Barrymore
(Tour)
By William Luce
Directed By: Clay Watkins
Produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc
The Cast
| John Barrymore | Ed Desiato |
| Prompter | Ryan H. Case Nick Swarts |
ABOUT THE PLAY
"Barrymore" is a one-person play by William Luce which depicts John Barrymore a few months before his death in 1942 rehearsing a revival of his 1920 Broadway triumph as Richard III.
Barrymore's attempted revival of his Richard III never actually took place and was a device that was invented for the play, but it served as a dramatic framework for the actor to reminisce about various episodes in his life and about his career downslide due to alcoholism, his abandonment of the theatre, and the squandering of his talents in the pursuit of fame, greed, and dissipation. He chronicles his ascendancy to the throne as the finest classical actor of his generation; his arrival to the pinnacle of movie stardom; his intimate and compassionate relationships with his sister, Ethel, and his brother, Lionel; and the explosive debacles of his four marriages.
The play was originally produced at the Stratford Festival of Canada in 1996 and went to Broadway the following year, winning Christopher Plummer a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for his performance as John Barrymore.
CAST BIOS
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Edmund Desiato (J Barrymore) has enjoyed an illustrious theatre career since graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He has appeared in innumerable stage and screen roles; including work for Jackie Gleason, and the television series "The Edge of Night". Ed has worked with professional, community, and touring theatres for many years. He currently serves as Vice President of the Balagula Theatre Company, and is house manager for Studio Players' Carriage House Theatre. He began working with the Balagula Theatre in 2005, directing Neil LaBute's "Bash". Ed has since starred in Balagula productions of "The Dresser", "Line", and several installments of the "Surprise Theatre" series. |
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Ryan Case (Frank) is a co-founder and the Artistic Director of the Balagula Theatre Company. He has previously performed in Balagula's productions of "The Pillowman", "Power Plays", "The Dresser", "Phyro-Giants", "Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening With the Illuminati)", and as the physicist Werner Heisenberg in "Copenhagen". He has also appeared in AGL productions as the title character of BatBoy in "BatBoy: The Musical", and as Vincent VanGogh in "Vincent in Brixton". Ryan's latest directing credits include "Line" and "Lovesavers", both for the Balagula stage. He has also co-produced several of the Balagula Theatre's shows. |
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Nick Swarts (Frank) is very proud to be making his Balagula debut with Barrymore under the direction of his longtime friend, Clay Watkins. Nick recently moved back to Lexington from Los Angeles where he was last seen on stage in the world premiere of a brand new play by Ray Bradbury. This was Nick's second appearance with Mr. Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company. Nick has acted in the CBS television pilot Homewood P.I. with Tony Danza and the sci-fi thriller, Spiders. Nick has also worked with Actors' Theatre of Louisville and The Barter Theatre. |
Clay Watkins(Director) is very shy. |
Press Quotes
"A dazzler! .... A portrait of riveting complexity and paradox" N.Y. Times
"As good as one man shows get." New Yorker
"A perfect image of Barrymore." N.Y. Daily News
Interview with Ed Desiato
(Herald-Leader Article) Friday, June 27, 2008
It's not an act
Rich Copley Herald-Leader Culture Columnist
Ed Desiato, whose acting resume includes roles on Broadway and in the soap opera The Edge of Night, has lived and acted in Lexington for decades. He is now starring in Barrymore. He also is house manager for the Carriage House Theatre and is vice president of Balagula Theatre.
Desiato worked with Kay Worthington in Star Spangled Girl at Diners' Playhouse in the 1970s in Lexington. The theater closed in 1982.
Ed Desiato will be the first person to tell you he's no John Barrymore.
"I'm not an idiot," Desiato says in a gravelly voice deepened by cigarettes and with a lingering New York accent. "There was only one John Barrymore.
"I'm doing what Christopher Plummer did," Desiato says, referring to the actor who originally played the acting legend in William Luce's play Barrymore. "Plummer played himself, with the characteristics of John Barrymore. That's the way I am going to play it."
Desiato is performing in Balagula Theatre's production of Barrymore for three nights this week at Natasha's Bistro. It's a play that the well-traveled actor says he always has wanted to do. And while Desiato's career does not have the national, historic status of Barrymore's, it is one of the more colorful and diverse ones on the Lexington stage.
It started when Desiato, now 71, entered college in New York, and attempts to study classical guitar and violin didn't work out.
"I was going to Fredonia State Teachers College in New York State," Desiato says. "I got involved in a theater group because my faculty adviser was Jo Oatfield, who once upon a time had been an actor on the West End of London and in New York in the '20s and '30s. And she knew Fran Fuller, who was the director of the American Academy in New York.
"So she called me into her office one day and said, "Mr. Desiato, you did very well in the play' — I played Priam in Tiger at the Gates, and she thought that was quite a feat for a young man — "and you're doing rather well in English and in history. However, there are other subjects that you have to master when you are in college, and you're not mastering them. So, I've called your father, and I've called Ms. Fuller, and you're going to audition at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts."
With that decree, Desiato auditioned, and he was accepted.
"My father drives me in for the first day of classes for the new season, drops me off at the corner of 52nd and Broadway, reaches into his pocket, gives me a $100 bill and says, "You want to be an actor? Act.'"
And he did.
One of Desiato's first breaks was being cast by writer William Inge and director Worthington Minor in Glory in the Flower. In the play by Inge, who also wrote Splendor in the Grass, Desiato played the male lead, Bronco, a role played by James Dean in a 1953 CBS television production. Desiato was in his junior year of college and being paid union rates for the production, which ran for six weeks at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
After that experience, Desiato went on to a couple of years on The Jackie Gleason Show before it moved production from New York to Florida.
"You never saw my face on television," Desiato says. "I was the rear end of a mule, I was a snowman, I was a boulder — a talking boulder, I might add — and that was quite an experience."
He went from there to a role on the long-running soap opera The Edge of Night, a gig that lasted until he punched somebody backstage.
"The next day I was written out of the script," he recalls, noting that his character was killed in a car accident.
"I've since calmed down, and I don't hit people," Desiato says with a hearty laugh that fills the dining room at Natasha's. "I may berate them verbally, but I don't hit them."
He continued acting and eventually came to Lexington to work at Diners' Playhouse, a union theater that used to offer shows in repertory on North Broadway. It changed management and names several times before closing in June 1982.
Despite the theater's closing, Desiato has remained in Lexington and active in local theater, particularly with Studio Players, where he is house manager for the Carriage House Theatre. He also is vice president of Balagula Theatre, the company that performs at Natasha's Bistro on Esplanade.
In those years, he's turned in some memorable performances, particularly as a lonely old man dealing with the gay young man caring for him in Jeff Barron's Visiting Mr. Green at Studio Players.
In the community, Desiato is a distinctive and opinionated talent who advocates for the basics over newfangled approaches to theater that he says often have nothing to do with acting.
Desiato's method to playing Barrymore harks back to his training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts with his acting styles coach, Jack Aronson.
"One of the questions Jack would ask us in class was, "What does your character look like?'" Desiato recalls. "You'd say, "He's 7-foot-5, weighs 390 pounds, he's got a big hump on his back, blah, blah, blah.' Then, he'd say, "What does he sound like?' "Well, his voice is blah, blah, blah.'
"Then he'd hand you a mirror and say, "That's what your character looks like.' And he'd been recording, and he'd turn it on and say, "That's what it sounds like.'
"It's the truth. This is the only machine you have — your body, your voice, your looks, whatever. We can do all sorts of funny things with makeup, but underneath the makeup, there's the person, and that's the actor."
And that's who this Barrymore is: Ed Desiato, drawing on his own stage career of more than 50 years and playwright Luce's words to bring one the 20th century's legendary actors to life.
That's the only way this play can be performed," Desiato says. "To get the chance to work this character is an actor's dream. But there's no way I could be John Barrymore. I wouldn't even try. It would be insulting to his memory and a crime to the pictures he left behind. But I am sure enough of myself to know I can do this role."