Francis Guinan and K. Todd Freeman Wrestle With Mercy in Broadway’s Downstate

Bruce Norris’ Downstate arrives on Broadway this fall after getting people talking in Chicago, London and off-Broadway. Now directed by three-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello and featuring original cast members and longtime friends Francis Guinan and K. Todd Freeman, the play about a group home for sex offenders is poised to provoke more conversation on theater’s biggest stage. Whether audiences throw bouquets or toss tomatoes after the actors bow, beauty and ugliness will already have shared the stage. Wrestling with that coexistence is what Downstate is all about.

For Freeman, the theme of Downstate is simple: “It’s about mercy.” That description opens up questions the actors continue to explore. “What do you do with people that have done the unforgivable?” Guinan asks. “And what is unforgivable?” Freeman sees the play reaching beyond its setting, asking audiences to examine “where your limits of forgiveness are and how you deal with redemption in others and in yourself.”

Despite the weight of those questions, humor was what first drew Guinan to the script. “I was struck by how funny it is and the ambiguity that’s involved in the emotional lives of the characters,” he recalls. Freeman was immediately taken with Norris’ willingness to unsettle people. “I think there’s a place for the things that shock, the things that shake you up inside and make you rethink,” he says. “That’s what this does.”

That discomfort takes a particularly challenging form in Fred, the character Guinan plays. Gentle and helpful within the house, Fred has also sexually abused children. “This is a person who's capable of great kindness, and on the other hand, completely blind to the needs of a small child,” he says. His everyday kindness exists alongside the harm he has caused, a contradiction Guinan makes no attempt to resolve. “What we’re asking the audience to do is hold those two ideas at the same time,” he says.

This subject matter prompts discussion beyond the theater. During the show’s run in Chicago, Freeman met audience members who identified themselves as survivors of sexual abuse and shared what watching the production meant to them. “They talked about how cathartic it was for them to experience it,” he recalls. Guinan remembers similarly personal exchanges in London. “It's usually someone that they love or that loves them that commits this crime,” he says. “Dealing with those two emotions at the same time is really very difficult.” Freeman was moved by this willingness to open up. “They felt comfortable enough to do that and you could tell it was doing something positive for them,” he says.

Returning to the emotionally demanding material requires the actors to remain open to each other, too. Longtime Steppenwolf Theatre Company colleagues, Guinan and Freeman bring an easy rapport to their work. “I do love working with Fran,” Freeman says. “We get along well and I think it carries over into our relationship on stage.” Guinan describes “a real sense of play back and forth,” something they continue to find within the script.

That familiarity now meets the discoveries that come with a new company and director. Working with Mantello and the actors approaching the play for the first time has changed Guinan’s own responses dramatically. Freeman, whose 40-year friendship with Mantello stretches back to college, welcomes the adjustment. “You have to listen completely differently because they’re new people, they’re new bodies, and they’re giving you different things, so you have to respond differently to that.”

For Guinan, the play has sharpened his ability “to listen to what’s happening on stage and to truly respond to what’s going on.” He hopes audiences will be equally receptive to the story's surprises. “Things aren’t always what you think they are,” he says. “It can be a very difficult moment for some people, as I was saying, holding these two ideas in their mind at the same time. But I think that's what theater's about.”

Downstate begins performances on October 17 at the Booth Theatre. Get tickets!