It May Be Cool in Malibu Canyon, but Mercer’s Career Is Hot in Town

It may be hard sympathizing with people who live in the Ritz-by-the-sea known as Malibu Canyon, but just talk with Tony-winning actress Marian Mercer. “It’s very cold here in the morning,” she says, “and then I drive into town, and it’s hot as the blazes. Or it seems like it to my sinuses.”

A big problem, since Mercer is driving into town a lot these days. She recently completed work on “McTeague,” the L.A. Classic Theatre Works-KCRW radio adaptation of Frank Norris’ novel, which Erich Von Stroheim once made into his film epic, “Greed.”

Last week, she finished work in an initial batch of pilot episodes of “Sunday Dinner,” Norman Lear’s new comedy series planned as a CBS mid-season replacement. Mercer is now able to devote full time to her character, Bananas, in John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves,” opening tonight at the Skylight Theatre.

Commuting and sinus flare-ups are nothing, though, compared with the character shifts in her flurry of projects. “In ‘McTeague,’ I played several turn-of-the-century society women,” she says. “What makes ‘Sunday Dinner’ so refreshing is that I play Robert Loggia’s sister, very blue-collar and old-time religion. But she’s not satirized. She’s not a ‘character’ at all.

“Bananas emphatically is, the crazy wife of a guy about to run off to Hollywood with a younger woman: Mad people are able to be straightforward and honest. Children can be like that. My 5-year-old daughter definitely tells it like it is!”