Westport Country Playhouse: Back to the Future

In 2006, after leading the Westport Country Playhouse in  Westport, CT, through a six-year $29.5-million reinvention which included the renovation of the venerable but weather-beaten 78-year-old summer barn theater into a nationally recognized year-round regional facility, artistic and associate artistic directors Joanne Woodward and Anne Keefe gladly passed the mantle to respected young playwright and director Tazewell Thompson. On January 1, 2008, they inadvertently had it passed back when Thompson abruptly resigned his post.

Left scrambling just as they were about to launch their new season, the theater's board of trustees looked to the women who had so successfully shepherded Westport's revitalization in the past for leadership once again. Still ardent supporters and actively involved members of the board, Woodward and Keefe couldn't refuse.

"Joanne and I told them that we would happily give them a year as co-artistic directors," Anne Keefe said in a recent telephone interview conducted just prior to the season opener. "We've stayed on the board through all the transitions, and we'll continue to stay on the board if asked. The playhouse means too much to us to abandon it."

Inheriting a slate of shows that Keefe said were "unique to Tazewell," she and Woodward hurriedly revised the season's program to include shows that were now uniquely theirs. The season opened to cheers from loyal patrons with Morris Panych's dark comedy Vigil, starring Timothy Busfield and Helen Stenborg, and continues with Alan Ayckbourn's Time of My Life (April 1-26); Craig Wright's The Pavilion (May 13-31); the Cole Porter musical revue Hot 'n' Cole (June 10-28); a new comedy by David Wiltse called Scramble (July 8-26); Karoline Leach's dark thriller Tryst (August 5-23); and the John Steinbeck classic Of Mice and Men (October 7 – November 1), directed by Paul Newman.

In 2002, Westport's acclaimed production of Our Town starring Newman, who was Tony nominated, transferred to Broadway and had a record-breaking run at the Booth Theatre. Currently the one-man show Thurgood, which starred James Earl Jones at the playhouse last season but now has Laurence Fishburne playing the indomitable Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, is poised to open at the Booth on April 30, with its first preview set for April 12. Of this season's seven shows, two – Vigil and Of Mice and Men – seem to have the potential to follow suit.

"Of course we would like to have more of our shows transfer," Keefe said, "but we don't choose our season with Broadway in mind. First and foremost we find plays that are right for our playhouse. We have a very sophisticated audience that sees shows regularly in New York. So our programming must be in keeping with our endeavors to appeal to that audience. For many years we were part of the straw hat circuit of summer theaters. But we are now changing our image, breaking from that tourist attraction mentality and putting the focus back on the play."

According to Keefe, she and Woodward have similar tastes but different, and complementary, skill sets. Keefe, a veteran stage manager on Broadway and with the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, is the technical brains of the administrative duo while Woodward, the award-winning actress and director, is the artistic force. "We feed off each other very well," says Keefe. "She's my other half."

Their synergistic relationship has fortunately enabled them to pull together a potent season on very short notice. They started off with a bang with Vigil. They had been wanting to bring the show to Westport ever since they saw it at a play reading in Manhattan in 2002, but rights had not been available till recently. At the end of 2007, managing director Jodi Schoenbrun Carter snatched it up for consideration, and when Keefe and Woodward resumed the theater's co-leadership, its production became a reality.

Star Timothy Busfield couldn't have been more thrilled to play Kemp, the socially stunted anti-hero who hovers at the bedside of his dying aunt Grace (Helen Stenborg), trying without a modicum of subtlety to hasten her passage into the afterlife. His performance was a tour de force. Kemp's decidedly unfashionable, out-of-the-mainstream shiny brown suit fit his pinched, twitching body like a glove.

"I just despise people like Kemp," Busfield said via the telephone prior to the show's opening. "That's why I wanted to play him so badly. He suffers from arrested development, and I wanted to understand, 'Where did his optimism and compassion go? How does that happen?' We are all basically the same, but then some people get thrown into this murky environment and they become dysfunctional. So I wanted to infuse him with some normalcy. I didn't want to play him as only arch. The drama of the dark side always appeals to me. I love getting inside people who fascinate me."

Busfield acknowledged that he would gladly continue to walk in Kemp's shoes if Vigil made it to Broadway. With producer Daryl Roth on board and holding the show's rights, he believes it has a chance.

"I think it may need to get a pre-Broadway tryout in a Broadway-style house before it can transfer," Busfield stated. "It needs to be tested first in a proscenium environment, with wrap-around boxes. But I would love to be involved beyond the two weeks at Westport. From your lips..."

Busfield's co-star Stenborg is equally enamored with Vigil. Although her character of Grace is mute and bed-ridden for the vast majority of the play, she must communicate a wealth of emotions and life history through body language and expressive eyes.

"Grace obviously has no family, no contact with the outside world, she is very lonely and is simply delighted to have a visit, however strange," Stenborg explained by phone. "She is ultimately intrigued with Kemp, and she becomes very fond of him. She is sympathetic to him and becomes very protective of him. She wants to be a part of his life.

"The play is a wonderful comedy when played as well as Tim plays it, and it's also beautifully written," she continued. "At this time in my life – I'm 83 years old – parts don't come along very often. So I'd definitely be open to going to New York with it. I'd be delighted."

Audience and critical response to Westport's production of Vigil was very positive. It will be interesting to see if it finds a home in New York, either on or off-Broadway. Whatever happens, Keefe has said that the playhouse will not alter its programming as a result.

"We will stick to our mission of choosing works that touch the human soul," she stated. "Yes, our vision is for Westport to become a nationally recognized regional theater like Long Wharf, or the Goodman, or the Alley. But we are not so much concerned about what the playhouse will become as we are that the playhouse will still be."

PHOTOS: Anne Keefe, Joanne Woodward, Timothy Busfield and Helen Stenborg

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