Time has come for something 'risky and edgy'

NEW YORK -- For 20 years, Robert Falls has been artistic director of Chicago's Goodman Theatre, one of the country's leading regionals. He has directed revered actors, introduced works by the likes of Arthur Miller, August Wilson and Stephen Sondheim, and championed now-prominent playwrights such as Rebecca Gilman, Mary Zimmerman and Noah Haidle.

For 10 years, Falls also has been a father; he and his wife have three children.

"And as I've learned how to cope with 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds, it has helped me a great deal in my work with major artists," he quips.

Falls, who actually only has praise for his creative colleagues, clearly has ample energy for all of them.

The 52-year-old theater veteran, whose credits also include Broadway hits ranging from the Disney musical Aida to last season's celebrated Conor McPherson play Shining City, has two more pending productions in Manhattan: a Broadway revival of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio, starring Liev Schreiber, opening in February, and Frank's Home, a new Richard Nelson play due off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in January.

Home, which casts Peter Weller as Frank Lloyd Wright, is in its world premiere at the Goodman as part of Falls' anniversary season. It follows Haidle's Vigils, also new, and Falls' brash, contemporary take on King Lear, which starred Stacy Keach.

Though Lear drew rave reviews and record crowds, its graphic and often brutal imagery generated controversy. One critic "called it the worst production he had seen in his theater-going life," Falls says.

The director seems more amused than wounded by the barb.

"Because it's my 20th anniversary, I wanted to take on some highly visible projects and some things that were really risky and edgy. I had always known I would have this huge King Lear. A lot of people have asked me when I'm going to bring it to New York, and I tell them that I wish I could. It's a production of such size and scope that it could only be done in a major theater like the Goodman."

Falls was equally intent this season to include a play by Wilson, who died at 60 last year after a brief battle with cancer. With Radio Golf, which starts previews at the Albert on Jan. 13, the Goodman "will be the first theater to have done all 10 of August's plays" tracing African-American experiences through the 20th century, Falls proudly notes.

Racial and cultural diversity have been priorities throughout his three decades as a Chicago-based director.

"I don't think you can have a major regional theater in this country without being responsible to the whole community. That's particularly true in Chicago, where there's so much richness from African-American culture and the emerging Latino culture."

The Goodman's artistic collective includes, in addition to Frank Galati and Zimmerman, whose new adaptations of, respectively, Greek and Persian classics will make their debuts next year, Henry Godinez, curator of the Latino Theatre Festival, and two African-Americans, Chuck Smith and Regina Taylor, another rising playwright whom Falls has nurtured.

"They contribute a lot," Falls says. "They generate their own work, have their own ideas. Each has a national profile, but they keep the Goodman as their home base."

Looking ahead on the home front, Falls jokes that the Goodman's 21st season "will be an enormous, crashing letdown for all concerned. No -- it will just be exciting for different reasons. Hopefully, we'll have the same mix of classic work reinvigorated and new plays lovingly presented with really exciting artists involved in all of them."

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