Al
Pacino's Fixation Continues on LA Stage
The
ANNOTICO Report
Pacino
plays the role of Herod, king of
"Love, Betrayal. Religion … It's Jerry Springer with rhyme."
Actually, it doesn't rhyme much, and in this 90-minute "presentation with
music" — some would call it a staged reading with bonus features —
most of the violence is offstage. But Pacino can't
resist the rigors of live theater, even when marking his 66th birthday Tuesday.
Pacino first saw the
play "Salome" in
He first did "Salome" onstage in
In his rave review, New York Times critic Ben Brantley commended the production
for making "Wilde's most arcane theatrical work feel as luridly immediate
as this morning's tabloids." Brantley called Pacino's
Herod "a soul encased in the armor of jadedness that comes from years of
exercising ruthless power."
In this production, along with 16 actors and two dozen crew members who will
face these 1,100-plus seats, Pacino has a documentary
team rolling on just about everything and everyone in the building. They're
aiming for release in time for
What
follows in the article is a fascinating chronicle of the "change"
process that evolves during rehearsal.
THE
ACTOR'S CRAFT
Lights, cellphones, cough drops, "Salome," cameras,
gemstones, action.
Multitasking
with Mr. Pacino, you don't pause between art and
life.
By
Christopher Reynolds
Times Staff Writer
AL PACINO likes layers. A week before the first performance of
"Salome" at the Wadsworth Theatre in West L.A., he drifts up and down
the dark aisles like a wayward cloud formation of black and gray garments —
baggy pants, a couple of untucked shirts and a droopy
blazer, his smiling face floating above them in Cheshire cat fashion.
"Suicide," he says. "Murder. Sex."
Pacino is ticking off the overlapping elements that
keep him coming back to this odd script and the role of Herod, king of
"Love," he continues. "Betrayal.
Religion … It's Jerry Springer with rhyme."
Actually, it doesn't rhyme much, and in this 90-minute "presentation with
music" — some would call it a staged reading with bonus features —
most of the violence is offstage. But Pacino can't
resist the rigors ! of live
theater, even when marking his 66th birthday Tuesday. And he has more elements
at play than the nasty plot and stark look of "Salome."
Along with 16 actors and two dozen crew members who will face these 1,100-plus
seats, Pacino has a documentary team rolling on just
about everything and everyone in the building. They're aiming for release in
time for
"The working title is 'Salomaybe?' " says Robert Fox, one of the play's producers.
"There's a lot of stuff that Al's not telling us," says Barry Navidi, producer of the film.
This film, whatever it is, will almost surely be seen by more people than will
"Salome" during its monthlong
The king hasn't said. Or rather, he's n! ot
spilling specifics. As a reporter dogs him through four days of rehearsals and
one surreal foray into the real world, he talks plenty.
"The issues of the play are vast and interesting," he says.
The film, he says, should be driven and enriched by language in the same way
the best plays are — "the specialty of language, the kind of feeling
you get when you hear repartee that ignites and transcends. It just interests
me, to see if I can do it," says Pacino.
"Man does not live by Oscar alone," he says.
"Am I filibustering?" he asks. (Who would say yes?)
Did he get a chance to recharge batteries between his last film project and
this? Pacino waves a hand at the stage.
"This," he says, "is recharging batteries."
*
Six days to curtain
IT'S a blustery afternoon outside. Inside, the company is multitasking.
"Where is he whose cup of abominations is now full?" says a voice
that might be God's, resounding through th!
e theater. It's Kevin Anderson, who plays the
imprisoned Jokanaan (a.k.a. John the Baptist),
working with the sound guys on just how much portentous echo to give his bursts
of prophecy.
Jessica Chastain, the willowy young redhead who plays Salome — she's just
two years out of Juilliard's drama program, yet
sufficiently well schooled to dodge questions about her age — is up
front, investigating movement options and bantering with the director.
Behind her, composer Yukio Tsuji, who will contribute a live tone poem
underneath the action as he did on the show's Broadway run, is testing flute
sounds.
Pacino enters from the lobby, headed toward a
conversation with a lighting guy and carrying his customary triple macchiato.
He pauses to chat with two of the producers and a reporter, the cameraman and
boom microphone advance, and suddenly there's a second show going on in the
theater's back row.
"It sort of feeds you, having more obstacles," he says. "It's ! trying to break through
those shackles of preciousness."
—
"I'm not in charge," says Estelle Parsons. She's the director.
"I work with Al," she says.
"He has wonderful ideas. Well, sometimes they're terrible."
Parsons is one of those wise, cheerful 78-year-olds who don't much care what
anybody thinks. She won a supporting actress Oscar for her role as a Barrow
Gang member in 1967's "Bonnie and
When he's out of the room and she's slouching in the third row and barking up
at the stage, she's utterly in charge. When Pacino is
in the room, they negotiate. While the cast watches.
"That," says one of the actors, "I can't begin to
understand."
Technically, it's a simple show: just! one act and a
handful of props to accent about 70 pages of strange and elegant dialogue.
Oscar Wilde wrote it nearly 115 years ago in French, then oversaw its
translation into English, generously distributing moon similes among the cast.
Even after the audience shows up, most of the characters will play it in street
clothes, and as it begins, they'll be glancing at scripts on music stands.
"It's sooooo
decadent," says Parsons. "We always find something new. That isn't
always true with Shakespeare."
As Herod, Pacino doesn't appear until more than 20
minutes into the show, and when he does, he is heard before he's seen.
"Salome," calls Pacino's voice in three
teasing, singsongy notes. This announces not only his
tipsy state but his unwholesome interest in his stepdaughter, who is also his
niece, who is also 14.
Over the next hour and a half — this cast's first full journey through
the show — Herod arcs from blowziest decadence to a sort of frontier m! orality, provoking more laughs
than turn up in the average tragedy, toying with lines he's had in mind for
more than a decade.
"Let no king swear an oath," Herod laments at one point. "If he
keep it not, it is terrible, and if he keep it, it is terrible also."
"At this point, it's in him," says cast member Geoffrey Owens.
"He's just soaked in it."
"One of the reasons he's become this icon is there's always something in
his voice or his face," says Parsons, "some signature."
Then again, Parsons may hear Pacino more acutely than
most. At the end of a run-through she calls "magnificent" but also
"too spread out" — a run-through in which Pacino's
fellow actors heard nothing amiss — she has a question for Pacino.
Parsons: "Are you losing your voice?"
Pacino: "Yeah."
Parsons: "Well, then you've got to stop talking, that's all."
Pacino: "Basically, I should just shut up for a
while."
Parsons: "I think we should go home."
Pacino: "Why?"
Parsons: "Because it's
—
In many ways, this dual project seems a sort of sequel to "Looking for
Richard," Pacino's 1996 movie about playing
Shakespeare's Richard III. But it connects to his broader career too.
As a Method actor, he's long been famous for burrowing deep inside his roles.
While making "Serpico" in the early 1970s,
one famous but thinly sourced story goes, Pacino forgot
he wasn't a cop and tried to arrest somebody. Thirty years later, here he
is climbing into Herod's head while simultaneously climbing way, way outside
him.
Instead of retreating between scenes to steep himself in Herod, Pacino offers counsel to the other actors and whispers with
Parsons, Fox and Navidi. Occasionally, during pauses
between Herod's lewd advances upon Salome, Pacino
takes cellphone calls from his 5-year-old twins.
Their mother, with whom the never-married Pacino is
no longer ! romantically
linked, is actress Beverly D'Angelo. To be closer to
the kids during the school year, Pacino says, he
moved to
With so many roles to play inside and outside this theater, says Pacino, "I could only do this with a play I've done
before."
Pacino, who spent several years onstage in
Pacino first saw this play in
He first did "Salome" onstage in
In his rave review, New York Times critic Ben Brantley commended the production
for making "Wilde's most arcane theatrical work feel as luridly immediate
as this morning's tabloids." Brantley called Pacino's
Herod "a soul encased in the armor of jadedness that comes from years of
exercising ruthless power."
Pacino and Tomei were going
to bring the show to
" 'Salome' for Al is like the never-ending tour
for Bob Dylan," says Fox. "He's looking at the same material in a
different way."
*
Five days to curtain
PACINO shuffles in and takes the throne, hoping "to find nuance."
Actress Marthe Keller, a friend of Pacino's and his costar in "Bobby Deerfield" 29
years ago, has come to watch.
"You know what I thought yesterday?" she tells him. "Salome is
Hamlet. She has the s! ame
problems with her father."
But before Pacino can get too far with this or
anything else, his cellphone rings. He steps to the
lip of the stage to answer. One of the twins.
"How is Tinkerbell?" asks Pacino. "Is Tinkerbell
OK?"
Eventually, they start from the top of the play. Pacino
sidles up to Parsons and offers a thought.
"Thank you, gentlemen," says Parsons, interrupting the cast.
"We're going to try a new beginning. Al's got an idea."
They try it. Doesn't work. Back to
the old idea.
Soon all eyes are on Chastain, who is working out her first entrance. It seems
simple enough. On cue, she steps forward from darkness. But Pacino
and Parsons each have ideas, as do the lighting people. These rehearsals, the
producers whisper, are far more collaborative and less structured than most.
"Where do you want me to start speaking? That's the question," says
Chastain, thumbs hooked into her back pockets.
"Is it ! possible,"
Parsons asks Chastain, "that you can come in with a little different
attitude?"
—
Amid the darkened, mostly empty seats, a cough rings out. Pacino.
"Don't tell me I'm getting a cough," he says, looking toward the
ceiling. "Please, God … I'm terrified I'm getting a cold."
The scent of Halls cough drops is on his breath.
*
Four days to curtain
TIME for jewelry shopping. While the rest of the cast takes the day off, Pacino leads an excursion to Harry Winston on
Soon they're stationed at a countertop, looking at sparkling rocks of green,
purple, blue and yellow, together worth slightly more than $1 million. At the
door, a security guard keeps the outside world at bay.
"This is something the actress takes off my finger," Pacino says. "It's the death ring. It's very
significant in ! the play. It
represents an action that's going to take place."
Randy Soto, the salon director, isn't in the habit of marketing death rings,
but he plays along, and the cameraman zooms in on Pacino's
ordinary hands, ring finger size 11, and beat-up nails.
And then Pacino, with a delinquent glint in his eye,
pipes up with a question.
"This is a very nice place," he says. But "why are we
here?"
"Because you wanted the real thing," says Fox, evenly and patiently.
It's part of his job, after all, to supply money and remain calm.
"I wanted the real thing," Pacino repeats.
"And my reason was?"
Now Fox speaks more slowly, in the hesitant tone of a quiz-show contestant.
"That the real is better than the unreal," he says.
Suddenly a rote exercise is inflamed with tension. The film crew doesn't miss a
minute, which is, of course, what Pacino probably had
in mind all along.
"Never miss an opportunity to try things out," Pacino!
told the cast the other day. Something he didn't say
then seems quite clear now: Whether you're an actor or not, if you're in a room
with Pacino and a camera, you're not safe.
*
Three days to curtain
WITH Pacino up on the balcony taking a call, the
rest of the cast gathers at the foot of the stage to talk about Salome's dance.
Parsons quizzes them on what they'll do while Chastain is writhing and
shimmying for Herod and the audience.
"They're not going to be looking at us," quips one of the cast, a
little too quickly.
"Bob, you do not know what they're gonna
do," says Parsons. "Some people are so disturbed by that dance, they
can't look at it."
"He's going up!" whispers Parsons. "I was hoping he'd go
down." But for now she keeps mum.
As for Pacino, he seems to have three triple macchiatos in him today.
"I connect to the role," he says of Herod. "That's one! thing. And I've done it a long time too. There's something
to be said for doing a thing a lot. Because certain things,
if you're lucky, begin to come. Things that wouldn't
come earlier on."
For years, Pacino has been telling interviewers that
it was seeing the movie "The Lost Weekend," with Ray Milland, that awakened him as a teenager to the
possibilities of acting. But to illustrate his point about repetition and
command, he reaches for another memory, a Frank Sinatra concert long ago. Buddy
Rich was on drums, taking a solo.
"It started out he was just drumming," says Pacino.
"By the end, he was doing something else."
Up on stage, they hit a snag. Pacino leaps up there,
looking to keep things light, starts jabbering in an Asian language all his own. Later, after he's made his point, he segues to
faux French, gross German, indefensible Italian — a bravura throwaway
performance, with film crew in place.
The hours wind down. Chastain has solve! d the riddle of her entrance.
"I did a sort of Gregorian chant yesterday. Nobody really told me what
they thought of that," says
Pacino and his
As it happens, the box office is only 20 feet away, and a woman, a playgoer, is
standing there. She takes in Pacino's entrance as if
she'd expected it for days.
"Don't die yet," she deadpans. "Don't die until after the
19th." Then she turns back to the clerk and buys three tickets for the
19th.
"Thanks," Pacino tells his public.
"Thanks for that."
The film crew misses it all.
But three days later, an honest-to-God audience shows up in! the
rain to fill 90% of the seats. Salome's entry and Jokanaan's
voices go fine. Fox clocks the performance at 1 hour, 28 minutes, followed by
standing and shouting. Pacino's cold, if he ever had
one, is nowhere in evidence.
*
'Salome'
Where: Wadsworth
Theatre,
When: 8 p.m.
Wednesdays to Saturdays,
Ends: May 14
Price: $68 to $93
Contact: (213)
365-3500
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