Most of us who remember the early days of Stiller and Meara on the old “The Ed Sullivan Show” might be taken aback to realize that more than three decades have gone by since then. And the married couple has remained in show business all that time.
Working separately in recent years as much as together, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara have both continued with distinguished careers. Indeed, Meara has proved to be a signpost of good comedy-drama wherever she shows up. In the movies, you tend to sit up and take notice whenever she comes on screen — she was the grim, traditionalist, good-hearted teacher in “Fame,” for instance. And she came to life with great pathos in “Awakenings.” As for television, her five Emmy nominations include one this year for outstanding guest actress in a drama series for a role in “Homicide.”
What made Stiller and Meara’s comedy memorable in the first place was that inner edge of drama, that poignant, bittersweet message that we laugh in order not to cry. Meara embodies that, and it should come as no surprise that her career in the theater has included such serious roles as the tragic, crazy Bunny in John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves” or the mother in Guare’s “Bosoms and Neglect.”
But the really big news these days is the emergence of Anne Meara the playwright. Her second play (and first produced work), “After-Play,” surprised everybody when it showed up off-Broadway nearly three years ago. It looks at two married couples with vague ties to show business reuniting in a restaurant after going to the theater, and it’s full of the bumptious, ethnic-tinged comedy of the husband-and-wife team’s early days. “After-Play,” which will receive its Chicago premiere on Monday at the Touchstone Theatre Building, is also a penetrating look at late middle age, parental disappointment, sexual ennui and the slow death of almost everyone’s life dreams.
“It’s dangerous to generalize about these characters and what they mean,” Meara says. “I really only work from their stories. But when you get to a certain age in life — and I wrote these characters to be in their 60s — many of the issues we face are the same. And these issues are more crucial as your days in life get shorter. You reach a certain age when, if you’re lucky, you start to assess — the things that went wrong, the things that went right.”
Meara writes with great feeling and humor about an age group often neglected. One of the couples still lives in Manhattan, the other is based in L.A. They haven’t met in years. What begins as a jolly reunion ends in fights over the play they just saw, their treatment of their children, their attitudes towards each other and finally over the meaning of life — all cagily couched in everyday chatter and sharp-edged
one-liners.
“My mother was a saint,” says Renee. “She washed, cleaned and cooked for all of us and my father who thought he was artistic. He was so artistic he died of cirrhosis of the liver.”
“I think a lot of actors who turn to writing write good dialogue because good acting, after all, is listening,” Meara says of her good reviews. “Jerry and I wrote our sketches together. He’d come up with the ideas, largely based on incidents involving a Jewish-Irish couple. Sometimes the incidents would be things that happened to us, sometimes things that happened to our friends.
“But I’d always wanted to write on my own, and over the years I wrote different things, snatches of stuff, really, and little bits of dialogue. When I sat down and got serious, I borrowed a lot from that old material. You could say I raped and pillaged my own work.”
The casts of the drama have varied in various productions, but have included the likes of Barbara Barrie and Rue McClanahan, and in a couple of summer-stock mountings, Stiller and Meara themselves. Here, the leads will be played by Linda Kimbrough, Nancy Baird, Michael Guido and Richard Henzel. Steve Scott is the director.
Meara is naturally pleased by the play’s reception. “A writer’s always glad when his or her work affects people,” she says. “I’m very happy.” She’s also working on a new play, untitled as yet. Ever onward and upward, huh? “For all of us. For everybody.”
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The Organic Touchstone Company mounting of “After-Play” plays through Jan. 18 at 2851 N. Halsted St. For tickets: 773-404-4700.
