Interview: Lou Diamond Phillips Talks About His New Play, BURNING DESIRE

After a series of star-studded readings dating back to the 1990s, Lou Diamond Phillips' play Burning Desire is having its first full production at Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury, Conn. With Phillips in the lead role, the play opened Saturday night and is scheduled to run through March 13.

Burning Desire is the first produced play written by Phillips, the actor best known for his breakout role as Ritchie Valens in the 1987 biopic La Bamba--or to theater fans as the King in the last Broadway revival of The King and I (opposite Donna Murphy). He portrays a familiar figure in his play, too: Lucifer, a.k.a. the devil, who toys with a young couple's romance. "He makes them fall in love and then gets his fun by creating havoc in their lives," according to press notes for Burning Desire, which is described as a "comedic look at what it means to be in love, when it seems all odds are against you."

The Equity production, which costars Tara Franklin and Ryan Wesley Gilreath as the young lovers, is directed by Richard Zavaglia, who also helmed a New York reading of the play in January 2015. Previous readings, held in Los Angeles, featured Brooke Shields and Noah Wyle, with Swoosie Kurtz reading stage directions, and Amy Smart and Michael Urie with Dan Lauria. Phillips has done Lucifer's role in all the readings.

Soon after Burning Desire concludes its Seven Angels run next month, Phillips will head back west to film season 5 of the Netflix series Longmire. The 54-year-old actor has also appeared in a couple of episodes of NBC's new hit drama Blindspot. On the big screen Phillips recently costarred in The 33, about the Chilean miners who were trapped underground for more than two months in 2010; the film has just come out on DVD and Blu-ray. Phillips spoke with BroadwayWorld while his play was in tech last week.

How did this production at Seven Angels come about?
It's interesting, because the play itself makes note of the coincidences and the crossroads and the stars aligning and all of that--how the universe works--and we had this lovely chain of events that brought us here. One of the readings I did early on was at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles. Richie Zavaglia was one of the partners there at the Coronet, and Dan Lauria as well, who's a very dear friend. That's where Richie got familiar with the play. Over the years Richie and I crossed paths a number of times again. We did Aaron Sorkin's play A Few Good Men in Texas, and he asked me, "Have you ever done anything with the play?" I said, "No. If you want, take it and run with it if you come up with something." Cut to last year--we did a reading at Malachy's Actors' Chapel in Manhattan, and that reconnected him with Dan Lauria. And Dan Lauria had gone to school with Semina DeLaurentis [founder of Seven Angels Theatre]. Semina saw Richie and Dan do a play that Dan had written called Dinner With the Boys, and Richie and Semina started talking, and Semina was like, "Sure, bring the play to Seven Angels." So this production certainly feels like kismet to me.

Have you expanded the cast since the readings?
I have added a couple of dancers, Sophie Lee Morris and Jackie Aitken, which is something I'd always hoped to do. During the readings we'd often have somebody reading the stage directions, and I [was thinking], How are we going to make these [scene] transitions smoother? What could I do to underline the temptation, the seduction, Lucifer's ability to pull the strings as puppet master? And then the idea of two dancers, like Price Is Right models or Vegas showgirls, came in, and I thought that would be not only funny and entertaining but sexy. I have to say, it's really proved to be a great addition, because not only does it make some of the practical elements of the show--transitions and moving sets--more attractive, it really does add to the sexiness. And even to the humor. We were able to find a lot of really cute bits to do with having a couple of sexy girls on stage.

Who's the choreographer?
His name is Mic Thompson. He's had a lot of music video experience, worked with Michael Jackson, has done Vegas shows, so he was absolutely perfect for our production. His choreography is pretty fantastic. It spans hip-hop to classical to jazz, and really gives a very good language, if you will, to the movement of the show.

Has the play otherwise changed much over the years?
I haven't done a lot of rewriting. I've tweaked a joke or two along the way and made a few edits. It remains 95 percent what it was when it first came out of my head. With all these readings I've been able to see which jokes work and which don't, and also whether the story has clarity, and when we do get to the parts that I hope are meaningful and that spark either thought or emotion in my audience, whether they work. Fortunately I've had a number of dry runs at this, so I can see where it's really landing.
What I've discovered is that it's very important, even though they are sort of representative of a modern-day Adam and Eve--not that it's about creation, but it's about an innocent young couple who are being manipulated, and who could possibly find paradise--I've discovered that themes of the play and the relationship itself works better if we're dealing with two people who are young, but not too young. They've been around the block, they've experienced love before, and they're ready to settle down, they're ready to accept true love. If they're too young, it just doesn't have the same resonance. And in the same respect, if I were to cast people my age, it'd be like, Wow, you kind of missed the bus there, didn't you? [Laughs]

So what made you write this play in the first place?
Write what you know: It originally came from a breakup--a pretty nasty breakup. I was ruminating on the darker aspects of love, and how something so perfect and bright and shiny can turn so dark and painful. And the thought, Well, Lucifer obviously has something to do with love--the whole idea of Lucifer having half the responsibility for the love in the universe became a very intriguing thought to me. That was the basic premise where the show started. So I wrote this opening monologue, à la Woody Allen or à la Our Town and Thornton Wilder, and didn't know where it was going. So I put it away--I put it in a drawer for four or five years--and then I was doing The King and I on Broadway. I've discovered a lot of times that when I'm doing something that creative, that's really sparking my creative juices, it inspires other aspects of my art, if you will, and the end of Burning Desire came to me while I was doing the show. I basically wrote it while I was commuting to and from New York. I was living out in Great Neck, Long Island, at the time, and I wrote the play on the LIRR.

Have you written anything else?
I wrote plays in high school and college and produced them on a very, very small level, but I've never had a play produced professionally. If you look at my filmography, I've got some screenplay-writing credits as well. I also dabble in prose. I wrote the introduction for Craig Johnson's collection of short stories, Wait for Signs. Craig is the author of the Longmire mysteries--he and I got very close, and I read all of the books. Was incredibly honored, actually, when he asked me to write the foreword to the short-story collection. So, technically, I guess you could say I'm a New York Times best-selling author [laughs]...riding on his coattails!

Then you're an actor/writer, not just an actor?
Yeah. Just because you get known for one thing doesn't necessarily mean you don't have other things waiting in the wings. It's like when I went to Broadway, people raised their eyebrows: "Oh, this movie actor's gonna do theater?" I have a degree in theater; it's where I cut my teeth. My first professional gig was with a comedy sketch troupe called the Zero Hour back in Fort Worth in the early '80s.

You mentioned that a breakup was the impetus for writing the play. What's your "relationship status" now?
I'm married. I have been for eight years. I have four daughters, one daughter with my current wife. Yes, I believe in the institution and I've not given up.

So is this play romantic rather than cynical about love?
Both. I think ultimately it is about faith and belief in this concept of romantic love and devotion, and the joy that it brings. But I wanted to give it a well-considered approach, to look at both sides, to look at not only what is unabashedly emotional and sentimental but what is dark and cynical and realistic and try to find a balance--and try to find a hopeful resolution that isn't trite or pat.

Will there be a production in New York City?
Let me put in this way, there are hopes. There are no plans, but I'd certainly love to see it go to New York. I think it's a crowd-pleaser, it's a great date-night show, it skews to a younger audience that we'd love to get to the theater. I think there are a number of houses off-Broadway that might be very suitable, so I'm hoping some people will jump on the train or make the trek out and come take a look at the show. They'll see that, first of all, it's incredibly easy to produce. It was written that way--I created it to have a life far beyond my involvement with it.

Speaking of NYC, have you come here to see the new revival of King and I?
I absolutely did. And it's gorgeous. There are a number of people involved in this production that I worked with on mine. I was able to see Jose Llana play the King; Jose was my Lun Tha back in '96-97, so I was incredibly proud of him and thought he did an amazing job. It's been 20 years--my god--so we're putting together a King and I reunion from that production.

Burning Desire photos by Paul Roth