Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [61]
Within a week, Nichols, and the production, perked up. “I saw what Bob was giving us. He had the farce experience from Sunday in New York. He could roll with the unexpected moments. And Bob was also a very funny guy when he was pissed, and he was pissed a lot in those days, so that was great electricity for Paul Bratter. Once Bob himself got those elements by the neck, he had the character, and he was off and running.”
Redford, though, thought the prep time was insufficient. He felt unready when the show opened out of town at the Bucks County Playhouse. Ashley, emotionally spent from overwork and the complexities of her love life, was exhausted before the show started. No one saw the approaching nervous breakdown that would put her out of the show within three months, and ultimately out of show business for half a decade. But it was Simon who fell apart after the first night. “He just disintegrated,” says Nichols. “As far as he was concerned, we had on our hands the worst play ever written. He actually asked the theater manager that very question: ‘Is this the worst play you’ve ever had?’ In my opinion, apart from the fact that the third act didn’t work, we brought the house down. All the laughs came on cue, and I knew Bob was the center of it. He’d tightened up enormously and, for the performance, gave it everything. I learned he was the kind of actor who inhabits the role, and so it was perfectionism that lifted Paul Bratter. Neil wrote an uptight character. Bob’s eccentricity made him someone lovable.” Redford believes that Paul Bratter was unquestionably his most successful theater role.
After Bucks County, there was a hiatus before the play would begin its pre-Broadway tour, at New Haven, in the fall. Redford returned to the Utah building site and resumed what he calls his “soul work.” By August, the house was finished. “My whole psychological framework changed,” he says. “Simply, the day-to-day work, carving stone, digging, seeing this house grow like a flower in the landscape, touched me very deeply. I already felt I belonged in the canyon, that it had a hold on me. Now I felt that what I had just accomplished was far more important than Broadway.” Stan Collins, who knew the area well from childhood hikes, was impressed by the beauty and craftsmanship of the finished house. He also saw something beyond pride of ownership. “Bob definitely sensed a mission. The house was amazing, but it was a little too far up the canyon, a little too off the road, a little too inaccessible. You got the impression that he had a hidden hand, that there was more to this idea of building a house in Utah than met the eye.”
When Redford rejoined the play in New Haven, he “behaved badly. I did not want to be there, and I did not cooperate. It was really tough on Mike, on everyone, and today I feel ashamed of how I was.” Neil Simon had fixed the technical problem, boosting the third act by adding a love affair between Velasco and Corie’s mother. A jolting review brought Redford to attention, a local critic remarking that “the play was fine, except for Redford, who couldn’t be heard past the first few rows.” Redford says, “It was true—I was lying down. I was spiritually still in Utah, so you might say I was on my way out the door.” Over dinner Nichols inadvertently saved the day. They talked of the characters, of the personalities of the actors, of Ashley’s troubles. “And then,” says Redford, “Mike said something that connected me once again with Bratter, whom I’d lost. He said, ‘You have the secret’—meaning, the answers to the character rested with me. I suddenly saw the power of my choice, that Paul Bratter could be whoever I wanted him to be. There wasn’t any analysis beyond that. I made some actor decisions. I went onstage, and I just kept silent. Elizabeth delivered her lines, and I just smiled and looked at her. And it worked! She looked at me, waiting for the line … and she had to look again,