THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 12, 1994 TAG: 9411110127
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 169 lines
``TOUGH AUDIENCE,'' said Academy Award-winning writer Ernest Thompson, under his breath.
Wednesday night, Thompson, author of ``On Golden Pond,'' sat in the Generic Theater waiting for the curtain to rise on his new play.
He found himself pegging his audience before the first smidgeon of dialogue was spoken, even before the lights went up on the scruffy Manhattan patio set.
Then Mary Huff introduced the show and put any doubts he might have had to rest.
``How many in here are breast cancer survivors,'' asked Huff, a local coordinator for the Virginia Breast Cancer Foundation, which sponsored that night's sold-out benefit performance. Half the patrons in the 100-seat playhouse raised their hands.
Thompson, who had traveled that day from his home in rural New Hampshire, scrunched down a little in his seat.
Then the lights came up on the first full production of his 3-year-old comedy-drama, ``Amazons in August.''
The show, which continues through Nov. 27, is centered on a friendship between two middle-aged women, one of whom gets diagnosed for breast cancer, then undergoes a mastectomy. Numerous top actresses have read the script and expressed interest in playing one of the two major roles, he said, including Carol Burnett and Ellen Burstyn.
Adding to Thompson's anxiety, perhaps, was a call he had gotten Wednesday morning, informing him that his close friend, an 86-year-old man who was his high school English teacher, was expected to die from prostate cancer in six months. The man had encouraged his writing from the start.
``My oldest and dearest friend,'' Thompson said.
He wasn't the only audience member feeling trepidation. ``I almost didn't come,'' said Debra Goff, a 32-year-old Chesapeake woman whose mother died of breast cancer in July. ``I was thinking this might bring it all back full force.''
They needn't have worried. From the audience came the warming hum of laughter. For the most part, hankies stayed in purses. Even Thompson laughed gently through much of his play, which was inspired in part by his sister's and his mother's bouts with breast cancer.
``He was right on the spot with his dialogue,'' said Nancy Schreier of Virginia Beach, a 5 1/2-year breast cancer survivor. From the early stages of denial to the first post-mastectomy wail, the characters' lines and reactions seemed so familiar to her.
Yet, here was a weighty tale buoyed by humor.
AFTER THE SHOW, THOMPSON, 45, held court in the lobby. The mostly female group clustered around Thompson, who looked the square-jawed, broad-shouldered leading man type he has played on stage and in television soap operas.
He told the gathering about his mother and sister, and how he had been his younger sister's caretaker when she had her mastectomy. He went with her to Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he witnessed ``a lot more of the process than I cared to.''
He accompanied her because her boyfriend didn't care enough to go - a situation repeated in his play.
As a family, he said, ``We're not necessarily close.'' Yet, clearly he was affected. Concerned enough to make breast cancer the backdrop of a play.
``I guess I felt a sense of responsibility to draw attention to something.'' In writing it, though, ``I didn't want it to seem maudlin. I was trying to find a balance.'' To be neither trivial nor bleak.
His sister hasn't read the script for ``Amazons,'' nor has she seen any of the staged readings that have taken place at various theaters.
``She still has a lot of anger,'' he said, warming to the crowd as if they were close cousins; indeed, Thompson shared much with these people.
``I don't think she could see it yet,'' he said. Even though, ``I thought for my sister it would be a reminder of how precious life is. I think it's a hopeful play.''
``Did we react the way you expected us to,'' asked Katie Byrnes of Norfolk, whose mother died of breast cancer 24 years ago. ``Did we laugh in the right places?''
Thompson nodded yes. ``I certainly wept through writing it. The least you can do is laugh at them.''
THE PLAYWRIGHT RECALLED ONCE being asked to write a comedy. He is, in fact, known for his comic touch. He says he is surprised when he finds his films in the ``drama'' section in video stores, though that is the norm.
(Besides his 1981 film ``On Golden Pond,'' which earned him an Academy Award for best screenplay adaptation, his films include ``Sweet Hearts Dance'' (1988) and ``1969,'' also a 1988 release and his directorial debut. Also, two television films he wrote will air early next year - ``Take Me Home Again,'' on NBC and starring Kirk Douglas, and for CBS, ``The West Side Waltz'' with Shirley MacLaine.)
Yet, he said, ``I wouldn't know how to write a comedy. To me, humor comes out of pain, and those sorts of emotions.
``My father died of cancer 15 years ago. His last joke was to call the undertaker three days before he died to arrange for his cremation and funeral. After they made the arrangements, the undertaker asked, `And where is the deceased?'
``And he said, `You're talking to him.' ''
Darkly comedic occurrences seem to dog Thompson. He recalled that, during a run of his late 1970s play, ``The West Side Waltz,'' he spotted a dead man in the theater.
Thompson had been strolling through the theater before curtain, and saw this very old man, slumped over. ``And I just knew he was dead. His wife had no idea. She nudged him and kept talking.''
But he was really dead. ``So the paramedics came in, and then Kate Hepburn (the show's star) came out and did a curtain speech.
``Then, we did the play. And it was a comedy.''
Such keen observation is a writer's curse, he said. ``I never miss anything.''
In a telephone interview last week from his home, Thompson talked about humor as a coping mechanism.
``That's how I was raised. Humor is the great equalizer or emollient that helps you get through it.''
His latest play, ``Rip Your Heart Out,'' is about gay-bashing and will open off-Broadway in the winter, he said. ``It was probably the only time I've written something direct linkable to something I saw or read. I had seen an article in The New York Times about a trial where three young men were found guilty of murdering a gay man.''
Thompson's play follows the gay man and then the three guys through one evening. Eventually, they meet.
``Rip Your Heart Out'' is ``extremely funny,'' he claimed. ``But it is hard going. A lot of painful things happen in it.''
He seems to be making a career of writing about characters vastly different from himself - the gay man in ``Rip,'' the older women in ``Amazons,'' the twilight couple in ``On Golden Pond.''
He was just 28 when, making good use of his time between acting jobs, he wrote ``On Golden Pond.''
``To me, it's all just human experience. A woman's experience is not that much different from a man's. Fear is still fear. Rage is still rage.''
When writing dialogue for Norman Thayer, the cantankerous old man played by Henry Fonda in the film, ``I thought I was writing about myself.''
SERENDIPITY WAS HOW THE GENERIC Theater ended up with the first full production of ``Amazons.'' Bob Nelson, the theater's artistic director, was handed the script by an agent. Nelson read it, liked it and simply became the first to schedule it.
The play takes place in a New York apartment building. Quiet, restrained Ruth arrives from Illinois so she can stay in the city for breast cancer treatment. Her upstairs neighbor, Cassandra, is a nosy, brash out-of-work actress.
``It's almost like a female `Odd Couple,' '' Nelson said.
These 50ish women were affectionately drawn by Thompson, who is bothered that few strong and compelling roles exist for ``women of a certain age.''
The area actresses in the roles - Candy Aston as Cassandra, Leigh Hronek as Ruth - are more than a decade younger than Thompson's intention. But both have some connection to the subject. Hronek's husband's first wife died of cancer. And Aston took a job in September as an operating room assistant to a Norfolk plastic surgeon who does breast reconstructions.
In fact, before the first performance, Aston spent the entire day in such an operation.
Still, Aston stressed, ``It's more a story about two women who befriend one another.''
The play has been through many drafts since Thompson began writing it in the early 1990s. It may go through yet more revisions. Based on responses from actresses like Burnett and Burstyn, Thompson said he expects the play to open in New York or be adapted for film - or both.
``This production in Norfolk I consider to be another laboratory for me. And I'll learn a lot from the production.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN
Ernest Thompson's comedy-drama focuses on the friendship of two
women after one gets breast cancer.
Graphic
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