Identity and Irony: Richard Thomas on 'Democracy'

It was The Homecoming, a 1971 TV movie, that introduced America to a family named the Waltons and their eldest son, John-Boy, a role which made Richard Thomas one of the biggest television stars of the decade and won him an Emmy.

There's been another important homecoming in Thomas' life recently. In August, he moved back to his hometown, Manhattan, after 32 years. Though Los Angeles had been his address since the Waltons days, he's been working on stages nationwide—Circle Rep, Second Stage, Williamstown, Hartford Stage, Kennedy Center, Alley Theatre, L.A.'s Ahmanson, to name a few. He's currently starring on Broadway as a Cold War spy in Democracy.

Earlier this year Thomas played the egotistical and sexually preoccupied conductor in Terrence McNally's The Stendhal Syndrome off-Broadway. Born and raised in New York City, Thomas had appeared in four Broadway plays and numerous TV shows (including Bonanza, Marcus Welby and The Defenders) before getting cast in The Waltons. He returned to Broadway post-Waltons, succeeding Christopher Reeve in Fifth of July, and since then has continued performing in TV movies and series while building up a diverse theatrical resume.

In the fact-based Democracy, Thomas plays Günter Guillaume, an East German spy whom Willy Brandt (James Naughton)—West Germany 's first liberal chancellor—unknowingly employed as an aide. Like so many other Germans, Guillaume was genuinely enthralled by Brandt's charisma and ideals; Brandt, though irritated by the unctuous Guillaume, grew closer to him. After five years as a popular and Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader, Brandt was forced to resign when Guillaume was unmasked.

Democracy was an award-winning hit in London before being recast with American actors for its Broadway bow, but talk has persisted—even after a New York Times rave—that the politically tinged historical drama by Michael Frayn (Copenhagen) would be a tough sell for Americans. Thomas addressed the issue, as well as others related to the play and his performance, during a recent interview at the theater.

What is the play about, beyond this particular episode in German history?
It's a play about politics without a particular agenda to flog, which is not only rare, it's absent these days. It's a true history play. It's very rare that we get true history plays that don't have another point to make somewhere along the line.
It's about process. For me the whole play is about the process of telling this story and being on this character's journey. It's also about how the process in the individual mind is mirrored in the overall political process, how the political process is simply our psychic process writ large and factored up. If Copenhagen is to some degree about uncertainty, then this is to some degree about chaos and complexity. How anything ever gets done. Sometimes what gets done is what you intend; so often, as my character says in the very first line of the second act, nothing ever turns out the way one expects. Everything goes in a different direction, because of all these things that come into play. Sometimes you do the right thing, sometimes you do the wrong thing by mistake, sometimes you try to do the right thing and there are consequences for your success. The ironies of the process, and the inability to pin down one moment, any absolute, black or white point of view or picture about what's going on in human affairs—I think that's the larger issue that's hanging on the pegs of this particular historical story.

How much did you know about Germany before doing the play?
I made an East German escape movie for CBS in 1980, Berlin Tunnel 21. I was there 12 weeks. I knew the wall, I went through Checkpoint Charlie, I knew East Germans, I went back and forth [between East and West Germany]. That was hugely useful, much more than any reading up. The full awareness of what the Cold War split was, the huge shadow that the wall cast—that I got because I lived there and saw it. I'd be walking up the street, turn the corner, and there it is right in front of you, you can't go any further. That had a great effect. The play's talking about the Germany that's broken apart, the capital is split, the way they are in the East, the way they are in the West—that was very helpful for me to understand it.

What interested you in this role?
The challenge of being not the villain, but the antagonist. Frayn plays fast and loose with theatrical types. Guillaume is Brandt's antagonist, and yet the audience knows more about him than any other character on the stage. He tells the story, he's sort of the presiding genius of the play. He's the Puck, he's the Richard III... The idea of playing the foil, but the foil who is also the central active figure in the play.
The complexity of the role is amazing. The language is extraordinary. It's very precise, it's very clear. The diction—it's got a very small vocabulary. We all use the same words. It would be the design equivalent of a tight palette. It's very much a language play, which appeals to me. And it's a highly complex role. The difficulty factor is very high in the part, and that's always exciting to me.

Did you see Democracy in London?
I wanted to see it because I knew that of all the parts, mine was going to be the most physically active. I wasn't interested in seeing the performances as much as I was interested in seeing how the role fit into the production and what the effect of the production was, because I was going to be a part of it.

How does the Broadway production differ?
It was much drier in London, as one would expect. Maybe a little more emotional distance, not quite as in-the-gut. It was a little more back-on-its heels—a touch more removed from the wetness of the emotions. American actors tend to be wetter rather than drier.
We weren't building this from scratch. [Director] Michael [Blakemore] said, "This is going to be a completely different thing, and it must be a completely different thing." His decision was to have American English spoken for American audiences in a play that was going to constantly have reverberations in their own psyches about their own public life, democracy. He wanted it so that it chimed with our way—the same kind of emotions, the same kind of playing that Americans do. Otherwise, it would just be imitating a cast of English actors...a cast of English actors who are playing Germans!
The audience is much more vocal here. Much more laughter, much more vocally engaged. English audiences aren't as voluble. This play isn't a laughfest, but it's filled with irony. Consequently, there are always these little ripples of a-ha! kind of humor. When you get those responses, you know they're getting what's happening. It's them being on point with the story. It's not a play designed to get a visceral reaction, which Americans are not used to. We like to have a good healing cry, or a lot of laughs, or be shocked. This is touching and funny and daring, but it keeps the reins on itself.
In every role I do I try to find as much comedy as I can. This is a political tragedy but in an ironic vein. I try to find as much humor as possible, not by being a funnyman but by seeing where the ironies are.

Did you base your portrayal on Guillaume's memoirs and news reports from the time, or is it your own creation?
They're all in German! I did look at a couple of documentaries, which were in German. They were very interesting because we saw what everybody looked like and got a flavor of the time. And the Günter Guillaume who was interviewed in the footage was 20 years older than the Guillaume who's in the play.
I base it entirely on what's in the text. If the text is good enough, that's really all you need, unless you're doing an impersonation, which is not what any of us is doing. Nobody on the stage, either here or in London, looks like the guy he's playing. And as Michael Frayn writes in his essay [published with the play], of all the roles, Guillaume is the one that is the most imagined on his part, in terms of personality. So, since he imagined it, I'll take my cue from him.

So how do you define Guillaume's personality?
I don't think Günter Guillaume is all about any one thing. He's an underling. He is far from the peer of any of the other men on the stage. His job is to get attached, become useful, then to become indispensable, which is what he does. None of the other men on stage can do that because they're all officials. That is how he attached himself to Brandt and that office, by becoming a sort of dogsbody who was always there to help out with anything. The adjectives are all there [in the dialogue]: chirpy, smiling... It's one of the ironies, one of the 250,000 ironies of the play, that Brandt is immediately put off by him. Brandt is not used to having peons around; he's surrounded by his peers. And this guy is obsequious, and he is just there as a kind of spaniel. Brandt keeps saying, "Find me somebody else," but it never happens. And pretty soon in his way Guillaume becomes indispensable to Brandt, because there are times he can talk to him when no one else is around... It's beautiful how it evolves. So I think the obsequiousness is a tool that Guillaume uses. And yet he's not that way with Kretschmann at all. None of that is manifested in his relationship with his handler.

What do you identify with in this role?
Duplicitousness is something everybody experiences and indulges in. Whether or not they care to examine it is another thing. But everybody is a spy from time to time—and we all feel excited about getting information, and we all feel guilty about getting information. We have the ambivalence in place. It's very much what an actor goes through. He [Guillaume] is playing a role. So there is this feeling of "That was good"..."no, that's not so good"..."they like me now"..."they're not liking me now"..."I'd better shift, I'd better do this, I'd better do that"..."how's it going?" He's in the moment, but he's always also watching himself. So there's a lot about acting in this role, simply because there's so much about identity. Identity is such a huge theme in the play. One of the tenets in the play is that we're all mini democracies. We all have these different identities in us, these different situational and constellated cells that are struggling for dominance from one moment to another. That's very much what's going on in all the characters, but particularly the two main characters.

There are no women in Democracy, though both Guillaume and Brandt had wives and extramarital affairs. The central relationship depicted in the play is between the two men.
There's the whole intimate story about these two men and how they develop a relationship. The more they learn about each other, the more we learn about them. They project each other's needs onto each other. Guillaume becomes the screen on which Brandt projects his frustrations, his ambiguity about his own identities, his desires, just because Guillaume is there. That very obsequiousness that turns him off at the beginning is the thing that ends up making him dependent on him. Whereas Guillaume, as is very frequent in the case of actors playing roles, there's a big transference that takes place. He becomes deeply attached. When Brandt goes down, Guillaume goes down; when things get good, he gets good. So he's very much swinging on the chain, on the pendulum, of the other man's psyche. That crossover is a fascinating part of the intimate story of the play.

What was it like going into this play after doing The Stendhal Syndrome?
It's so cool that they're completely different characters—from the fact that one is standing in one position for an hour and the other is walking all over the stage, like a gerbil in a cage. But also the emotional orientation. In that play, almost no one else is talking. Aside from all the attendant acting challenges that go with doing a Terrence McNally piece—all the emotional and language and energy challenges—[I had the challenge of] learning how to conduct. Every day I went right from rehearsal to my conducting lesson.
Frayn is a much drier, cerebral playwright; it's much more restrained, unless he's writing farce. And Terrence—it's just all out there. Nothing is hidden, everything is fully felt and experienced. He revels in just that kind of over-expression. It's the virtual opposite of a Michael Frayn text in terms of its emotional content and requirements. There's no propriety where Terrence is concerned, whereas Frayn is careful with his characters. Terrence demands so much of you emotionally: looking like I knew what I was doing, learning how to conduct that piece of music, and acting like a man who, on the podium, thinks he's God.

How does Guillaume compare to other roles you've played?
Richard II is very much a play about performing, and about what it means to be in the psyche of a performance personality: someone who is inflated one moment and deflated the next, for whom there is no real middle ground. That's not precisely Guillaume's problem. However, he is very much involved in performing himself, as Richard II is. Also, as in Richard III, here's a guy who at the beginning of the play—although there is no direct address in this play except for the first two lines—is saying to the audience: I'm going to spy on this guy, now watch me do it, and we'll have fun doing this together. He's the guy who's going to be the instrument of the downfall, and he's going to take you along with him on the journey. So those two parts in their deep structure are similar even though the personalities of the characters are different.

How'd you manage that elusive transition from child star to successful, well-balanced adult actor?
I wasn't a child star, I was a child actor—a very big difference. I was raised backstage, in the world of the ballet [Thomas' parents, former dancers, ran the New York School of Ballet on the Upper West Side]. So we were a theater family. I was free of the child-actor thing of being a vicarious player for the parents. It was in that sense healthy right off the bat. They taught me a lot about how to be a professional performer, and they taught me about work. I had some good work values, which helped as I became successful. I think child stars have a huge amount of pressure on them that child actors don't have. I worked all the time, I was always on the stage, always on television from the time it was black-and-white and live. I never stopped working from the time I was about seven years old. I had, like, eight months when I didn't work about ten years ago—that was the longest period I ever went through without a job. And on either side of those months, I was constantly busy. I never had a drought, but I never had that pressure of box office as a child, or creating an image, or the pressure of all the publicity, or the obsequiousness that attaches itself.

You've done comedy, drama, a lot of classics, modern classics, new plays—how would you characterize your career?
Lucky! Really, I have had the opportunity to do so many different things that it's hard for me to characterize it. Somebody who watches me would be much better able to characterize than I would about myself. I don't know what people are seeing. I've just been really lucky.

Photos, from top: Thomas as Günter Guillaume in Democracy; with Michael Cumpsty as Guillaume's handler, Arno Kretschmann, in Democracy [photos by Don Perdue]; in The Stendhal Syndrome [photo by James Leynse].