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You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but can you take Brooklyn out of the boy? When it comes to Donald Margulies, not so much.
In his early plays ("The Loman Family Picnic," "What's Wrong With This Picture?"), Margulies tapped repeatedly into his middle-class Jewish childhood in Brooklyn in the 1950s. Now 51, he is better known for his later work, especially his Pulitzer-winning "Dinner With Friends" (a tale of two couples grappling with adultery, divorce and the ennui of the long-married, it was made into an HBO movie starring Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear and Andie McDowell in 2001). But lately he returned to his home field.
In "Brooklyn Boy," he tells the story of Eric Weiss, a writer in his 50s who has spent most of his life trying to distance himself from his past, his religion and his culture. Buoyed by his first commercial success and touched by his father's illness, Weiss has come back to the old neighborhood. After a run on Broadway earlier this year, the play had its regional premiere this weekend in Palo Alto; the production by TheatreWorks continues through Aug. 13 (a review will appear in Tuesday's Mercury News).
Last week, Margulies talked about the relationship between his life and his work.
Where did the germ of the idea for this play begin?
I was talking to my friend, the playwright Herb Gardner, and he said, "You know, I love your Brooklyn plays. Why don't you go back to Brooklyn?" And I said, "Because I don't want to go back." And he said that I had never written about it from that vantage point so why not try? And I said, "OK, I've got to get off the phone." But I began to see that there really was something there.
This play, like a lot of your work, seems to draw deeply from your own experience. How much of Eric is you and how much is fiction?
It does all emanate from very personal places. But it's not an act of expiation or self-discovery, I don't think. It's really more about what the characters are going through, so even though Eric and I are contemporaries, and we might know and like each other, he is having a very different midlife experience than I am, which is what makes him a more interesting and dramatic character than I am.
He has many more issues. His stakes are much more heightened than those for someone like me. But what happens in the play does reflect some of my experiences.
Did you, like Eric, go through a midlife crisis?
If I did, I did it very early on. Really, what I did in imagining Eric was imagine what my life might have been like if I had not been as mentally healthy and equipped to deal with turns of events. I buried my parents a long time ago and have been somewhat successful since my 30s, but those things happening to a person in midlife would give the things much more weight.
It also seemed correct to give him a spiritual crisis, which is something I never endured.
Do you read the critics? Some reviewers, while praising many of its merits, also have described this play as "familiar."
Yeah, that was kind of annoying. Because I think there are archetypes and then there are stereotypes, and I think there is a lot of nuance and shading to my characters. Yes, they are recognizable, but "familiar" is a dismissive term that sort of distances one from actually trying to figure somebody out or be surprised by somebody. You think you have someone figured but then you see where we're really going with it. That's really what I try to do in all of my work.
Is it true that you once decided to never officially open a play, to thwart the critics?
Yeah, that's right. "What's Wrong With This Picture?" just stayed in previews and then it ended its run. That was at the Manhattan Theater Club in 1985. I was at a very vulnerable point, and I had just been slammed in the New York Times a couple of times, and I just don't think I could have survived another assault. I think it really could have finished off my theatrical career.
That took some chutzpah!
It really did, and it was not an entirely popular thing at the MTC, you know. But I felt certain that it would have put the kibosh on my then-rather-green career as a playwright. And I'm glad I did it.
You write so many different kinds of things, from plays to movie treatments. What are some of the projects you're juggling now?
Well, I just finished a new children's play for South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa, which was a total pleasure, and I'm working on a screenplay for Mike Myers.
How did the Myers project come together?
Turns out he's a fan of mine and he contacted me, which was very nice. Who the hell knows? I don't know. It's a biopic on Keith Moon, the drummer for the Who, who was a total madman. It's a great role for Mike. And I'm of that era; I lived through and participated in it. That's my generation. So it's fun to immerse myself in that stuff.
Is it ever hard to break away from the thing you're truly passionate about, the theater, to work in other genres?
Well, even though I am now happily widely produced, I still need to subsidize my income by being a writer for hire in Hollywood. That's the reality of it -- unless I, like my friend Winnie Holzman, write the book for "Wicked," which means she can do anything she wants. Her life and her grandchildren's lives are now taken care of.
But in the world of straight plays, there really is not that kind of windfall to be experienced. Not in this current theater market anyway.
Has winning the Pulitzer changed your life as a writer?
That kind of recognition gives one access, which is a wonderful gift. People know my name now, which is important. It means that all of my plays are written by "a Pulitzer-winning playwright." So that's very nice.
`Brooklyn Boy'
by Donald Margulies, presented by TheatreWorks
Where Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
When 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays; 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays (no performance Aug. 8; no matinee Aug. 12; no evening performance Aug. 13)
Closes Aug. 13
Tickets $20-$55; (650) 903-6000, www.theatreworks.org
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