Interview: Ned Eisenberg Hopes to Make ROCKET TO THE MOON Fly at the Theatre at St. Clement's

A rare revival of Rocket to the Moon, the 1938 play by Clifford Odets (AWAKE AND SING, GOLDEN BOY), starring Ned Eisenberg, starts performances tonight at the Theatre at St. Clement's. Directed by Obie and Lucille Lortel Award winner Dan Wackerman (Counsellor-at-Law), Rocket to the Moon will play a limited engagement, opening Monday, February 23rd. Eisenberg graciously sat down and spoke with BroadwayWorld about taking on the role of Ben Stark in this seldom-performed Odets piece, working with Wackerman, and more!

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How is preparation for ROCKET TO THE MOON coming?

Oh, it's going well! We're a few weeks in, and we've got another couple weeks of previews and rehearsals too, so I'm assuming we will get there. It's an enigmatic place, not quite as, you know, graspable, as AWAKE AND SING, or GOLDEN BOY, or any of that kind of thing. It's got a life of its own! [Laughs]

What has it been like portraying this character? It's a Clifford Odets, which you've done before...

Yeah! This is my third Odets in the decade; it's kind of remarkable! People always used to tell me, "You look like you just walked out of a Clifford Odets play." Well, now I guess I'm walking into them. It's quite something.

What's it like to work with your director, Dan Wackerman?

Oh, it's really nice! He's a very courteous fellow, and it's just a good report on all fronts there. I've never worked with him before; we've never collaborated on anything, so it's all new with me and most of the actors too. I've worked with Jonathan Hadaray before. So I got to do both Odets pieces with him, oddly enough. This is our third Odets piece together. It's crazy. But other than Jonathan, it's all new for me with a whole new group of people.

You mentioned doing GOLDEN BOY and AWAKE AND SING before. How are those Odets plays similar to or different from this show?

Well like I say, this one is different. It's a whole different setting. It's in a dentist's office. It's still got those great bursts that come out of the characters from time to time- well, not as much from this character until later on in the show. He's a little bit more obtuse; he's a little bit more inscrutable. You can't quite tell what's going on. So it's different that way, because GOLDEN BOY was more cinematic. It goes from the boxing ring, to Central Park to the boy's house, whereas the whole action of this play is in one setting, a dentist's office in Manhattan. AWAKE AND SING is pretty much just all in an apartment in the Bronx, so that's a similarity, but it's still got that rhapsodic language that Odets specializes in. It's Odets-ian that way. And a lot does happen. A lot of emotional stuff does happen in the course of the play. They get physical with one another.

What's your take on Ben Stark?

Well, I'm finding out about him as I'm playing him, actually. He's been in a very neutral place, very static, in a way. Not unhappy, but I don't know how happy he is either. It's so much about Odets's characters, that they're racing towards happiness, but this guy is like, "Well, it's ok. My life's not bad." And at this particular time, he's in this hot office. Everybody's sweating, and with the Depression, people are having money difficulties. So things come to a boiling point for him in terms of his marriage, which was probably good at one time. They did love each other, at least that's the way we're playing it, but I think a lot of that has gone. They're a childless couple, and there's this character of the father-in-law who doesn't get along with the daughter and didn't get along with his wife. He comes in, and he's a trouble-maker. He sets in motion, or at least he plans for Ben to have a romance with his 19-year-old secretary, and over the course of this play, this does come to fruition.

Of course the title is very metaphorical, ROCKET TO THE MOON, so what is your take on that?

Well in this case, it's embodied by the love affair that happens, or the affair that happens. But it's like, "Reach for the stars," as it were, "To dream, to explore, to come alive." There's one point when I get to say, "A certain man once said that in our youth, we collect materials to build a bridge to the moon, and in our old age, we use the same materials to build a shack." Then I said, "That sounds like a quotation from something..." and someone was doing the internet thing, the assistant stage manager says, "Yeah, that's Thoreau." I said, "Oh, well that sort of changes it around, doesn't it?" So the shack, the humble life is the good life rather than the youthful building a bridge to the moon. See, I told this to the director when we started to work, that sometimes the plays reveal themselves to you, like this particular work, and as you're working on them, as they're playing out in an audience, at least that's what I found when we did GOLDEN BOY and AWAKE AND SING with Bartlett Sher. He allowed that kind of exploration and it just kind of comes together after a while, but it's not immediately apparent.

So how do you think audiences can relate to this show?

Oh, I think it transcends time. It's not like it's just period, but I think we're dealing with the same problems all the time as they always have, so I think it's definitely relatable.

What are you most looking forward to about this show?

I don't know; I'm just sort of in it. I'm enjoying the whole ride. I guess I'm looking forward to when things are more cemented or figured out in my own head and my own take. But I can't get too locked into something, because it's an organic thing; it comes and goes. But I'll be curious to see how it's received. They did it a couple years ago over at Long Wharf, I think around the same time we were doing AWAKE AND SING. I didn't get to see it, but I think it was well-received.

Have you ever seen this show performed?

No, I never have seen this show performed. It's rarely if ever done. It hasn't really been done in New York in any major way since 1938. People know it though, who are actors, directors, and writers, they know it. They've read his work. For some people, they consider it his best play. Amazingly enough, they consider it his most layered and textured... And difficult! Some directors have said, "It's a hard play," and I say, "Well, I guess so, we'll see. I hope to make it fly."

NED EISENBERG (Ben Stark) Broadway: Rocky, Golden Boy, Awake and Sing (Tony, Drama Desk winner,) The Green Bird. Off Broadway: Finks (E.S.T.) Othello (Iago - Lortel Nominee), Oliver Twist, King John (TFANA), Meshugah (Naked Angels). Film: Meadowlands, Experimenter, Won't Back Down, Limitless, Flags of our Fathers, World Trade Center, Million Dollar Baby. TV: "Madam Secretary," "Mysteries of Laura," "Crime," "Person of Interest," "White Collar," "30 Rock," "Blue Bloods," "The Big C," "Law and Order, SVU," "Criminal Intent."