September 20, 1996
Metro
A NEW STAGE FOR PACINO
HOLLYWOOD'S GODFATHER IS BRINGING MOBS TO BROADWAY WITH HUGHIE
by Caren Weiner
Keanu Reeves shadowboxes in the hallway three stories below Broadway, beneath Circle in the Square's underground stage, outside the tiny dressing room where Al Pacino is holding court. Showbiz types are gushing over Pacino's performance in the Eugene O'Neill drama Hughie, and Reeves pops through the door every so often to join in. Meanwhile, the target of all these accolades stands, happily fatigued, wearing a rumpled green linen suit, stage makeup, and stubble. Though Pacino's visitors are enthusiastic, they respectfully keep to the doorway: No one penetrates his retreat.
And this is a real retreat for Pacino. Why else would a film actor of this caliber, with a 28-year movie career, seven Academy Award nominations, one Best Actor Oscar (for 1992's Scent of a Woman), and a $9 million-per-film asking price, come back to his New York theatrical roots at least once every four years? Indeed, the two-character, one-act Hughie, which is scheduled to run until Oct. 9 after 11 weeks of previews and performances, seems a little like a metaphor for the star's career at the moment. Directing himself for the first time on Broadway, Pacino portrays jinxed gambler Erie Smith, who returns to the hotel where the deceased night clerk, Hughie, always gave him comfort and confidence. Though Hughie's replacement (Paul Benedict) at first can't be bothered to pay attention, the two construct the beginnings of a friendship, and Erie begins to feel hopeful again.
Like Erie, Pacino, 56, is not as lucky as he once was. Although he works constantly, many critics have called his recent characterizations mannered, overwrought, predictable. TIME'S Richard Corliss wondered, "Is he a failed great actor or a great bad one?" His film choices have often been, to put it charitably, unwise (take last year's Two Bits--please); his biggest hit since Scent of a Woman was last year's Heat, which grossed a relatively modest $67 million.
"Pretty much all the things I find interesting to do for myself come out of the theater," Pacino says earnestly. Why? Pacino rolls his head counterclockwise, briefly considering the ceiling, and talks about depth. The plays are profound, he says, and there is a deep communion between live actors and their audience. "With the theater, you know why you're there. You're not looking up at a big screen and just wanting to get away; you're there to get there...to find out something or have an experience of some kind." He cites the Living Theatre, New York's Off Broadway troupe of the 1960s, as a prime example: "They had that ability to transform your perspective. And that's kind of a religious experience."
Clearly, Pacino is still a believer in that religion. After being an acolyte of the Living Theatre as a young actor, he was blessed with an Obie, in 1968, and two Tonys, in '69 and '77; he was anointed a high priest when he served as co-artistic director of the Actors Studio from 1982 to 1984. But because of the demands of his film career, in the past 16 years he has appeared on the New York-area stage only a handful of times.
To Pacino, the theater is about trust and experimentation and privacy and flux. "It's like a garden, you know?" he says. "You plant the seed, it doesn't come up right away. Sometimes it takes time." Long runs are enticing, he says, because of the almost infinite possibilities. "I did American Buffalo for four years, and that was one reason I repeated it. Especially interesting is when you've done a part and you've gone off and done a movie and you come back and repeat the role. Something's happened to you, and it will affect the way you do a play you just did a year ago."
A play like Hughie, for example. The short play had some sentimental value for Pacino: He had performed a scene from it in his youth for the Method acting guru Lee Strasberg, according to Circle in the Square founder Theodore Mann. Not until many years later, however, did Pacino see a way to present the piece: When his mentor, Charlie Laughton (not the actor), informally read it aloud to Pacino, he incorporated the usually unspoken thoughts of the night clerk, which are written in the script in italics. The idea of using those thoughts as added dialogue swirled around in Pacino's head for years until, in 1992, he did a six-performance workshop of Hughie at Circle in the Square's downtown theater. That workshop, directed by Mann, held the conceptual seeds of this show: a spare, nonnaturalistic set to highlight the intensely verbal nature of the play; the voiced-over inclusion of the clerk's thoughts. Finally, last year, following six more readings of the play, Pacino agreed to do the show on Broadway. Says Mann, "He was intrigued by it; he'd go away and read something else and then come back again." After Pacino approached Benedict, three weeks of rehearsals in New York and four weeks of previews in New Haven ensued, in addition to the first four "preview" weeks on Broadway--in total, almost three months of preparation for this production alone. Most film shoots are over in less time.
According to Benedict, those months allowed the two actors to deepen their friendship--"we spent a long time telling really bad jokes to each other"--and to work according to Pacino's slow and respectful directorial method. Benedict says: "He has a very subtle approach. For example, we'll rehearse a scene, and he'll say to me, 'It seems to me there might be a flavor of such and such here.' And then--and this is the important part--he'll say, 'Don't do that, I don't want you to do that; it's just something you can put in your head; if it's right, it'll come out at some point.' It's a suggestion, not a command. Very few directors know enough or trust enough to work that way. "
Pacino's passion for the stage has fueled forays into film directing as well. His feature directorial debut will be October's documentary/drama Looking for Richard, which follows the rehearsal and staging of a production of Richard III, a play Pacino has starred in three times. He hopes to make the play accessible so that audiences will be encouraged to see some live Shakespeare. And his next turn behind the camera may be Modi, a screenplay based on Dennis McIntyre's 1979 Off Broadway drama about Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani.
Pacino toils over his film projects, too, with intense slowness--which doesn't always pay off. His first involvement with a film made from a play he'd been in was The Local Stigmatic, which he and Benedict had starred in Off Broadway in 1969; Pacino tinkered with it off and on for more than a decade. (He finally shelved it, unreleased.) Later, the man took three years to film Richard, ending up with more than 80 hours of raw footage, which he laboriously culled for months. This endless noodling begins to seem a bit obsessive and self-indulgent.
Give him this, though: At least he is willing to pay for his obsessiveness. Pacino bankrolled Richard himself; similarly, he is performing Hughie for a pittance. He laments "the syndrome of the Hit"--he puts his right elbow on the table and clenches a fist in the air--"which is motivated and generated by money.... But once you work the economics out, you can start taking liberties. If you don't get a salary for it, then you're allowed to come and go with it. You're free." One such liberty: He insisted that 100 tickets per performance be discounted to $20 for students and seniors. (Meanwhile, though, the purse strings are still a noose: Though Hughie is sold out nightly, Circle in the Square filed for bankruptcy in August after years spent teetering on the brink.) In the end, all these projects are subsidized by Pacino's film stardom. "Movies allow you to go on the stage," he admits, "because people know you and will come to see you."
Still, over these last decades, fame has made him wary of exploitation and mindful of who's really in control. "As an actor in movies, you are always subject to someone else's interpretation. It's the director; it's the editor. You always feel that kind of a vulnerability, which sometimes is very useful for your performance. But sometimes it's enervating," he muses. "There is a tendency, when we do these things, to censor ourselves because we know somebody else is going to adjust it. I try not to censor myself."
Back in the dressing room, the crowd disperses and Pacino stands there, blinking and waving. He promises to meet his friends for a drink at a nearby bar, his favorite, in 10 minutes. In the corner and on the dressing table, three stories underground, red and purple flowers bloom.
