What Amy Ryan reported about Richard Armitage #LLLplay

[So, yeah, I’m in NYC for the last few performances of Love, Love, Love — which is why the blog has been a little dead the last day or two — and it may be thin for a few more as well. One more performance tomorrow to watch, and then the Berlin Station finale Sunday night, and Monday I’m flying back. Theoretically — from my FB, it looks like Wisconsin is a mess.]

Anyone else who was there is welcome to comment on this, because it was a weird moment.

The “celebrity talk” after the matinée this afternoon was conducted by Ben Rosenfield, Kathleen Littlefield (Zoe Kazan’s understudy), and Amy Ryan. Ryan came out a little late, and several of her answers were either or curt or phrased in a way that suggested they were sarcastic, so take this for what it’s worth. In general her posture created the impression she did not want to be there — something that I am not critical about, I can imagine that she feels this is not really part of her job or the questions she gets are often related to themes she is not really qualified to speak to. For instance, she got some repeated questions about how the characters should solve the problem set up by the play, and the psychological development or regression of the characters, and so on, that were a little outside what one would expect an actor to answer, so that may have contributed. She did, however, get at least two questions that I thought were good, as well, and she gave serious answers to them. (And she had great classic boots on — I think those are called Chelsea boots.)

About 2/3 of the way, someone asked about the physical comedy during the cake scene and how that was put together (or was it in the script). Ben Rosenfield noted that almost none of it was in the script. Katherine Littlefield just pointed with her thumbs at Ryan and Rosenfield. Amy Ryan mentioned that the comedy not only developed out of their own creative work, but that it takes shape in the performance based on things that happen in the play, so that it changes and develops from performance to performance. She pointed out the way that Jamie (Rosenfield) appears to have to keep eating ridiculous amounts of cake (as the discussion gets more uncomfortable, Jamie consumes more and more) and she expressed admiration for his solution to the problem of cake overdose, which was to take Rose’s cake after she exits and plop it straight down on his (implication — so it looks like he’s consuming more than he is. I agree this is comedic brilliance; it’s very funny).

Then she mentioned that that afternoon, Kenneth (Richard Armitage) had gotten a very small slice of cake. She stated that this developed out of the backstage situation — that Richard had “put the cake server on his butt” for a moment, “because he knows I have to lick it,” and so in consequence, Sandra gave Kenneth a very small piece of the cake.

The remaining audience laughed very hard at this story.

~ by Servetus on December 18, 2016.