The Tamesis
The longest gap in Laurie Metcalf’s resume since she debuted on the professional stage 50 years ago is the three years between the COVID-19 shutdown of her Broadway productions. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and her return to Broadway in 2023 gray house. As a charter member of Chicago’s renowned Steppenwolf Theater Company, she won two Tony Awards, an Oscar nomination and four Emmy Awards in more than 50 roles. Now, Metcalf is performing one of America’s greatest plays, death of a salesmanopened on the same day big mistakeThe Dan Levy-led comedy in which she stars is now available on Netflix.
Arthur Miller’s 1949 masterpiece is an intimate drama, but Metcalf and co-star Nathan Lane performed it in the massive 1,600-seat Winter Garden Theater through sheer talent and willpower. Still, Metcalf said it was a beastly drama Fashion This was her first time using a microphone on stage. “I’m so old, so old-school, and just started wearing microphones. This is the first time I’ve ever put on a microphone and really done the heavy lifting. If we had to work without them and just do projects, no one would have a say now.”
The lavish production is a career milestone that Lane and director Joe Mantello have dreamed of since the ’90s, folding Metcalf almost a decade ago. From then on, it was a game of waiting, manipulation, and, according to Metcalf’s strict rules, no Watch any performance of the play.
On the eve of her two major premieres, and just months after the release of Samuel D. Hunter Xiaoxiongling Road Metcalf admitted that during the same Broadway season Fashion On playing a character written for her by generations of fans, the joys of being cast in the wrong part, and how she felt comfortable in front of the camera.
Fashion: 10 years in, how do you maintain the knowledge that one day you’ll be playing a character?
Laurie Metcalfe: I wrote on my calendar: “Don’t go to the show salesman“. It was number one because it will be ingrained in my mind and I’ll never forget it. Even though it’s a 75-year-old drama, I wanted to present it in as fresh a light as possible. I’d never seen it – ever. I knew it was one of those bucket-list roles that I would get into as I got older and past [laughs]- So I always stay away from it. Other than that, no, I’m not pulling it out of a drawer to read it once a month or anything. I wanted to postpone all of that until we had about four days of workshops, when we knew the cast. That’s when I really started digging into it, and luckily I had about a month off to really learn my lines. I appreciate the huge impact Nathan made eight times a week, but even for me it takes a long time to remember.
