AN INTERVIEW WITH JOE GRIFASI

Playing the role of Charlie Hughes, the distracted night clerk, in Eugene O'Neill's Hughie is a daunting task because of the character's relative lack of dialogue. O'Neill has given this nearly silent, slightly morose character a rich dream life, full of aspirations, victories, and defeats, all of which he must juggle while listening to the ramblings of Erie Smith, a down-on-his-heels gambler struggling with his own issues.

Veteran stage and screen actor Joe Grifasi, who is playing Charlie in Long Wharf Theatre's production of Hughie, sat down in his New York City apartment to discuss his work in the play with Steve Scarpa, Long Wharf Theatre's Public Relations Manager.

Steve Scarpa: Charles Hughes doesn't speak much for the better part of the play, yet O'Neill's stage directions indicate that he has an actively engaged imagination. How do you reconcile O'Neill's suggestions with your own understanding of the character?

JG: When I first did the show I used to think that Charlie was not a talker. I've altered that. Part of that is based on O'Neill's stage direction. I do believe he is someone who would love to be involved and talking. I think it has helped me portray the character because when I do talk I am finally ready.

It was always hard for me to come out of this shell towards the end of the play to say the things I have to say, but now it is easier because it is like a switch goes off. I think, "Oh, I might as well talk to this guy - he is not going away."

SS: How much of what Brian Dennehy (who plays Erie Smith) is doing drives what you do on a nightly basis?

JG: That is a good question because it really does now, much more than it did before. I used to feel like I was totally passive, but the last time in rehearsal (in Stratford) I started activating moments with Brian a little bit more at the request of the director, and I think they paid off for him. I felt that it gave him someone to talk to, rather than a stiff. Let me put it this way, I used to feel like a piece of stone. He would talk and it would just bounce off.

SS: Was that a choice?

JG: It wasn't a choice, I didn't know another way to play it. I varied it at times, but I didn't have the courage to try something differently. But now, I play it more like a mollusk who is buried more inside of a shell. There is something in there, it just has to be opened up and brought out.

It's helped me out and it has helped Brian out too, to give him a task. He has a very difficult job - his task on stage is to do all of the talking, for the most part, not because he wants to, but because no one is jumping in. Now, he at least feels like there's a chance that something might be stimulated.

In the end, I think the tip of a life line has to be a little bit observable for the whole play to give Erie help to continue trying.

SS: So, the process of discovering Charlie Hughes changes all of the time?

JG: It kind of does. I like that. I have to come into the play expecting that everyone at this late hour comes in, asks for their key and goes to bed. The last thing they want to do is stand around and talk to me.

I've become fine with that. That's why my personality suits being a night clerk. When I do decide to speak to him at the end of the play, it is a remembrance of the kind of person I might have been before I accepted this job.

SS: How has your understanding of the play, yourself and the character changed since you first played the role?

JG: I first did it about six or seven years ago. I never thought there would be a way to incorporate what O'Neill says about the character's imaginings. They seemed passive and prosaic and I never could activate them.

As I find out more about the character I'm finding that I am learning that the decisions I am making with the director and the other actor are closer to O'Neill's notes than I ever thought I would ever get.

SS: Tell me a little bit about the nature of the rehearsal process for this production and the collaborative relationship between director Robert Falls, Brian Dennehy and yourself.

JG: Bob and Brian have a vocabulary that goes way back, an actor/director vocabulary. It involves a lot of the same things as my relationship to Brian. We've known each other for 30 years - we are at the point in our relationship where we've said everything we can to each other, both good and bad, and now we just get along.

It is a nice place to be. It's interesting, there is a lot of talking, we tell a lot of stories, we listen to a lot of stories, it drives stage managers absolutely crazy. We talk about the old days or a new funny joke, then we take a look at (the play), but of course, an hour might have gone by.

It doesn't resemble a rehearsal process that you would see in a highly structured situation, but it works for us and has worked for us in the past. It actually works better now than when we first started doing things together.

SS: Do you think that camaraderie helps the play at all? Does that end up on stage?

JG: Yes, but it isn't just camaraderie. It is contradiction and disagreement. I think the nice thing about the way we've come around with this, the way we've dealt with it and the way Bob has left us, Brian and I continue to work on our roles.

I thought the last two times we did the show we settled into the ideas of the role and performed those ideas. I think this time we not only made changes in rehearsal, but we actually grew, which is the ultimate in onstage collaboration.

It only happens very rarely, but that is why I am so pleased with this last go-around to see that Brian and I could both adjust to one another.

SS: Do you have a shorthand with each other?

JG: That's a good question. Sometimes we follow and sometimes we don't, but that's not to say that following is always good. It's funny, if we do have a shorthand, it's due to sharing a lot of similar experience because of our age.

Brian is a few years older than me, but we find that we can talk about stuff that happened in the '50s and the '60s. We were both in the military. We were both stationed on the same island in the South Pacific only one year apart from each other. We both come from families that worked pretty hard.

I think we find that fewer and fewer people around us can respond to what our day-to-day references are, about our growing up and our development. You are just comfortable with someone.

We can make allusions in rehearsal - ‘Yeah, that reminds me of that crazy bit that Soupy Sales used to do on television' - and we know exactly what that was. Or ‘Gee, yeah that sounds like something from the Guy Lombardo orchestra.' Nobody is going to know what we are talking about, but we'll know. So, we have that. We can talk about very old, dead football players, stuff like that.

SS: Do you and Brian have anything you would like to work on together in the future?

JG: We've talked about it. We would like to work on some O'Casey, which we both love. We also did a reading of Endgame at Long Wharf last year for Gordon (Edelstein, artistic director of Long Wharf). We were talking about that because we feel very suited to those roles. We both love Beckett. We both direct and we both act.

SS: Do you think there are any parallels between the characters in Hughie and those in modern America?

JG: One of my cousins came to see the show and she took me aside to say that the character that Brian plays really reminds her of our Uncle Frank. I've gotten a lot of people saying things like that. Most of the people they are reminded of are long gone.

I suppose young people nowadays would say that Erie and Charlie are extreme characters, but Brian's memory and mine are filled with a lot of types who were very close to parts of these guys and behaved this way. The slang in the language Erie uses in the play is not at all theatrical or far fetched.

SS: You knew people who spoke like this?

JG: Yeah. Maybe not as condensed in the amount of time of the play, but they used all of those expressions. It is interesting when an audience over 50 watches the show, or over 70, they get a lot of that talk. They know where it is going, what it is about. It is familiar to them. It is familiar to me. I was lucky to have heard some of it in the 1950s.

But now I suppose it exists more on a musical level for people. You can always read Damon Runyon, or look at plays from the '20s like The Front Page to get a taste of it.

SS: Do you think there are equivalents these days for the "types" - the sucker and the wise guy - that O'Neill talks about in the text?

JG: Yes, but I don't think in today's politically correct world it is appropriate for people to talk about people like that. People do try to compete, to dominate, but it is done so differently now. A low of it is buried in passivity.

One of the things that people like about the play is that the characters put their cards on the table.

SS: You grew up in Buffalo, New York. Did growing up in that environment inform any of your choices in this play?

JG: I was always a hyperactive kid. My mother would be very proud because she was always saying, stop fidgeting, sit still, now people say to me ‘how do you sit still for that long?' I don't know but that was always something I aspire to as an actor . . . When I first started doing this role I had to artificially silence myself.

SS: How did you do that?

JG: I would be still. Now I am not still at all. I am not moving a lot, but I am not still. I realize that listening is a very, very involved thing. There is listening well and there is listening badly, and you have to know how to do both.

When Erie is talking sometimes I am more aware of the truck that is going by or the dog that's barking. And Erie every once in a while say things pointed to me. Normally I would be there with an answer because I am staring right at him, but I am not listening in that same way, so it is almost like I am caught with my pants down. You are now given the challenge of listening on three different levels.

This whole world of being inside the box with an ear facing out has kind of been an interesting one. It has taught me a lot about corners of acting I've never explored. I always wanted to be a quiet person - like Spencer Tracy. Don't act, someone once said, just stand there. That works great if it is the right moment.

SS: So, how did a nice Italian boy from Buffalo find the theatre?

JG: I think a lot of attention was hard to come by in some of our families. There is a lot of competition and some of our fathers, who had pretty tough lives, weren't touchy feely types, so you knew what it was to scrape and scramble to get someone's attention.

I was a very small skinny kid and I had to find a way to not get pushed aside, or even get roughed up. So I did a lot of physical, antic behavior.

Strangely enough, those experiences prepare you for what you need to do, at least part of what you have to do on stage, which is to get people to focus on what you're saying and what you're doing.

It may sound a little crazy but I think I learned a lot of what I needed to know on stage before I was 15. That's how it happens.

How you get out of that community is another story. Nobody from home understood what it meant to become a professional entertainer. That is where is becomes interesting.

As far as someone entertaining with the family or doing variety shows at the local parish, that is one thing, but being a professional was an unheard of commodity where I grew up. I hope I at least gave it some validity.