October 29, 2009

Whispers Offstage? Could Be Actors Next Line

By PATRICK HEALY

Ticket holders at this weeks first previews of Matthew Brodericks new Off Broadway play have been privy
to a second drama: watching the veteran theater actor try to learn his lines, with help from a prompter
sitting in the front row.
The play, Kenneth Lonergans Starry Messenger, has been undergoing rewrites amid preview
performances, and Mr. Broderick has struggled so much that he called out for lines multiple times on
Monday and Tuesday nights. His offstage helper is expected to be on hand at least until this weekend.
The problems have led the shows producer, the New Group, to delay opening night for a week; at the same
time some audience members have complained about paying to see a star who has not memorized his part.
Mr. Broderick was not available to comment, but Scott Elliott, artistic director of the New Group, said there
was no shame in using a prompter. It happens now and then, he said, but people simply dont know
about it.
The stage and screen legend Angela Lansbury, for instance, said in an interview this week that she used an
earpiece to stay on cue during her Tony Award-winning turn in Blithe Spirit on Broadway last season.
Its not something you ever want to do, but if were going to play important roles at our age, where our
names are above the title on the marquee, were going to ask for some support if we need it, said Ms.
Lansbury, 84, who is set to star this winter in the Broadway revival of A Little Night Music.
But now the use of prompts has become a matter of inquiry for the Actors Equity union, which is
investigating a recent dismissal by the Hartford Stage theater of an actor who peeked at bits of dialogue
that he had taped inside his characters hat for a difficult scene.
While opera companies have long had hidden prompters at the rim of the stage, many theater actors
shudder at the idea of needing help with lines during performances. For them, mastery of a script is a
benchmark of professionalism. Still, acting fallbacks have a long but largely unnoticed history in the
theater. During the national tour of Legends in the 1980s, Mary Martin, who was in her 70s at the time,
used an earpiece that also picked up taxi signals, according to published accounts.
In the Hartford Stage incident, the fired actor, Matt Mulhern, 49, was appearing in Horton Footes
Orphans Home Cycle, a series of three plays over nine hours. Mr. Mulhern said he never received any
warning from Hartford Stage that his job might be in jeopardy; Orphans is a co-production with
Signature Theater Company in New York, where it is transferring next month.

In an interview, Mr. Mulhern described the prompt in his hat as a crutch that he relied on because of
script changes during rehearsals. He said he had been emotionally devastated by his Sept. 22 dismissal,
the first of his 27-year career. He also acknowledged he had ruffled feathers among colleagues for a
variety of other reasons after rehearsals began in July.
Michael Wilson, the artistic director of Hartford Stage and director of The Orphans Home Cycle,
declined to comment, saying the theater did not discuss employment issues. Maria Somma, a
spokeswoman for Actors Equity, also declined to comment.
Hartford Stage has yet to give Equity a formal reason for firing Mr. Mulhern, according to the actor. Ms.
Somma again would not comment on the matter.
Actors being fired for this reason vary by the situation, Harry Weintraub, general counsel of the League of
Resident Theaters, which includes Hartford Stage, said in an interview. When asked if the production
created hardships for actors because it spanned nine hours and included script changes, Mr. Weintraub
said, I wasnt aware that Mr. Mulhern had nine hours of lines to learn.
Actors Equity contracts do not forbid actors to use prompts, though directors sometimes fire actors who
have trouble learning their lines. Robert Falls, the artistic director of the Goodman Theater in Chicago, said
he had done so in the past. But he has also made adjustments, he said.
In 2002, for instance, Vanessa Redgrave was having a stressful time learning the lines for the role of
Mary Tyrone in the Goodmans production of Long Days Journey Into Night, Mr. Falls said. When
previews began, she asked the producers and Mr. Falls if she could have a prompter in the front row with a
script. Ms. Redgrave never called for a line, he said. She went on to win the Tony Award for best actress
when the production transferred to Broadway in 2003.
The prompter was more of a security blanket for Vanessa than anything else, Mr. Falls said. A
representative for Ms. Redgrave said she had no comment.
In the Broadway production of The Gin Game (1977-78), the characters played by Jessica Tandy and
Hume Cronyn spent stretches of time playing gin rummy. The actors at first used randomly dealt cards
with numbers that, naturally, did not match the dialogue. While the two spent extra hours drilling lines for
the gin rummy sequences, they were both nearing 70 and had memory lapses.
The initial solution for this was to pare down each scene, then write notes on the top of the card table for
the actors to refer to, said Nina Seely Sommer, the production supervisor for the show. This was difficult,
because the stage was raked so that the audience could see the top of the table, so these notes had to look
like player graffiti. Eventually the faces of the playing cards were sanded off, so the actors would not get
confused.
Although prompters once played a part in theater, audiences are no longer accustomed to them. And with
Broadway producers now charging $125 for orchestra seats, ticket buyers expect at a minimum that actors
will know their parts. New wireless technology has made it easier for actors to mask, say, flesh-colored

earpieces. Ms. Lansbury recalled that when she and Marian Seldes were on Broadway in Terrence
McNallys Deuce in 2007, a tiny speaker was behind their chairs in early performances to pipe lines to
them if needed.
Ms. Lansbury emphasized, though, that neither the Blithe Spirit nor Deuce prompts diminished the
productions or audiences apparent pleasure.
In the early days of theater, there was a prompt corner with a person ready to throw the line to any
actor, Ms. Lansbury recalled. In the electronic age, some 80-year-old performers wear earpieces. And all
of us lose ourselves in a play at moments. Laurence Olivier did at the height of his career. This is part of
theater.
This season A Steady Rain is one of the most dialogue-driven plays on Broadway, with the actors Hugh
Jackman and Daniel Craig who have extensive experience in the theater, not just movies shouldering
all 90 minutes of dialogue. A spokesman for the show said this week that neither man used prompts. Still,
Mr. Jackman said in an interview in August that the amount of memorization was a tall order and that he
and Mr. Craig even tossed a ball back and forth while running their lines.
I hope we wont have to use cue cards, Mr. Jackman joked, then added, Its a slog to learn the whole
script, but theres no other way to do it.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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