PAINT US A PICTURE KEACH BACK ON STAGE AS 'TEN UNKNOWNS' ARTIST.Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer MONTHS BEFORE ``Ten Unknowns'' was to arrive at the Mark Taper Forum The Mark Taper Forum is a small thrust stage with 745 seats at the Los Angeles Music Center built by Welton Beckett and Associates. It has presented innovative plays since 1967. The world premiere of Angels In America was produced here. , theater writers and Web sites began speculating about who would be cast as Malcolm Raphelson, the tormenting and self-tortured painter at the center of Jon Robin Baitz's play. For an actor in the 60-something or older range, Raphelson is - to put it mildly - a hell of a part. The gossip wire tossed out names like Nick Nolte Nicholas King Nolte (born February 8, 1941) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor, model, and producer. Biography Early life Nolte was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Helen (née King), a department store buyer, and Franklin Nolte, a farmer's son who , Ian Holm and Brian Cox This article is about the actor. For the physicist, see Brian Cox (physicist). For the director, see Brian Cox (director). For the football player, see Bryan Cox. Brian Denis Cox, CBE (born June 1, 1946) is a Scottish actor. for the Taper staging. Donald Sutherland, who had played the role in the play's Lincoln Center Lincoln Center New York’s modern theater complex. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 1586] See : Theater premiere, was out. Ditto ``Alias' '' Ron Rifkin Ron Rifkin, born to a Jewish[1] family October 31, 1939, is a prolific American actor and director who is featured in numerous television shows. In 2001, his association with Touchstone Television began when he played ex-director, Arvin Sloane, in Alias , a frequent Baitz collaborator, who played Raphelson when the playwright reworked the play for a Boston engagement. To Baitz's great satisfaction, the role fell to Stacy Keach Stacy Keach (born Walter Stacy Keach, Jr. on June 2, 1941 in Savannah, Georgia) is an American actor and narrator. He is most famous for his dramatic roles; however, he has done narration work in educational programming on PBS and the Discovery Channel, as well as some . Meaning Raphelson - and the play - would continue to evolve based on Keach's persona. ``When I knew Stacy was the guy, I couldn't help but factor that into the version I was doing for here,'' says Baitz, author of ``The Substance of Fire,'' ``The Hotels'' and the upcoming Al Pacino film ``People I Know.'' ``Stacy brings true brute strength and intellect at the same time, and a kind of loss which is very male, which is very blocked, which is slightly iconic and is quite often frightening,'' Baitz continues. Theatergoers may not easily recognize TV's erstwhile Mike Hammer under the shock of wavy gray hair, goatee and paint-spattered shirts. Keach, a regular of L.A. TheatreWorks live radio broadcasts, hasn't acted in a fully staged play since being part of the rotating cast of ``Art'' in London's West End four years ago. His last venture at the Taper, he recalls, was a 1974 production of ``Hamlet.'' ``L.A. TheatreWorks gives you a sense of getting back in the theater a little bit,'' says Keach. ``You have to keep those muscles alive. Otherwise they atrophy.'' Not that any of Keach's muscles are in in any danger of going soft. He has two films, a TV film and another Mike Hammer movie due in 2003. A science buff, Keach is producing a documentary about the world of microscopes. His audio book recording of the complete short stories of Ernest Hemingway Noun 1. Ernest Hemingway - an American writer of fiction who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1954 (1899-1961) Hemingway was recently published by Simon and Schuster. ``I did Hemingway in a miniseries 10 to 12 years ago, so that's how that came to pass,'' says Keach. ``And there are certain Hemingway-esque qualities with Raphelson, too. This guy really seems to have qualities of the ugly American
Ugly American is an epithet used to refer to perceptions of arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless behaviors of Americans abroad. .'' In the play, Raphelson, a former darling of the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of art demimonde dem·i·monde n. 1. a. A class of women kept by wealthy lovers or protectors. b. Women prostitutes considered as a group. 2. , has spent the last three decades living in a kind of self-imposed seclusion seclusion Forensic psychiatry A strategy for managing disturbed and violent Pts in psychiatric units, which consists of supervised confinement of a Pt to a room–ie, involuntary isolation, to protect others from harm in Mexico. Struggling with the painter's equivalent of writer's block writer's block Psychiatry An occupational neurosis of authors, in whom creative juices are temporarily or permanently inspissated , he has not painted so much as a greeting card. Until now. As the play begins, a South African art dealer is trying to lure the newly prolific Raphelson back to New York for a major retrospective. Raphelson has an assistant, whom he terrorizes, and he encounters an attractive young biologist who is in Mexico studying a rare breed of frog. Ugly though the character may be, Keach loves him. ``You get to do just about everything,'' he says. ``He's funny, he's tormented, he's frustrated, all the great things that an actor wants to play. Including cruelty. ``Oh yeah,'' Keach continues, ``and different, but I think the depth of his feeling and the depth of his passion about his dilemma is such that ultimately he becomes sympathetic in some ways. Hopefully.'' Recent months have been a bit turbulent in the Keach family. Keach's father, Stacy Sr., died in February, and Stacy Jr.'s family recently underwent a major house renovation. The ``Ten Unknowns'' engagement comes right in the middle of pilot season, and Keach has already told his representatives that, no, he can't bail out of the final week of ``Ten Unknowns'' to hook up with a pilot in New York. ``For me, these opportunities don't come along that often - that you get a part this good in a Robbie Baitz play,'' says Keach. ``I think you have to take advantage of the opportunity.'' TEN UNKNOWNS Where: Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays; through May 4. Tickets: $31 to $45. Call (213) 628-2772. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: Stacy Keach is a troubled painter who's not exactly easy to live with in ``Ten Unknowns'' at the Mark Taper Forum. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion