own story, so we couldn't help wondering how it feels for him to see the play anew, from the audience, a generation later. A generous man of the theater now nurturing a new generation of playwrights as a teacher at Juilliard, Durang responded by sharing memories of one of his very first theatrical collaborations, back home in suburban New Jersey.

It's a pleasure for me that my 1985 play The Marriage of Bette and Boo is being revived by the Roundabout in a superb production directed by Walter Bobbie. It's strange to realize so much time has gone by since that play was done—23 years!

The play is my one unabashedly biographical work, based on much of the strife and sadness in my parents' own marriage, and with the narrator Matt standing in for, well, me. In the original production at the Public, at the suggestion of Joe Papp, I played Matt.

I could talk about the passing of time, or what it's like to see talented Charles Socarides play my part. I decided the best way to handle that was to stand up in rehearsal every time he said a line and scream: "No, no! Do it this way!" Poor guy, he's a nervous wreck from that behavior. Just kidding. Enough time has gone by that I am at peace with handing the role to someone else, and Charles has been so open to being guided by Walter, and occasionally by me.

But I find the topic that has kept popping into my mind is how often when you do a play the people you're working with become a family. And it's usually a much happier family than the one you grew up with.

The original company back in 1985 was a happy and close knit group. Joan Allen and Graham Beckel were Bette and Boo, and the superb cast included Olympia Dukakis, Mercedes Ruehl, Kathryn Grody, Bill Moor and Bill McCutcheon. For Allen, Dukakis and Ruehl, their Oscars and Tonys were still ahead of them.

This new company seems similarly close, and they have bonded together as a warm family-for-now. I've been friends with Julie Hagerty who plays Soot for years, and she told me last week how much she adores the other actors. I can see it in how all the actors interact. It's similar, I guess, to what people feel on athletic teams—especially, maybe, in high school—the shared goals, the shared experiences and mishaps, etc.

I performed and acted throughout my teenage years, and I remember those early feelings of "this is a family." Sometimes it's brief: I was part of a talent contest where my school friend Kevin Farrell and I came in second for performing a song we wrote together. Kevin is still a composer, and also a conductor on many Broadway shows. But being backstage with the other contestants, I found it easier and more fun to talk with people than I usually did. We had this shared experience of performing, and the nerves before and the relief after.

Kevin and I wrote a full musical when we were 13, and my Catholic school Delbarton put it on, with the older students ages 16-17 starring in it. It was called Banned in Boston, and it was very innocent and ended with four marriages. Very Shakespearean, that.

The summer after the school production, my mother told me she wanted me to put on the show in our local town with teenagers I met from the talent contest.

I'm a mix of shy and outgoing, and the shy part of me couldn't imagine making phone calls asking "Do you want to audition for the show Kevin and I wrote?" But my mother was forceful, and luckily she was pushing on something I actually DID want to do. So we had these auditions, with me running them and choosing the people I was 15 by now, I think, and we rehearsed in the Catholic school basement. We had no scheduled theater to perform it in, but we rehearsed anyway. Gosh, it sounds so much like Mickey and Judy putting on shows in the barn in all those movies.

However, there was this tiny 50-seat theater with lights and a stage and nice seats called the Summit Playhouse. And it was a community theater for adults, not teenagers; and they put on classic, famous plays. And my mother called them up and said, "Would you donate your theater to these high school students?" And they said yes. A few years ago, I went back and joined them for a fundraising event; it was extremely generous what they did all those years ago. And their theater is still going strong.

So suddenly we had this actual theater and would really put the show on. My uncle, who had been an actor and then become a set designer, came in the last few days as "play doctor" and indeed gave everyone good direction and bits of business.

We played for three days, Thursday through Saturday. And the Thursday show went great—things I thought were only mildly funny, the audience seemed to find hilarious. I had cast myself in a supporting role as Edmund, the nephew of the two spinster aunts who were trying to shut down a local show as indecent. The aunts sang a song called "It's a Scandal!" in which they kept tearing their hair out… which was filled with talcum powder to make their hair gray. This action caused clouds of talcum to keep being released into the air, and the audience was in stitches. Gosh, forget Mickey and Judy—it's sounding like the Little Rascals putting on a play.

Anyway, in my small-ish part, I had several lines that got laughs. I had one song with the pretty girl who played the minister's secretary. Kevin played the minister, but otherwise was at the piano, leaving the keyboard from time to time to confer with the aunts. And I had lots of time off-stage, to both regroup and to savor the experience. So I became aware how much I was enjoying this, and the camaraderie.

I remember before the show on Friday night having a roast beef sandwich for energy, and taking a shower, and realizing how much I was looking forward to performing that night. And to being around my fellow cast members.

I'm not in this company, of course. But I was around the rehearsals and most of the previews almost non-stop, and I certainly feel that "this is a family" feeling.

It's one of the plusses of being in theater. I had kind of forgotten it for a while, until being around this 10-person cast. Oh, I should say their names—one doesn't want to leave any family member out. Kate Jennings Grant, whom I've known and adored for several years, is Bette, and Christopher Evan Welch is Boo. Charles Socarides is Matt. The other roles are played by Julie Hagerty, John Glover, Victoria Clark, Adam LeFevre, Terry Beaver, Heather Burns, and Zoe Lister-Jones.

Hmmm. I must say this essay is making me want to act again. And in a big cast. I'm the right age and look for Chekhovian doctors and malcontents now if any directors are reading. Laugh, laugh.