Simon Says: Mercedes Ruehl on Her West End Debut in The Prisoner of Second Avenue
Mercedes Ruehl has won an Oscar (for The Fisher King) and a Tony (for Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers), but only now is this seasoned actress making her U.K. stage debut. Ruehl is appearing opposite fellow American Jeff Goldblum in a revival of Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue as Edna Edison, a 1970s Manhattan wife and mother of two who endures multiple hardships—burglary, a job loss, a husband in the throes of nervous collapse—in the course of the play. The late Anne Bancroft took the part on screen in 1975, but Ruehl makes it her own with a mixture of warmth and fury that honors both aspects of a seriocomic play. The Old Vic production, directed by 2010 Tony winner Terry Johnson (La Cage aux Folles), has been extended at the Vaudeville Theatre through September 25. Broadway.com caught up with Ruehl one morning late in rehearsals as she was renewing her relationship with a familiar writer, Simon, in unfamiliar surroundings, namely the West End.
It’s astonishing that you haven’t done London theater before now, given the many notable American actresses who have.
Yes, and I don’t know why it hasn’t happened before. It’s a long overdue, and the good news is, here I am—finally.
Did you and Jeff Goldblum know each other?
He doesn’t remember, but he sat behind me on a flight from Los Angeles to New York many moons ago, and we nodded courteously at each other—and sensed from one another’s formality that we both wanted to be left alone for the flight. That was just a glancing thing, and I might even be making it up. So, really, this is the first time, and he’s very different from the shy and retiring man I assumed was on that airplane [laughs].
Jeff and Kevin Spacey were astonishing together in Mamet's Speed-the-Plow. [Ruehl and Spacey co-starred (and both won Tonys) in Lost in Yonkers.]
Well, both of them have minds and tongues that can work with a kind of rapidity. They’re both scarily bright and articulate, rapid-fire people, and that is what’s needed for Speed-the-Plow: high-octane L.A. energy.
The Prisoner of Second Avenue, on the other hand, seems to need a certain anxious New York energy.
And truth, too: I discovered that in Lost in Yonkers, somewhere around the second or third week of rehearsals. We were doing a run-through, and I realized that [Simon] excavates right down to the molten part of the heart, and you have to stop worrying about being funny and get down to that molten place. With The Prisoner of Second Avenue, it’s almost haunting how the economic environment reflected in the play echoes the one we’re in right now: people afraid that they’ll lose their jobs, that the country is going out of business. My character, Edna, has a line where she says [to her husband], “I thought we were such a strong country, Mel, but if you can’t depend on America, who can you depend on?” There’s very much a sense of that under the surface in the United States right now—this presumed bulwark of economic and moral strength seems to have been crumbling over the past 10 years. Although the play dates itself to a certain era, which is not necessarily bad, I think that era reflects our own.
Neil Simon’s own cachet seems less assured, at least in New York. Look at the fate of the revivals of Brighton Beach Memoirs [which closed quickly] and Broadway Bound [which was cancelled] last season.
I’m not sure how Neil goes over with American audiences right now. New York was obviously not ready to see these plays again; it was either too soon or just not the right time and place. I think what happened was maybe a perfect storm, in that if you are not fated to have a certain show at a certain time, all of the forces will gather together to make sure it doesn’t happen. Also, they were making it a two-show deal, so people may psychologically have felt, “I’ve got to get tickets for both of them and bring a friend,” and suddenly that’s four or five hundred dollars.
And yet Prisoner was seen on the West End just over a decade ago, with Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason in the starring roles.
Yes, I can’t explain it, since I’m sure there is not that much familiarity with Neil Simon here, which may work on our behalf. He’s got this manic, urban New York energy in this play—Jewish, but more universal than that—and I think if we get it right, audiences will be more than happy to hitch their wagons for the ride.
Did you see the original Broadway production in 1971?
No, I was just out of college then and had no money, so I was lucky to see anything on Broadway at that time!
But you must remember the climate in Manhattan that the play so vividly evokes: rising crime, dwindling economy, and so on.
Yeah, but when you’re 21, you think this is all business as usual because New York is a great big monster anyway. You have to realize that New York had been my Mecca since I was about seven years old. I remember going to visit relatives in New York and seeing the skyline when we came over the George Washington Bridge and thinking, “This is where I’m going!” I had this very romantic view of New York which came face to face, yes, with the reality of the time. There was a lot more crime, a lot more drugs; it was a time of transition from the breathless summer of love and the hopes and the dreams and “make love, not war” and suddenly it was Cambodia and Nixon. How did he get in? [Laughs.]
How well do you know London?
I’ve been here twice before, once in the early ’70s when I hitchhiked around the entire U.K. and France with my college roommate. And to be here, rehearsing this at the Old Vic! The first week, I managed to get in the rehearsal room alone during lunch and I literally talked to the ghosts in the room: Richardson, Gielgud, Burton, O’Toole. This place is teeming with the energy of the greats; I can’t believe it.
It must be quite something to find your former Broadway co-star [Old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey] running one of the city’s most illustrious theaters.
My hat is off to him. The first time we met, we were both kids and had bit parts in a film called Heartburn, directed by Nora Ephron. The next time was on Lost in Yonkers, and I just thought he was a very talented, loose kid. When I found out he had done this, I thought, “Wow.” He had roared up into a titan. I didn’t see that coming! But, you know, he has the charisma and the management skills and the talent to make this happen. And the passion—you can’t leave out that word. A passion for the British theater and for this city, and when you find your true home, the home of your soul, you stay there. I think that’s what this is for him.