Bless Howard Sherman and Ben Hodges. They’re responsibly for a stirringly marvelous book called The Play That Changed My Life, which is subtitled America’s Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them. (Applause, 179 pp, $18.99).

Sherman gets the credit for the idea. He saw a book called The Movie That Changed My Life and decided that the same thrust should be made for plays. Under the auspices of the American Theatre Wing, he got together with Hodges to choose the playwrights. Hodges interviewed some, assigned and edited essays from others, and put together this most moving book.

Special thanks to Hodges for getting Horton Foote in before it was too late. Nonagenarian Foote speaks of some of the greatest performances that he’s ever seen, so you know that the words “Laurette” and “Taylor” will soon follow, and they do, but –surprise! – not for the expected The Glass Menagerie, but for Outward Bound. And how about this rave for Pauline Lord in Ethan Frome: “In all the years since,” Foote states, “I have thought about it at least once a week.”

Some of the shows that influenced these playwrights weren’t quite in that league. Children’s theater played a big part. After a Pinocchio performance, David Ives was moved enough to wait around and get the autographs of the actors playing the Fox and the Blue Fairy (both of whom would probably want his now). Lynn Nottage tells of a children’s show she attended in which a refrigerator opened to reveal some talking lima beans – “and that,” she writes, “opened up a whole new creative universe for me.”

As a child, Nottage saw more plays than TV shows, for her family often took her and themselves to musicals -- Hair, Purlie, and Dolly! – long before they got around to buying a television set. And please, dear readers, the next time you buy Ms. Nottage a present, don’t make it a certain landmark play. As she wrote, “The gift I have received most often in my life is a copy in A Raisin in the Sun.”

Nice to see that community theater gets its due, too. Beth Henley gives a stream-of-consciousness list of what she remembers: “Cast parties, BYOB, understudy, upstaging, phoning it in, salmon gel, two-hander, no royalties, goddamn critics, the Scottish play, building costumes, half hour, cue light, callbacks, green room, glow tape, blocking, blackout, places!” The upshot? As Henley says, “It was like a dream being in a production with real adult actors.”

Sarah Ruhl, author of the current In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play, might surprise you with her community theater favorite: Enter Laughing, the 1963 commercial comedy that lasted a year and a day on Broadway. But no matter what the show, Ruhl enjoyed community theater for a more specific reason: “What is more moving,” she asks, “than seeing someone you love on stage?”

Something a bit more professional – but not much more – influenced Nilo Cruz. As a child in Cuba, his parents had planned to attend a nightclub cabaret, but when they couldn’t find a sitter, they took him with them. Because he was underage, he had to watch from under a table, peeking through a tablecloth. Who wouldn’t understand why seeing something under those forbidden circumstances would just have to be the most exciting thing in the world?

A.R. Gurney takes us back to his college days at Williams, and confesses that he played the female lead in The Man Who Came to Dinner. (I assume he means Maggie Cutler. Guess he could mean Lorraine Sheldon. But you know actors: It could be Miss Preen, and Gurney could have seen it as the lead.)

While at school, Gurney was two classes behind Sondheim – whom he judged to be “light years beyond me in talent and experience.” Still, Gurney was interested in the musical form, and wanted to adapt Pygmalion, but “the director of drama rejected the idea as hopeless.” Instead, Gurney channeled his energies into revues, and George Steinbrenner, the future co-producer of Seesaw before going on to other endeavors, played the piano for him.

Some were only able to read the plays that changed their lives. John Patrick Shanley tells who led him into uncharted territory. “No one in my neighborhood had ever gone into the arts. My role model was Cyrano” -- as in de Bergerac -- "because," Shanley says, he’s “a poet who’s the toughest guy in the room.”

Of course, the plays that changed some lives changed their style of these writers when they were just starting out. Jon Robin Baitz fully admits that he mimicked David Hare’s style. And after he saw Aunt Dan and Lemon, Baitz decided of Wallace Shawn, “If this man can write those long, hallucinatory monologues, so can I.”

David Henry Hwang ‘fesses up that Equus was a profound influence on him and his M. Butterfly – right down to the nude scene. It was one of the scenes he wrote late in the process, after director John Dexter had been signed. When Hwang gave the scene to him, Dexter said, “If you have a penis here and the Lunts here, everyone’s looking at the penis.”

Others had an equally rarefied experience at an early age. Says Donald Margulies, “I felt privileged being in a grand Broadway theatre packed with well-dressed adults and being let in on the jokes they so obviously enjoyed; I was thrilled to add my small sound to all that laughter.” How did he get there? His father loved Broadway and cast albums. Writes Margulies, “I was the only kid in the sixth grade who knew by heart the entire score of Happy Hunting.”

From Margulies' writing, one might not infer such an influence. Similarly, who’d expect that Christopher Durang would speak so lovingly about the sentimental ballads in Fiorello!? Of the actress who sang “When Did I Fall in Love,” he writes, “Her character sadly dies minutes after this realization” before he clarifies: “Minutes after in terms of storytelling, I mean. I don’t mean she sang the song and dropped to the floor. Though,” he muses, “I might write something like that.”

Diana Son, growing up in Delaware, was thrilled to find that her class would be taking a field trip to New York to see a Papp Theatre Hamlet –which she found a refreshing change from the usual “Liberty Bell, Dupont Industries and Joe Biden.” Better still, Son had already read the play, adored it, and couldn’t wait to see it – until she heard that a woman, Diane Venora, was playing the title role. Her adolescent mind couldn’t accommodate non-traditional casting, and she went very reluctantly and expected to be outraged.

Then she saw the show. “Venora’s Hamlet,” she writes, “was more faithful to my personal and passionate investment in Hamlet as an adolescent than the iconic performances imprinted by (such old-timers as) Olivier, John Gielgud, and Kevin Kline.”

And then, Son wraps up her essay by delivering my favorite line in the entire book: “It wasn’t just the play that changed my life,” she writes. “It was the play that gave me one.”

And yours, dear reader? Why not tell your story by entering the on-line contest at www.americantheatrewing.org/contest now through Sunday? Win, lose, or draw, everyone's bound to profit from hearing your story.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com

 

When Jim Brochu was 13, his goal was to be the first Brooklyn-born Pope. “Then,” he says, “my father took me to see Gypsy, and afterward, we went back to see Merman, When she asked me, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ I said, ‘A showgirl.’”

Well, that didn’t quite happen, but Brochu certainly went into show business. He wrote the book for The Last Session (and directed it, too) and co-authored The Big Voice: God or Merman? (and appeared in it as well). Now he’s playing Zero Mostel in Zero Hour, the one-man show he’s also written. It’s at St. Clements – only eight blocks away from the stage door where his father, a Wall Streeter for whom Merman was a client, introduced him to the legend.

As much as an impression as Merman made, David Burns, another of his father’s clients, made an even greater one. “We had front row seats to Do Re Mi,” he says, citing the 1960 musical. “I thought Davey was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. Afterward, we went to Toots Shors, and Davey told me I was always welcome to come see him after any show. So after he got A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, I went to see him.”

Young Jim was dressed in his uniform from La Salle Military Academy. During the wait, he did what so many of us did or would have liked to: He walked on stage to say that he’d been “on Broadway.” Trouble is, en route, he banged right into Zero Mostel.

“He was soaked, and the costume was so wet,” Brochu says, still with reverence in his voice. “And he stepped back and looked at me in my military uniform, and said, ‘Who are you, General Nuisance?’ When I said, ‘I’m here to see Davey Burns,’ he said, ‘Well, you never come to see me.’ So after that, whenever I went to see Davey, I went to see him, too. I’ll never forget the time I saw him unleash his fury one of the proteans, threatening to throw him into the orchestra pit for something he’d done. But then he turned, saw me, grinned that grin and said pleasantly, ‘Sergeant Brochu, so nice to see you.’”

Brochu will also never forget when he was performing in the 1970 musical Unfair to Goliath at the Cherry Lane – and not just because Jerry Tallmer in the Post said, “If they ever do The Zero Mostel Story, Jim Brochu is my choice for the lead.” During the run, he was walking on Broadway and 50th, and saw Mostel.

Says Brochu, “When I excitedly said, ‘Z! Z!’ he muttered, ‘What do you want?’ I told him, ‘I’m an actor now,’ and he said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ That’s all I needed to hear. ‘Then come see me!’ I said. He of course said, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ and I changed the subject to say, ‘You know, I’d really like an autographed picture of you.’ And he screamed at the top of his voice, ‘YOU’RE NOT WORTHY!’ and walked up 50th Street.”

But three nights later, Mostel was in the audience. “He didn’t come back afterward,” admits Brochu, “so I assumed he hated the show and me in it. But the next night I got to the theater, there was a manila envelope waiting for me. Inside was a picture, on which he’d written, ‘To Jimmy, with my admiration, Zero.’”

He was worthy.

Brochu would never see Mostel alive again. Seven years later, Mostel died in Philadelphia after playing a performance as Shylock in The Merchant, Arnold Wesker’s radical take on The Merchant of Venice. “I’ve spoken about it to Marian Seldes, who was in the cast,” says Brochu. “She told me that Zero envisioned Shylock as a thin man, so he went on this radical diet. He was living on cigarettes, coffee and a protein shake, and she believes the diet helped cause his death.”

Brochu’s show is set only a few days earlier. “Before Zero leaves for Philadelphia, he gives what will be his last interview to the New York Times,” he explains. “It’s not an interview he wants to do -- not at first. In fact, he’s actually painting all the way through it. He was quite a painter. He used to say, ‘I’ve done 25 Broadway shows, 50 films, and 10,000 paintings – and the only thing I’m going to be remembered for is The Producers.’”

Maybe Mrs. Mostel had something to do with that. Says Brochu, “At the same time Hal Prince offered Zero Funny Thing, he got an offer to play King Lear in Russia. He liked to say, ‘I thought Lear would have more laughs,’ and that’s the part he really wanted to do. But Hal was offering $4,000 a week – and Kate said, ‘My dear, if you don’t take it, I’ll stab you in the balls.’”

Perhaps playing less-than-Lear-like roles is the reason Mostel became terribly undisciplined in the parts he did perform. Brochu of course knows the stories of Mostel’s fooling around and not sticking to the script. “I saw him do it at Westbury, when he was doing Fiddler,” Brochu says. “After ‘Do You Love Me,’ he went up the aisle and said out loud, ‘And that night, Tevye had Golde, Golde had Motel, Motel had Bielke …’ Fooling around like that is not something I would ever do myself, but, well, how do you slap the hand of a genius?”

Maybe, too, all this was a strange backlash at being blacklisted. “Zero saw what had happened to Phil Loeb,” says Brochu, referring to an actor who was blacklisted and killed himself. “Six weeks after Loeb had committed suicide, Zero was called up in front of the same committee. There went his television and Hollywood opportunities and the big money.”

Another financial problem was the alimony Mostel was paying his first wife, too. “Marrying Kate had caused additional strife,” says Brochu, “because she was Gentile, so his parents disowned him for marrying outside the faith. Even when his mother was dying and he went to the hospital and brought his son Josh -- whom his mother had never met -- she wouldn’t see them.”

That story was one of two that inspired Brochu to write Zero Hour. “The other one,” he says, “concerns the night Fiddler was to open. I’m told that before the show, Zero was sitting outside the stage door on the curb, not wanting to go in and do the show. Why? I think he was thinking, ‘How could I go on the stage and play a man who disowns his own child for marrying outside the religion just as my parents had disowned me? Tevye says, ‘If I bend that far, I’ll break.’ But I wanted my parents to bend that far.’”

Brochu started writing around the time he turned 60. “I realized I was getting close to the age that Zero was when he died (62),” he says. “So I sat down, wrote, and the play just flowed from me. We opened in L.A., and I was scared when I heard a lot of Zero’s friends were coming -- including Theodore Bikel, with whom he was very tight. When he didn’t come back after the show, I thought he hated it and me in it. But the next day came an e-mail that said, ‘Thank you for bringing back a volcano we thought was extinct.’”

“What’s really funny,” Brochu says, “is that I recently found my high school yearbook, and was flabbergasted to see what one of my classmates wrote: “To Jim Brochu, the Zero Mostel of La Salle.”

Now he’s the Zero Mostel of off-Broadway, too.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com