How to Be a Stage Mother (No, Not That Kind)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/theater/stage-mothers-glenn-close-mercedes-ruehl.html

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Here is Simon, wishing his mother, Kristin, a happy birthday: “Pretty much everything we are and everything we do is a response against you.”

Kristin, played by Stockard Channing, is the protagonist of “Apologia,” and she’s one of a number of mothers crowding stages this fall, trailing love and guilt, resignation and blame. These kinds of roles — the mothers of adult or almost adult children — can be an afterthought, but this fall they are central to a litter of plays and musicals, some new, some not.

On a recent afternoon, four of these stage moms gathered in the plush presidential suite of a midtown hotel. (Mothers are presidents somewhere, after all.) Over fruit plates — mostly untouched — and coffee, Ms. Channing; Glenn Close, of “Mother of the Maid”; Rosemary Harris, of “My Fair Lady”; and Mercedes Ruehl, of “Torch Song,” met to discuss craft, age and what makes a good mother, onstage and off. Though Ms. Close’s spry Havanese, Pip, was also in attendance, he declined to comment. These are excerpts from the conversation.

Tell me about the women you play.

MERCEDES RUEHL I’m playing the mother of Arnold, a young man who is gay. This is 1979, and his mother has some pretty traditional and not particularly positive attitudes about homosexuality. There’s humor, there’s love, but there’s a whole lot of misunderstanding that has to be waded through.

STOCKARD CHANNING I play an internationally renowned art historian. When she was in her early 20s, she had two boys, and her estranged husband abducted them. The boys are now men. And she has published a memoir in which she doesn’t mention them.

ROSEMARY HARRIS I play Mrs. Higgins. Her son, Henry, has great difficulty showing his emotions. Particularly toward women. My theory is that he was bitten by his nanny when he was a baby. Mrs. Higgins is a pretty nice woman. She loves her son very much, but he drives her crazy.

GLENN CLOSE I exist in 15th-century France. I’m an uneducated peasant woman whose daughter happens to be Joan of Arc. She tells me one day that God and St. Catherine have told her that she is going to lead an army and liberate France. I have to deal with that.

Why did you want to play your role?

CHANNING It’s really beautifully written, complex and ambiguous.

CLOSE I don’t like to go over territory that I’ve explored before. And I’d never played a peasant woman.

HARRIS I’ve played Mrs. Higgins twice before. First when I was about 21 in twice-nightly, weekly rep. They put a gray wig on me and pushed me onstage. Then I did it fairly recently with John Lithgow at the Hollywood Bowl. When this came along, I said, “Oh! I’ll have a chance to get it right.”

RUEHL When I first read it, I thought, “Oh, this is a funny role.” But the more I’ve done it, the more I have discovered that the last scenes go emotionally very deep.

Have you been offered a lot of mother roles? Have they always interested you?

CLOSE My first film role was Jenny Garp in “The World According to Garp.”

HARRIS I’m trying to think. “Hay Fever” — that crazy mother. “All My Sons.”

CLOSE “A Delicate Balance.”

HARRIS “The Royal Family.”

CHANNING “A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.” And on film, I’ve played Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepard’s mother. “The West Wing,” I definitely was a mother.

CLOSE “Damages,” I was a mother.

RUEHL It’s more or less: When were you not a mother? I guess my first movie one was “Big.” Before that I was doing a lot of regional theater. “Medea.” Now there’s a mother for you!

In playing these roles, do you think about your own families?

CLOSE I don’t. I use my imagination. Of course, I am a mother, and I think that affects me, consciously, subconsciously. I guess I can relate to Isabelle. I remember I would say, “I want to lick you like a lioness licking her cub” — my daughter would go, “Ew!” That’s who Isabelle is.

RUEHL I suppose I do. My young son, whenever we’re disagreeing about something and he’s in high dudgeon, it’s always an awful feeling. There’s an extremely painful moment in the play when that happens. It’s a wound that’s not unfamiliar, a deep one.

CHANNING I don’t have any children, but to me it’s all about love and loss. We’ve all experienced those emotions.

When I saw these plays, I saw four women trying to do the best that they could for their children given their circumstances.

CHANNING I’m so happy to hear you say that.

Are these women good mothers?

CLOSE In mine, I can’t protect her. Religion and politics tear me up. Tear her out of my arms.

RUEHL In all of our stories, there is maybe the letting go of a child onto a dangerous path and nothing you can do about it.

CLOSE It’s terrifying.

Several of you have children. Two of you have children who are also actors. [Ms. Close’s daughter is Annie Starke; Ms. Harris’s is Jennifer Ehle.] Do you feel that this business is kind to people having children?

RUEHL There’s probably no more creative activity than being a mother. I mean, to create a human being out of your own body, right? And then to raise that human being? Creativity has an obsessive component to it. And when I work, I get a little bit obsessed with the work that I’m doing, with the character. There’s conflict there, especially when your children are young.

CLOSE When Annie was 3, she came up to me and she said: “I want you. I want all of you.” And I knew exactly what she meant. If anybody would approach me in an airport, Annie would get a little look on her face like, “I’m going to kill you if you come anywhere near my mother.” I think it’s difficult for them to want to do the same thing. It’s very brave. She came up to me the year after she graduated from college, and said, “I’ve been avoiding it for all the obvious reasons, but I’ve only ever wanted to be an actress.’

HARRIS Jennifer, when she was 15, she came into the room and said, “Mum, I want to be an actress.” I said, “Why?” And she said: “Why wouldn’t I? You have so much fun.” I couldn’t deny that. So I said, “Well, go for it.” And she has had a lot of fun, but she’s torn. She had to go to England for three weeks. She’s going to miss Thanksgiving, her husband’s birthday.

CLOSE There are always sacrifices.

HARRIS But I don’t think anybody else has more fun than we do.

RUEHL Yeah, it’s fun.

CHANNING It’s fascinating.

CLOSE Surrounded by amazing people. Talented, tolerant. I’ve always felt so incredibly blessed to do what we do.

RUEHL You become a small and loving collective. There are times, especially as you get a little older, you can walk in so tired, and then after the show, you’re ready to dance.

CHANNING A friend of mine calls it Doctor Theater.

RUEHL Doctor Theater? Yes, yes.

When you were younger, did you think you’d still be working in your 70s, in your 90s?

CLOSE [To Ms. Harris] You’re 90?

HARRIS You let the cat out of the bag! Oscar Wilde said, “A woman who tells her age will tell anything.” I’m 91. My last decade — it’s almost frightening sometimes. Because you push it away. But it’s there hovering, all the time.

RUEHL Forget lying about your age.

CHANNING We have to learn to be proud of it.

CLOSE Well I hope to God I am a 91-year-old like you, because you are phenomenal.

HARRIS It’s pure, pure luck. In the meantime, I’m having fun.

Did you think you’d be playing such robust roles?

RUEHL You do drift into the elder roles that sometimes have substance and sometimes don’t. I’m very grateful to have one with substance.

CHANNING When we were younger, we didn’t think this way. We thought: Oh, this is my next job. But then you wake up and as Mercedes said, they are few and far between, the juicy ones. When they come along, it’s pretty hard to resist them.

CLOSE In theater, if you have a great piece, you’re just always thinking about it, having little epiphanies. It’s infinite really, the exploration. And that makes it thrilling.

CHANNING A fountain. Not of youth, but of life.

RUEHL And you go out on the stage and you do it again and again. Nobody can get at you. The producer can’t say stop, the director can’t say stop. It’s the actor’s medium.

CLOSE I love the idea, and I feel it every night, that we’re going to go out on that piece of wood, and we’re going to tell you a story. We’re going to create a community in real time. You don’t get that on any screen.

HARRIS It’s the sharing, isn’t it? I guess it’s like a religion — oh gosh, isn’t it?

One last question, a question I like to torture myself with: What makes a good mother?

HARRIS Listening, maybe?

RUEHL That’s what I was going to say. I’m not sure I started out as a great mother. I think I learned how to be a good mother.

CLOSE I’ve always felt I was Annie’s custodian. I wanted to keep her safe, and I wanted to keep her fed. The basics. But one of her favorite books was “The Runaway Bunny,” where the mother rescues the little bunny from all these different situations.

RUEHL “You are my little bunny.”

CLOSE My little bunny! I think everybody wants to hear that.