A PLAY OF NUCLEAR PROPORTIONS : WHITMORE & LINDLEY A ‘DANDY’ TEAM

Handy to be on stage with someone whose acting you really admire. Handy indeed if you like them a lot offstage too. Handy dandy if you’re James Whitmore and Audra Lindley. On Sunday, the acting pair and one-time husband and wife arrive at the Pasadena Playhouse in William Gibson’s two-character comedy “Handy Dandy.”

The play centers on the relationship that develops between an activist nun--who’s arrested after releasing doves at a Boston nuclear plant--and her trial judge.

“He’s probably a Republican,” said Whitmore, “she’s radical-liberal. He’s from Harvard Law School, she was a street kid. And he has very strong attitudes about civil protest--you know, breaking the law to change the law. It doesn’t matter what her good reason was. At the end he states that anybody who comes into court thinking they have a cause that supersedes the law is full of prunes.

“But it’s also the story of their discovery of one another, being intrigued and challenged by the other. It boils down to saying--maybe simplistically--that (the resolution) of all war, all hate and all controversy starts with one on one. It has to start there. So it’s really about two people coming together in love. I don’t mean sexual love. Two people of divergent backgrounds and philosophies find that they’re not that different. And it isn’t she that changes him or he that changes her--but that they grow to understand each other’s point of view and accept it.”

Both actors acknowledge that the piece (which served as the basis of a 1984 anti-nuclear event by Hollywood for Sane) is easily preconceived as a “cause” play. Yet they shrug off any political agenda.

“I think this is something that could possibly change people,” Whitmore said simply. “People will walk out of the theater and start thinking--and the next morning, maybe wake up and think about it a little more.”Added Lindley: “It’s difficult to grasp because it’s a very difficult piece.”

“Well, nobody’s gonna come if you say it’s an intellectual piece,” Whitmore growled. “Look, it’s very active and emotional and terribly funny. This guy, William Gibson, wrote ‘Two for the Seesaw,’ ‘Miracle Worker.’ An extraordinary mind; his wit and humor are really glorious. Just damn glorious. But messages ? George Kaufman once said, ‘If you want to send a message, use Western Union. Don’t use theater.’ It’s true. Who the hell wants to listen to a polemic for two hours?”

The current pairing of Whitmore and Lindley follows a dozen others in 18 years, including “Death of a Salesman,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”--and “Handy Dandy,” which they’ve performed in the last few years in several regional productions. “People automatically look for things for the two of us,” Lindley noted, “the way they do for other couples in theater.”

Is it easier to act with each other? Yes, nodded Lindley.

“It’s always tough,” Whitmore said wearily. “Acting is tough, and theater is tough. But it’s a lovely tough. It’s like writing the great American novel. You have to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of a chair, stare at the page and do all the writing you can--paper the wall with rejections--to keep body and soul together. The important thing is doing it. If you’re just thinking about results, forget it.”

Whitmore (who’s had more than his share of stage and film successes: in “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry!,” “Will Rogers, USA,” “Asphalt Jungle,” “Battle Cry” and “Black Like Me”) traces his first acting triumph to a high school performance in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta--and a lot of support from his father. “He encouraged me in flights of fancy,” the actor said fondly. “He wasn’t an actor, but he had a lovely sense of humor and imagery. My mother was different. She was . . . closed.”

For Lindley (whose career has included “A Case of Libel” and “Take Her, She’s Mine” on Broadway, “The Heartbreak Kid” and “Cannery Row” in film and television’s long-running “Three’s Company”), it was another matter.

“Both my parents were actors,” she said. “When I was in my teens, my mother packed my trunk and sent me to New York. I worked in movies when I was a little kid, got to stay out of school and go to the studios and smell that greasepaint. I never thought of doing anything else. From the first time I can remember, maybe 4 years old, I dreamed of being a movie star. I wanted to be Katherine Cornell.”

Would either have been content not to have become successful?

“Content, no,” Lindley said thoughtfully. “I would accept it, because I would rather do this than wait on tables.”

Whitmore shook his head. “I never thought I would be (a star). Anyway, all it really means is that you get to play the good roles, the important roles. Sure, it’s wonderful to be congratulated for what you do. I’m not knocking that. It’s just that this concept of stardom is misunderstood. If you think it means being discovered on a stool at Schwab’s--well, that’s not how it works. It does work that way sometimes, but that’s not acting. It’s not what the craft is about.”

Lindley nodded her agreement and smiled at Whitmore. They met doing a “truly awful play” in 1969 (both cite love at first sight), married soon after and divorced in 1979. Now they’re friends.

“We’re nice people,” Lindley said firmly. “We like each other, care about each other. And we have a whole bunch of grandchildren in common: seven of mine, six of his. I would never want to lose him.” Added Whitmore: “(Getting along) isn’t easy. You do have to overcome a lot of bitterness. It took a lot of work; it still does. But that’s what the play’s about, too: Reconciliation. Loving your fellow man. Compromise--with a capital ‘C.’ ”