Master Class with Linda Lavin at Lincoln Center
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Linda Lavin is currently appearing in Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities” at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. After a Sunday matinee, I sat down with her to find out, among other things, what intrigued her about the work.
Her reply was as honest as her acting: “You know, you read a play and you go, ‘Wow, this is spectacular writing.’ This guy has a great gift for language. He writes inter-dynamic familial relationships. We’ve all had parents; most of us have had sibling relations. These relationships, for many of us, are stressed or in breaches, and it’s great to find a piece of literature, a work of art, or a theatrical event that helps us to express the pain of those breaches, the pain of the misunderstanding.
“So it’s very personal for me on many levels,’ she continued. ‘Without betraying anything about other people, I’ll say it took me to a very personal place, a place in a family where … God, you know, I don’t know that there is such a thing as a functional family in any society. They use that word ‘dysfunctional’ in quotes, but really, show me a functional one and I’ll move in.”
To read my Sunday Arts & Books interview with Lavin about her illustrious career, click here.
-- Charles McNulty
