Almost four decades have slipped by, but people still recall the love and compassion Joanna Gleason poured generously into the Baker’s Wife in Sondheim’s first romp Into the Woods. It won her a 1988 Tony Award and a place of distinction in the theatrical community.
Once witnessed, that Gleason glow is not forgotten. Thing is, it hasn’t been seen in some time—at least not on stage in New York. Her last appearance came in Stephen Karam’s 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sons of the Prophet. And while TV and film have kept her occupied, Joshua Harmon’s three-hander We Had a World at the Manhattan Theater Club seems to be just the ticket to bring back that warming glow.
Gleason plays an Upper East Side matriarch named Renee, long estranged from her lawyer daughter, Ellen (Jeanie Serralles), but hopelessly devoted to Joshua, her 15-year-old gay grandson (Andrew Barth Feldman). A veritable Granny Mame, she loves to introduce the lad to all manner of age-inappropriate pleasures (Diana Riggs’ Medea on Broadway, R-rated movies like Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies and Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves and an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s graphic photographs). He grows up fast.
Gleason plays an Upper East Side matriarch named Renee, long estranged from her lawyer daughter, Ellen (Jeanie Serralles), but hopelessly devoted to Joshua, her 15-year-old gay grandson (Andrew Barth Feldman). A veritable Granny Mame, she loves to introduce the lad to all manner of age-inappropriate pleasures (Diana Riggs’ Medea on Broadway, R-rated movies like Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies and Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves and an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s graphic photographs). He grows up fast.
“This play’s so beautifully written, so true and raw,” Gleason tells Observer. “Josh Harmon was very brave to dramatize, right out of his own life, what his relationships were growing up.”
Gleason connected with her character on first reading. “It was a part like I’d never had an opportunity to play before,” she says. “It’s my first grandmother role. I am a grandmother. I have nine grandchildren.”
But Gleason liked that Renee is not just a grandmother. “She’s so colorful,” she says. “So there’s not just one thing to play. The whole cast—Jeanine and Andrew and I—realized that we’re three protagonists in this play, but we’re also antagonists as well. Back and forth, back and forth.”
Did I mention Renee is an alkie granny? Her lifelong alcoholism is the source of almost all the family conflict. Her daughter keeps this as best she can from her son, who obviously adores granny, but it’s a secret harder to keep when Renee is 93 (about two decades older than Gleason herself) and battling pancreatic cancer.
Even in this state, Renee prevails on her playwriting grandson for one final favor—to turn their immediate family history into a play—“and make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible.”
The prospect of Renee’s death hovers heavily over the final third of the play. “I watched my own parents die,” Gleason says. “They died several months apart. They were 96 and 90, and so what I watched the two of them go through, I recalled—but, in a way, I believe that I understand the world that they were going through better now than I did at the time.”
Gleason owes her love of theater to her dad, Let’s Make a Deal host Monty Hall, who sent her, at an impressionable age, to shows like Bye Bye Birdie and the Robert Morse-Rudy Vallee How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Proof she was susceptible to this: when Morse and Vallee opted to revive that show years later, she found a place in that company.
A musical-theater orientation led her to the stage. She made her professional debut in Burt Bacharach-Hal David’s Promises, Promises and, five years later, she braved Broadway with Cy Coleman-Michael Stewart’s I Love My Wife, waltzing off with a Theatre World Award.
What dramas or comedies that punctuate the music have been well-chosen: Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, for starters. Peter Nichols’ A Day in the Death of Joe Egg put her in the Tony running, as did David Yazbek’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. On TV, she’s been everything from Leo McGarry’s lawyer on The West Wing to Bette Milder’s mother on the short-lived sitcom Bette, and her film work—from Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights—has been equally eclectic. In Boogie Nights she played the mother of burgeoning porn star Dirk Diggler. “Again, something I’ve really never been asked to play before,” she says. “I’ve been lucky the plays and pictures I’ve done have come my way, and I’ve been lucky that I have followed my instincts as to what I’ve done before. But what’s going to be something that I haven’t done before?”
Even when Gleason makes poor choices, she tends to win anyway. Case-in-point: the 1991 musical Nick & Nora which put in nine performances before crumbling into dust. Barry Bostwick and she headed a very starry cast as Dashiell Hammett’s domestic detectives, Nick & Nora (Charles). The good news is that she found a husband among the usual suspects—Oscar nominee Chris Sarandon. They’ve settled into New England, not far from roles and work.
After several extensions, We Had a World will call it a run on May 11, and Gleason admits to mixed emotions about this. “I’m both sorry and grateful, like the song says. I don’t live in New York. Chris and I live in Connecticut, so it’s been a little logistically challenging for us.”
Gleason has filled the potentially idle time ahead by switching mediums and professions. She’s written and directed a film called The Grotto. A story where grief, laughter and music combine to bring about small miracles, it focuses on Alice, a 40-something woman who uncovers the secret past of her recently deceased lover when she inherits part ownership of a forgotten nightclub in the Mojave Desert. It’s about loss, betrayal and recovery, and who are the people in your life who’ll tell you the truth and who won’t. A host of New York actors ponder that problem.
The Grotto has been screened at several film festivals and even won Best Premier Picture at the Heartland Film Festival. Its first screenings outside a festival come May 16 in Los Angeles and May 19 in New York, when it will be shown at the Union Square Regal Cinemas. Gleason is planning a talkback at Union Square before the showing. “I’d love for people to come out. It’s what a distributor wants to see: Are people going to the movie? Will they fill the seats? Can they be relied on for word of mouth.”
These are new concerns for an actress conditioned to acting the heart and soul out of a play.
