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Tracy Letts & Company Celebrate Opening Night of LINDA VISTA on Broadway!
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Oct 30, 2022
The Hayes Theatre was the place to be last night as Linda Vista, by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Tracy Letts (August: Osage County), officially opened on Broadway. Linda Vista is a brutally comedic look at Wheeler, a 50-year-old divorcee in the throes of a mid-life spiral.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Playwright Tracy Letts is back on Broadway, this time at Second Stage Theater with his latest, Linda Vista
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And we caught up with the company, led by Jan Barford, just minutes after the opening night curtain rang down
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You know, you try to write stuff that audiences identify with, and I think they do identify with complexity
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I think they do identify with people who don't always behave in the most noble way, right
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We can all see something in that that we recognize. There's a long tradition of that, of course, in the theater
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So I hope it looks like life to people. He's a complicated guy, and I think that Tracy's done an amazing job
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of not really shying away from kind of giving him his full comeuppance
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because of some of his despicable choices and behavior But at the same time he never really abandons him And so in the end maybe there is hope that even a narcissistic white male in his 50s
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can grow and learn to get outside of himself and see other people not as objects, you know
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but as other human beings that are worthy of his understanding and his respect
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What's it like living in the world of Tracy Lentz? Beautiful, challenging, and scary
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I mean, what he does best is he writes fly-on-the-wall experiences. So you find yourself in a bedroom watching the most intimate experience between two people
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and you're simultaneously shocked, but also you feel seen. you feel known because he naming a universal experience of misconnection trying to connect but missing each other And as an actor it a gift but it also scary because you have to really open yourself up and be transparent
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And it's a tremendous gift. It's a world of dark comedy where sometimes I'm like, do I really need to cry today
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Do I really need to go there tonight? But I do because that's part of the human experiences and that's part of what makes the play beautiful
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It's not just comedy. It really has the undertones of what makes life difficult
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There's something very immediate and real about the conversation. It always feels like it's a scene that plays itself if you're just open and listening
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but it's also very funny, very composed, in a way that makes it great comedy
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so we getting a lot of energy and feedback from the audience as well as playing what feels like kind of meaty drama as well It the smartest dialogue I ever ever had the privilege of saying
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I just like from beginning to finish I think there's just there's not a clunky scene in the entire play
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and you know I sort of I book in the play and sort of be able to listen to it all and then sort of have
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that energy carry all the way through back to the end of the play is really remarkable
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I think my part, I think all the parts are really have their ups and downs, you know
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I mean, Margaret is really right about a lot of things and steps across lines a lot
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I think there's just, as we all do, so I think that's what makes it really interesting
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It's the pleasure of my life to be on Broadway. It's the greatest place in the world
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It's the dream of an actor. I'm honored and flattered, and I'm back home east where my family's from
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