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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Tony and Emmy Award winner John Lithgow is back on Broadway at Roundabout Theater's American Airlines Theater
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with his new one-man show called John Lithgow, Stories by Heart, directed by Daniel Sullivan
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And we caught up with John just minutes after his opening night curtain rang down
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Once his summer festivals got rolling in the early 1950s, my father produced every single one of Shakespeare's plays
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not just the big famous ones, but plays like King John, two noble kinsmen
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Titus Andronicus, that's one where the queen is tricked into eating meat pies
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made out of her own two dead sons. I saw that one when I was about eight years old
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Well, personal, welcome back to Broadway. Thank you. I feel welcome. How does it feel being back
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Well, this is an unusual one. Just because it's been such a long history with this show, and it's only me
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I mean, it's like the closest I've come to a Bruce Springsteen concert
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You know, it was wonderful. And this is a great organization, Roundabout
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It's just solved all the problems of making things work on Broadway
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It's really been a happy time. You know, how did this all come about for you to do originally put this whole evening together
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I actually tell the story of the inciting moment. It was a moment with my parents where I read them a very, very funny story
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that my dad had read to me and my siblings when we were little kids
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so little that I'd forgotten the story. But I rediscovered it as I read it to my old dad And it just so completely entertained him It was kind of an epiphany for me I sort of saw in that moment
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kind of in retrospect, after it had passed, that that was why I'm an actor
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I mean, it's giving people the gift of entertainment, just sort of stirring something in them
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See, I didn't know the history of your dad, so sitting through this show
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of what he did and what he gave all of you growing up It was so fascinating the way you weave that all into this
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Yeah. Well, that's another thing about the show, which I absolutely love
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I feel like such a lucky actor that I can give this tribute to him
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He read them to us from this book. We would pick the stories, and he would read them out loud
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performing all the parts full out. When I hold it in my hands now
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my father comes back. So what are you enjoying the most about doing this on Broadway here at Groundabout
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Well, there's a wonderful sense of completion about it. I've always thought eventually I want to do it in a wonderful venue on Broadway
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And I never felt it was just right. I've been tinkering and tinkering
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So this was a kind of leap of faith. But bringing Dan aboard and working for really, you know
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Two weeks of rehearsal was something you've been already performing for this long
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It was creative all over again. My final question is when you took your bow tonight, back on Broadway
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to remember what you were thinking? Well, I was thinking about both my sons who were in the audience
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and I was thinking about my dad and my mom. Yeah. What a beautiful homage to your dad and your mom you do in the show
