Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20150313

Dennehy when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose is provided b rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Eugene Oneill is one of the greatest play writes of the 20th century, won the nobel prize for literature and called the father of theater paving the way for arthur miller, Tennessee Williams and tony kushner. His life was hard his mother a morphine addict and brother an alcoholic but oneil channeled his life into his work. The iceman cometh is one of his biggest. It focuses on the regulars of a new york city saloon who numbed themselves with alcohol and delayed acting on dreams. It was in chicago in 2012. Currently at the Brooklyn Academy of music. The New York Times says it is enacted by a cast not likely to be bettered this season. Joining me, two Tony Award Winning actors at the center of the production, nathan lane who plays hickey and Brian Dennehy who plays larry slade. Pleased to have them at the table. Welcome. Thank you always a pleasure. Rose theres a story i read that you saw this production was going to take place and you said this is right for nee me, i want to be hickey, and you notified the director . Yes. It actually started with ken brenna in a bar who said to me, you know nathan, you cant just talk about these great parts you have to do them. Rose did you say, ive never thought of that he said, if you do, you will learn a great deal and it will be life changing and doesnt matter what anyone says. Ten years later i read an interview in variety with brian and bob and they were discussing potentially revisiting the iceman cometh. Theyd done it when brian played hickey. Rose is there a role he hasnt played . I dont think so. He played most of them and quite brilliantly. When we heard them discussing this with brian taking on the role of larry slade, i wrote an email to brian and said i would love to play hickey and heres my reasoning and fortunately he responded positively and we got together and started discussing how we would do it. Rose how do you see hickey . Well, you know when i read the play when i was a kid and i had gotten a collection of Eugene Oneill plays and i read the iceman cometh, i was drawn to the character of hickey because of the description that oneill writes that sounded a little like me. He describes him as short and roley poley, a button nose and twinkle in his eye. He always writes these very long descriptions of characters rather too specific for everyone to live up to. But what he created i thought, and what i was bringing up to bob in my email was, you know, its defined by jason robards. He was the gold standard. In 1956, off broadway, they defined who the character is. And its much darker than say, the original production in 1946 and jason brought this mischievous ma leaf lens and kind of otherworldly quality to it and i was saying to bob wouldnt it be interesting, taking what oneil has said about him, the notion is he loves these guys and just as he you know, he ultimately says he killed his wife that it was an act of mercy out of love, he has come to help them and change their lives and bring them peace. Unfortunately its he feels the only way to do that is for them to kill their illusions, their pipe dreams as theyre so often called. So i thought it has to come out of that. It has to come out of love and not that hes trying to destroy them, but hes trying to help them and in a way thats more disturbing. And the fact that it is a joyous thing when he arrives and that its so off putting that this person they love sov is driving them to do this thing. For him its sort of he is many a kind of semidelusional state and he feels this last act which i dont think bringing him absolution but it is a way to prove to them and himself that what he did was right. Ultimately, his pipe dream was he did this out of love and rose hes doing it for them. Yeah. Rose is this a different hickey than you conceived when you played hickey . Oh, yeah. I mean, every great role, its interesting, when i started working, all i knew was jason rurabs and everyone else, so when we started rehearsal almost 30 years ago, i said, im going to do jason r obard. After a few weeks of bad jason robard interpretations i said, no, i cant do that and i came up with the happiest guy in the world this sunny salesman of death and big smiles all the time, a big, hardy laugh and slowly it becomes obvious to the audience and the people on stage that this guy is selling something thats not quite as advertised. Rose but is he selling it out of love h. Sure. Theres an interesting discussion that goes on with people like ourselves who deal with this play and characters just how crazy is he . Is he crazy enough to know exactly what hes doing in terms of embracing his craziness or is he not crazy . Rose its interesting, he sort of compartmentalizes all of these things. He knows hehouse to turn himself in. He knows hes going to make a phone call to the police. So he knows what he did was wrong technically rose technically. That shooting your wife in the back of the head in the middle of the night, thats technically wrong, and he knows he must be punished and ultimately thats what he really wants. He wants to be punished. Its what he always wanted from his wife but she wouldnt she kept forgiving him. Its this sort of unhealthy codependent relationship where she keeps forgiving him and he does love her. Thats the other theme of the play. The one theme is man cannot live without his illusions and the other thing is how does love and hate coexist in a person. The only way h he can stop her from forgiving him is to make sure shes dead. Otherwise, she would forgive him. Wait a minute before you pull the trigger, i forgive you. But it is about its an unraveling. You know, in the fourth act when he famously recounts in order to prove to the group that he was right, he recounts his life story and leading up to the night of the murder. As hes going along, you know, he wasnt planning on telling this story, but then he has to. Hes driven to do this to prove to them. And these revelations start happening. Its like a therapy session. Someone says, tell me your life story. And you start. And you start to talk about things that you didnt expect to talk about and then it takes you someplace else and it takes you and you think, well, maybe i was wrong about that and maybe i was wrong about this and as he slowly starts to unravel as hes revealing more and more about these awful his own selfclothing and his shame about what he did to her, and i think, you know, he finally convinced himself that that was the answer. I mean, its like a story you would read in the the New York Post and you would say, do you believe this happened . And yet it did because were human. Rose has doing this done all the things kenneth said it would do for you . Without a doubt, he was right. It was prophetic. Rose that was ten years ago. Well yes. It took a while to get me to chicago and to get this look i instigated the whole thing. So and i was you know we, fortunately, it was a huge success in chicago which led to us doing it at bam which has been the perfect venue, the beautiful harvey theater, and this Extraordinary Company we must talk about that, this Extraordinary Company of actors charles discussed, and its a Remarkable Group of people and thats whats also making this so special but, yes, it has lived up to those expectations and more. You know, it has changed me. Rose you want more . Well, sure. Who wouldnt . You know, i know there are certain look, anyone in show business, there are certain preconceptions about them. We think we know them because of two or three things they did that were successful and, oh, thats the person i know. And i felt, at my age that i needed that i had more to offer and wanted to challenge myself, and i certainly wanted to do it with bob and brian. I knew hats the way to do it. Rose heres what bob says about you its a mark of brian that he sort of moved through the oneil roles and he knew that he was the right age for slade. Yeah, i guess. Hes referring to the british system whereby the brits Start Playing out a wrung yung man part and move up doing the same thing over and over again. Thats true. I feel very comfortable with larry slade, especially since he sits on his ass throughout the whole play and try to keep the circulation moving. Its a really interesting complicated part. In many ways as complicated if not more so than hickey because although hickey has all the hard listening to do, larrys got some stuff to work out, especially with the kid, and its a similar situation. Its a parallel track except, in larrys case, he finds out that the real generous thing to do is to make sure that this kid kills himself, which he assists him in doing. Were talking about oneil world here. Rose dark world. Very much so. Whats really interesting about the darkness of it, it was written about the same time he was writing the family play, which was apparently an ordeal for him. Very, very difficult in california. And he wrote a letter to a friend in new york and said ive had to stop work on the family play, much too complicated, im suffering, i have to do Something Different so im writing something now which makes me laugh every day. laughter rose well, i mean he did love these guys. This was at a point in his life when he was in his early 20s and he attempted suicide in this place jimmy the priest, this is where the harry hope saloon is based on, these two places and the golden swan had a back room called the hell hole. And these guys saved his life, the character based on jimmy tamaro a scottish reporter who saved his life when he attempted suicide. Most in the characters in the play were based on real people he knew and lived with except for hickey actually. And then he also did you know he was reading carrying around the birth of tragedy. Rose he was writing as he was carrying it around. Obviously, its influenced by other plays, by the wild duck and lower depths, burks but neech was an influence. Rose were these things you had been interested in and curious about all along and studying . I was interested in the the play and when i knew i was going to do it the year before i started doing a lot of research about the play. Rose once you knew you were going to do it . Yeah. Rose you started in 1973 doing your first first oneill character. 73 . The first oneill plays i did, i think it was 73 at the quake theater on lexington avenue with bill hickey, and i did the sea plays with bill and he was a wonderful, wonderful character and tremendous guy. Rose hes been at this table. He had one little problem he had trouble learning his lines. These were two guys, one dying and had been buddies for years. We would go in this tiny little room with about 25 a people watching. He would say, yank. Yank. I was not talking about those women on the other on the shore in the in the what was the name Rio De Janeiro o daij yeah not talking about them. That one consuela con consuela, thats right laughter i had to give him every line. Where did that place go the marumba restaurant who do you think gets the curtain call . Him. They scream for him and im doing my part and his part rose laughter i like the other version of that suzy once told me she worked with a british actor who had great difficulty remembering his lines and when he would go up he would politely turn to her and smile and say, so hows your father . So it was all on her. laughter he talked a lot about her father. So hows your father. In this play, there was an actor named ron dean the first time we did it and he played rocky the bartender. This is good. Rodney had this huge part. Rocky has a good part. Ron had a checkered career and spent a little time in prison, i think it was 17 years. Inin any case bob took chance on him. What he realized what he had taken on, ron said to the cast, look, i got to have an escape mechanism. So when im talking, if i have these speeches im taking, and if i say, oh, boy, i know the line, its there someplace, im going to come up with the line so im just going to say oh, boy so be ready and ill get there. He said, but if i say oh, boy oh boy, you better look at me and make sure youre on your tiptoes because we may skip a line. He said, if i say oh, boy, oh, boy oh, boy, its every man for himself. laughter rose they say working with oneill is like climbing mt. Everest. Why is that swine flu. Well, you know h hes asking you to go with him. Hes very brave what hes writing about and hes asking Big Questions and big emotions and some people would call it in this particular play operatic. But hes asking you to go especially i mean all of us, but in particular hickey in the fourth act, to go to the most personal of places and its inescapable that you if its going to work, you have to go with him, and you have to be as brave as he is in the writing and you have to expose yourself in a way that its really difficult and personal and its very like diamond cutting. Its delicate. You know, you have to and you have to expose yourself. In a way that is difficult, and, you know, weve talked about that challenge of doing it every night. John flaherty came the other night and said how do you do this every night and how do you get will . And i said well, you know you just try. You dont always get there you dont always get to the top. Thats the challenge. Because hes asking, oh, yeah, its your agent, he regrets you telling that last story. laughter send your letters to Brian Dennehy. laughter you know, everything okay . Time for the medication . Ron says talk about ambidextrous, wait till i get ahold of you there you go. So, you know you cant. Youre only human. I mean, you know youre relying on many things. Rose do you know why you get there some nights and why you dont sometimes . Why you get into the zone . Rose yeah, because you said some nights you cant get there. Sometimes you see where the zone is and you get there a little more technically. That, i dont know why, because its not science. Its just human chemicals youre pouring in and as much as you prepare, sometimes youre in a very specific moment a quiet moment, and someone in the audience goes clearing throat and that can, you know, throw you. Either that or go yawning give you one of those. Yeah, but that can happen. Thats what live theater is about. Its about trying to keep a large group of people from coughing, as someone said famously. Its about concentration and focus. Rose did you prepare more for this than anything youve ever done . Without question. Rose without question. Because its a leap. A huge leap for anyone, even your most serious of actors. This is a degree of difficulty. The other thing, too, along those lines is he is mott the most adept writer of phrases hell back up on himself on a phrase. It doesnt necessarily come out as easily as it should. I mean, Mary Mccarthy who was a famous critic for the new yorker back in the 40s and who was the curse of a lot of play writes always said the same thing about oneill as she did about others that they were not good writers but they were great writers, meaning they were not particularly faisal with the language and the verbs and the announce in a way, for example that but oneill insisted on going to the deepest darkest parts. Arthur miller we talked about the differences between a lot of these play writes and he sadoneil was the deepest he said that oneill was the deepest writer and was interested in the soul. Rose youve done eight or nine characters. Sometimes its been my Great Fortune to do a lot of oneills parts and to suddenly discover youre digging away at a fundamental part of your own being and you realize if i keep doing this i could do myself psychic injury. Rose you cant do it well unless you do that. If you dont leave it on the stage its disappointing and its frustrating to you as an actor as well. I mean, he is the you know, they call him the american shakespeare and this language that youre talking about, although i love his language and this play in particular, but you do have to know how to handle that amount of, you know, language, because hes he repeats himself. Wants to repeat himself. People say, well, he says things over and over again. No hes a teacher and if youve heard it once he wants you to hear it again and again and again. And when people say weve got to take this out theyre missing the point thats the way he wants it. Its like music. Its a variation on a theme he keeps coming back to and changes it just a little and you start to see why hes changing and where the characters head is going when he changes the language and its fascinating. Its a thrilling challenge. It is a huge challenge. Yeah. I mean, the man gave birth turning his mother into a morphine addict which she stayed one for 30 years. Rose the birth was so difficult . Well, this is a very interesting device here. Rose yeah. The father refused to hire a good doctor for eugenes eminent birth, so he used the hotel doctor in new york. The guy was terrified of it, he hadnt assisted many births. She was in great pain. He apparently tore her or cut her a little bit, and then overwhelmed her with morphine, turning her into a morphine addict, and i guess thats a way to make a Nobel Prize Winner is turning your mother into a junky. And shell be that way the rest of her life. But all this stuff was his life. His brother died roaring in a hospital as the irish say by acute alcoholism at age 37 and couldnt even walk anymore on his feet. Theres a tremendous amount of pain. What do you do as kids . But all of it ended in these extraordinary words, dealing with those events and dealing with a lot of other events and a lot of things that happened to himself. Rose i hate to ask this but is there one of the three that you prefer . Yeah, theres one that i love which is not regarded as necessarily as a great play because its a play not about huge, terrible passions and events, but its about a little knockaround guy who screwed himself up and refuses to admit it, and his life is full of minor injuries bruises and cuts, and thats hughie. I love hughie. I love playing hughie. And its not massive pain and massive hes just a little guy who thinks his life has been worth it and successful and as he talks about his life we realize just what a tiny small disaster its been. Not a big one. A thousand cuts . Not even a thousand cuts. Its the death of 80 of the population. Rose you realize they have been living an illusion of some kind . Oh, for sure and hes still living an illusion. Rose and thats 80 of a population you know. Let me put it this way, i was raised in an irish family so i have sat on a few death beds and that feeling of was this ride worth it and just recently in fact. And thats what hughie is. Hughie is a life adding up to 40 or 50 years of certainty, knowledge of who he was, what he could do what his chances were, and failing at every single thing. Rose iceman i think ben bradley said this about hickey is really this is about his role as a catalyst. Do you think that . More than him, its his role as a catalyst. Yes. I mean, not just as a catalyst for the characters in the play, but for the audience. I mean, this is a confrontational play and as much as he experimented in his early career with the greek tragedy you know, more stately mansions or set in the south or whatever it might have been, these different strange interludes this really was also an experiment an emotional mar thop that goes on for close to five hours and he wanted the audience to feel trapped. He wanted them to suffer with the people on stage, and i tell you rose make it uncomfortable, but yes. And the audiences that come to bam, you feel that. Some people have said to me more than any other production they feel this is more confrontational. They feel you do start to think about your own life and your own pipe dreams and illusions and what is true and what isnt. Rose but in the end they hang on to those illusions. They have to. They go pack to the shore. And really, at least in this production, h hickey gives them that. Hes about to say to harry, even after hes saying to him, you know, i must have been insane to have said what i said to evelyn after he had killed her and he says, oh, so you have been insane this this entire time. So he sees that, you know, harry wants to be off the hook, and he starts to say, i cant let you get away with it. And he looks at him and he sees him start to shrink in front of him and at least from my point of view is he is giving him and all of them this gift back of being able to go back to their illusions and he says, yes, i have been insane the entire time i have been here, you saw that, didnt you . And, of course, it also allows him the to go back to his own pipe dream, you know of his love for evelyn and what he did out of love. And to not get executed. Dont think that. Thats your theory. But i dont think so. I think hes beyond that at that point. He claims hes insane. You think that was about not getting well, i dont think that. I admit to mr. Lanes posit which is i dont think that oneill wanted it to be that way. However, being as dark an ironman as i am an irishman as i am i expect he says, officer, yes, take me to jail execute me tonight, preferably. Could you pull the switch tonight . Maybe hell spend time at some camp and be released. No, because he wants to be punished. He wants to be punished. The fact is his version of love growing up he had a preacher father in indiana who used to beat him because he was bad. Youre a bad kid. And, you know, he would go out and act on it and then he would come home and be beaten. And then the only person who didnt was evelyn his wife, who loved him since he was a kid since they were teenagers and saw in him i guess the potential to be a good you know, good and bad, happy, you know the word happy comes up so often, happy is mentioned at the end of each act, all i want is for you to be happy. Happy. And shes going to make him happy. And, you know, you start to question what happy means because it said so often. Rose someone said he found the play exhilarating like a cold shower. Yes, a long, cold shower. Theres nothing less exhilarating than a long, cold shower. Rose you dont agree with your director . No i think you can overanalyze this stuff. Oneill was on to something every time he wrote a play. This play is a great mystery and deals with deep subjects. Selfdo you thinkdelusion. The terror of selfrecognition. Rose so terrifying you back away. And cling to selfdelusion. This is who i am, a really good phat snore. Rose because phat snore. Rose because reality and truth is painful. And if you need to get drunk to do it, have a drink. In some ways, he advocates drinking. Rose with no oneill, we would have no miller, no without question hes the father of american drama. He saw what edison and strinberg were doing and created his own version of that and wrote the first serious plays. The one writer i suggest you talk to at length about this is kushner. Rose tony kushner. Tony kushner is a huge fan of oneill in the best sense of the word. He understands him so completely. I think if you look alt this obsession that he has with illusions and dreams and the way he ties this into the National Question of america as kind of a hallowed dream or dream that will never be fulfilled is sort of very very tragic and dark vision of what this country, is what this country does to peoples dreams and i think it makes the theater the perfect medium for somebody who is as heart broken about disillusionment who really finally on some level cant reconcile him to the fact that wills no salvation, that theres no redemption, that theres no life after death, that everything that made life possible, bearable is really kind of finally a lie and i think that, you know the theater is a perfect medium for somebody whos as griefstricken about that as oneill was. Rose and hes written a screenplay about this period. About this period when he was living as a young man. Rose a screenplay about oneill. In his youth when he attempted suicide. Rose about the iceman cometh, those years. The years that led to him writing the iceman cometh, this period. Rose it was written when . 1939. Rose i was thinking 40something. It wasnt introduced till 46 because he didnt think the audiences would accept it, after the war. They didnt accept it then. But a year after he died almost to the dao neil and cantera opened the play and opened the whole banquet of oneills work because thats what happened oneills plays were recognized for the works of genius they were and they have been done everywhere by everybody ever since, the irony being, of course, that he had died reasonably in obscurity a year and a half before. Rose but when joseee queen terra did that, it changed everything . Everything. Rose is it the thing youre most proud of . I have to say i feel strongly about salesmen, though i have to say about salesmen, there are elements ive played i never really explored because they were so close to whatever sensitive places in myself that i couldnt go. I just had to play them. And also the interesting thing about salesmen having done 800 times and knowing there was Something Special about that play for me, i have forgotten a lot of it and its a deliberate act and i dont know why which means something and i dont know why it means something either. Rose do you want to know . Not particularly. Oneill, i can approach rationally and think about it and come up with ideas and understanding and feelings about, like, for example with hughie and things ive tone more than once but salesmen, i dont think i could ever go back to salesmen and theres been some kind of a process inside me that has removed so much of my understanding of that part from me and again, i dont question it. I dont worry about it, i dont try to get in its way, its just what it is. So that play was either more profound to me than im prepared to deal with. Rose this is not an illusion, this is the rawness of some place that touched you . Yeah. And i can remember, you know laying awake night after might after night doing it. I did this play exhausted. It seemed to me the more exhausted i got the better it was. Like i say, i put that over there and rose it will not go back. Well, im not ready to really look at it yet. Rose have you thought about salesmen . Its something that ive talked about with joe mantello, a director who had wanted me to do it, and then i didnt feel i was old enough. Then, of course, phil hoffman did it when he was 44 or 45. So it would be a way off now if we did. You know its hard. Ive seen a lot of them. I sawdust i saw dustin hoffman. I saw one with lee j. Cobb. One of the reasons i wanted to do this play with them is bob falls directed one with brian. Maybe it was my age but it was the first time i had seen the play and its always affecting because its about a father. But the first time i saw it and thought i really understood what was happening and also that i was seeing it inside someones head which is i think i believe what almost inside his head is almost what it was called and seeing someone have a real breakdown as well as what was happening to him you know in society around all of those other things, but it was very personal and raw that time, and i was so affected, i remember going back i think it was the highest compliment i could have paid you which is i went back to see him and i started to talk to him and i broke down crying. I couldnt really speak. Rose you wasnt backstage to see brian and started crying . Yeah, i couldnt find the words and i just broke down crying. Rose do you remember what you said before that . What was i saying . Rose hi, are you having any fun . laughter and something happened. I remember looking at you and all of a sudden you broke into tears snoop did you understand what that was about . Oh, im sure it has to do with my father, you know, the lack of a father. My father died when i was 11, he was an alcoholic. He basically drank himself to death. I dont know, i mean, that play, its a powerful one and then, sure, i think at some point, yes, i would love to tackle it. That i would like to see. Rose you would like to see that . See if you can do it before i kick the bucket, all right . All right, well try to coordinate our schedules around that. Rose anything else on a bucket list you have about theater . Well, you know i dont think we have enough time. I have this ongoing flirtation with lear. However, its a long conversation. I want to do it but i want to do it in a certain way i think i want to sneak up on it with end game which is a version of lear an easier version of lear only because beckett, whom i love, makes it so obvious that so much has been taken away from this man, already. The thing about lear is that ive seen very good performances of lear lately, all of which will be nameless, and i realize one thing it requires a towering performance. Its not good enough to do lear good enough. Its, after all about the most important subject of all, which is death and dying. Were all dying, no matter what age we are. Heres a man whos had everything, who assumes hes always going to have everything, and suddenly life begins to slip away in absurd and tragic ways. But whatever the canon is covered by shakespeare. Whats required is a majestic, mindless, humorous towering performance of life being ripped away. Having said that and having seen it a few times, paul scoff scofield, Simon Russell you say to yourself, do you want to climb into that arena . Part of me does. Part of rose ego . Yeah, thats the ego part. I have to kick its ass to see if i can come up with a real analysis as to whether or not im capable of it. But that appeals to me to take on a part that i know is so demanding and so huge that, you know, the idea of getting it scares the hell out of me. Bob and i a long time ago said were only going to do things to scare each other, but that one didnt really scare me. But thats the thing about lear. People say thats very nice thats not enough. Rose do you wish youd done this ten years ago . Could you have done it . Or is it one of those things maybe i did but i couldnt have happened it couldnt have happened without the intervening things in my life to do it . I think so. The latter, yes. I think it took this amount of time, and to reach a point in your life where you do you know, youre questioning not unlike the play writes were talking about youre questioning why am i here . What am i supposed to do with this . I have this success. Am i an artist . Am i going to push myself further . I could entertain people for the rest of my life and thats a lovely life and, you know marty short once said something about, you know the funniest man in the world. Rose you think so . I do. He said, you know, people dont want to see me stretching. They dont want to go to the monkey house and see the monkeys being introspective. They want the monkeys to be monkeys. Which made me laugh. Although believe me marty has within him marty as well as being a brilliant comic also can be a brilliant actor and has shown that in things like damages. Rose yeah, but does he want to . I think hes perfectly happy doing what he wants when it happens and if Something Interesting came along, you know, hes in the Paul Thomas Anderson film. He can do many things. But mostly i think he enjoys making people laugh, and i said to myself i think i might be one of the introspective monkeys. Rose introspective monkeys. Yeah. Rose didnt olivier always say he wanted to do comedy . He always wanted to play nathan detroit. He wanted to do it at the national. He imitated sam gold win beautifully. I would have loved to have seen him play nathan detroit. Well, hes an entertainer which was a tragic version of a comedian, but there are times he was very funny. Of course, the problem with him playing that part was he could not allow himself to be any good to the point hes playing a lesser entertainer. Famously, he was asked how did he achieve that mediocrity of singing and dancing and he just said, i just did the best i could and thats what came out. But, you know, he was yeah, i mean, look he famously did the pdipus in the rest regulation play where he played mr. Puff in the critic. So you know, he was testing himself in that way a long time ago. But, yeah, i think thats what happens, this has come about at a great time in my life to explore this side of myself andeth been thrilling and it has been life changing to come back. It makes you want more of that. Not that i dont enjoy comedy and going lack to its only a play with terrence mcnaily. But i think one thing helps the other. You know, when you do its like when you do stage then go back to tv or film and one enhances the other in some ways and i think having done this affects your other work as well. Rose does it mean in the end you put a higher value on drama than comedy . No. I think that would be wrong because, you know, comedy is always considered the poor second cousin to billing old drama to big old drama and tragedy, as if comedy was easy and, as we know, its not and to do it well, you know, is really difficult. And to make it look effort effortless. I think if its done in that way, people dont take it as seriously. Robert falls said imagine i was a beautiful young gorgeous woman and i wound up with Brian Dennehy. Thats why he made me wear that wig all that time. I always wondered about that. laughter you know, its funny, he took me to coffee one day. He was running a Little Theater and didnt even direct this play i did rat in the skull. And we had coffee and he said you and rigoing to do all these things together. He didnt even have a job, right . I had a job, but and i listened for a long time as i realized this was going to be something that we were going to do and he finished up by saying were always going to do things were not sure we can do. Which is also Something Else we did. Rose always do things that will make you a bit scared. Well, yeah. Even more than that. Were always scared. It can be the easiest play in the world and youre going to be scared. But youre saying to yourself, i dont know if i belong in this ball game and im really taking a chance here and, for the most part, weve pulled them off. Rose thats the way you are about lear, though, i dont know but i think the other thing about lear is ive left a little too late in terms of age and strength and my brain and so forth although that may be an excuse. Whatever i do ive got to make up my mind in the next several months and then ive got to find a place. Well see. Well see. Rose are you looking for another role like h . Do you actively look or does something happen that precipitates the thought in you . I would love to see him do the madrid play. Rose you mean the lisbon. The lisbon. Rose thats an old terrance mcnaily thats an old terrence mcnaily play i did in 1989. I was supposed to do a character much older but they wound up going with me. Its a wonderfully theatrical play and wonderfully dark. I could return to that. Rose what would you love to do . This was such a huge thing to climb and its been and so, its hard to think about another one right away where you know you see whatever you know one would hope that the cause of this, if people had seen me doing Something Like this that it might lead to another kind of interesting role like that. I dont know. I would hope. Rose or watch the show. Or watch the show and you might think, oh, hes a little deeper than i thought. I have one for you. All right. Richard ii. Yeah, im not crazy about him. Beautiful poetry. Gorgeous, gorgeous, but i dont have that passion for him. You know richard iii maybe, although and im getting a little old for that. But, you know, at least i understand you know, the character actors hamlet, richard iii. I would love to do more shakespeare, i havent done it in a long, long time and that would be thrilling. Rose thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Rose the iceman cometh is at Brooklyn Academy of music through this sunday march 15. Its sold out. Rose you dont go sorry. Rose just stand around, hope somebody doesnt come. You will miss something very, very special if you didnt go. We showed a little bit of it this evening in terms of two powerful actors. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org this is nightly Business Report sue herera. Much more tonight on nightly Business Report for march 12th. Wipe away your tears from a past couple of days. Wipe those losses away. More importantly stocks are once again positive for the year helped by a strong showing in financials. Following the final