ARTicles vol. 5 i.4c: Four Men’s Land

Two veterans of theatre, film, and television will take the A.R.T. mainstage by storm in David Wheeler’s production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land. Paul Benedict and Max Wright are no strangers to the A.R.T., but they’re joining forces for the first time in this production (which also features Lewis Wheeler and Henry David Clarke).

Even though Max Wright spent several years as Willie Tanner on ALF, he has even more experience with Shakespeare than with extraterrestrials. Wright earned critical acclaim for his 1998 Lincoln Center performance as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night with Helen Hunt and Paul Rudd (seen on WGBH’s Great Performances), and won a Tony nomination for his performance as Pavel Lebedev in Ivanov earlier that year. He particularly loves Chekhov and performed in Andrei Serban’s 1977 production of The Cherry Orchard at Lincoln Center.

Wright first got interested in acting at Wabash College where theatre was an extracurricular activity. He quickly transferred to Wayne State University in his native Detroit, where there was a fine theatre department and “two exceptionally gifted men: Richard Spear and Russ Smith, to whom,” he says, “I owe everything.” He also attended the National Theatre School of Canada but considers his real training the years he spent in repertory companies all across the country, including six seasons at Arena Stage.

His first Broadway show was The Great White Hope in 1968. After performing again in repertory companies, Wright returned to New York, where between 1977 and 1981 he appeared on Broadway in seven productions, five of which were classical revivals. After 1981 he began working in television. He can be seen in scores of television shows (including twenty-six episodes of The Buffalo Bill Show with Dabney Coleman) and a handful of films starting with All That Jazz (1979) and ending with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999).

Wright’s collaboration with the A.R.T. dates back to its first season in 1980 when he performed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Inspector General, and Happy End. He has worked on three occasions with David Wheeler. “I love and respect the man and his work,” Wright says. “He’s a real joy to work with. He has an infectious enthusiasm, a seemingly limitless delight in the work, razor sharp analytical powers and a great-hearted love of actors; all of which make him the best of all possible fellows to help a guy to mine the depths of a character or a situation or a piece of literature, and the most congenial possible fellow when you just have to muck about in the shallows.” Wheeler united Benedict and Wright for this project. Although both have worked extensively with Wheeler before and have appeared at the A.R.T. separately, No Man’s Land marks their first production together.

If you missed Paul Benedict’s performances at the A.R.T. as Chulkutrin in Journey of the Fifth Horse and Freddy in Picasso at the Lapin Agile, there’s still a good chance that you’ve seen him before. A Hollywood and Broadway regular, Benedict has taken on a wide range of character roles over the years. He is probably best known as Harry Bentley on The Jeffersons, or as the Number Painter on Sesame Street, but has also appeared on many popular television shows from Kojak to Seinfeld. Younger viewers will recognize him as a regular in Christopher Guest’s cult-classic “mockumentaries” This is Spinal Tap and Waiting for Guffman. He has appeared in more than fifty movies, including The Freshman, The Goodbye Girl, Jeremiah Johnson, and The Adams Family.

Although he is often mistaken for an Englishman because of his work on The Jeffersons, Benedict is a Massachusetts native. He got his start here in the theatre at the Charles Playhouse, working as a janitor. He describes his journey from janitor to actor: “Within a month, people asked me to help build the sets and run the box office. After another month, somebody said ‘would you like to do a walk-on role?’” He then managed a local coffeehouse where three nights a week, he and other local actors performed until they raised enough money to rent a loft on Charles Street. They created a ninety-nine-seat theater (with chairs salvaged from closed movie houses) called the Image Theatre, and it was there in 1963 that David Wheeler recruited him for the Theatre Company of Boston. At Wheeler’s suggestion, Benedict also began directing during his six years at the Theater Company of Boston. He debuted as a director with Icarus’ Mother, by the then unknown, young playwright Sam Shepard.

From Boston, Benedict moved to New York, appearing off-Broadway in such hits as Little Murders, The White House Murder Case, and Live Like Pigs, and directing numerous off-Broadway shows including Frankie and Johnnie in the Claire de Lune, Bad Habits, The Kathy and Mo Show, and It’s Only a Play. On Broadway he directed Any Given Day and performed in The Music Man, and co-starred in Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie opposite Al Pacino, who had acted with him in the 1960s in Boston under David Wheeler.

This spring, Wheeler and Benedict will continue their long-standing collaboration with Pinter’s No Man’s Land. Having extensive acting experience with Pinter’s plays as well as having met him, Benedict is pleased that this piece will mark his return to the A.R.T.: “No Man’s Land has great darkness in it because it’s a play about old age and impending death, but at the same time it’s incredibly funny. Sometimes Max and I in our readings with David can’t get through parts of it without cracking up. I love that the audience gets to have both.”

Katie Rasor is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.