Playwright Found ‘Bargains’ While Looking Into Past

Last Christmas, the department store in Corsicana, Tex., where Jack Heifner’s mother had worked for 20 years, closed with nary an obituary.

Its image lives on, however, as an authentic-looking set on the stage of the Old Globe Theatre, where the world premiere of Heifner’s “Bargains” opens Thursday.

“Department stores are the crossroads of the world,” Heifner said in a recent interview at the Globe. “I always thought it would be an interesting setting for a play.”

Heifner’s most successful work, the long-running Off Broadway hit, “Vanities,” involved a friendship among three women--a play inspired by some of the more self-involved students he had known as an undergraduate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

In “Bargains,” he returns to his roots. The show centers around two women, Sally and Mildred, both in their late 30s, who work at a downtown department store in a central Texas town of about 20,000 people.

Sally has a lot in common with Heifner’s 84-year-old mother, who worked at the K. Woolens department store until she retired on her 80th birthday.

“Mom sold exactly what Sally does--shoes and hose,” Heifner said. “A great many of the stories and one of the plot elements is about her. The incident about Sally being ordered to sell bras and panties on the sidewalk happened to her. Mom stood for the things that Sally stood for--pride in her work and a belief that there have to be rules and etiquette and ways of treating people well.

“I remember my Mom going down there dressed in beautiful clothes with a great deal of dignity. She loved to go down there because she loved people. And then there was all the gossiping and chatting. A lot of lines in the play are things I heard people there say.

“I have an incredible memory for conversations and a great love for all those people. There’s a particular music to the play. It has a lot to do with storytelling and people in Texas.”

A lot of what “happens” in the play happens through talk, and Heifner himself clearly enjoys the art of conversation as much as his characters do. A one-hour interview easily drifted into two.

In the course of talking, Heifner, 45, seemed to discover and take pleasure in discovering he had something in common with the character of Mildred’s brother, Lothar, who spends most of the play trying out different professions, hoping to find himself.

When Heifner graduated from SMU, he knew he wanted to pursue a life in the theater.

Precisely what he wanted to do eluded him for years. The one thing that “never entered my head,” he said, was writing.

He moved to New York City 19 years ago and looked for work--any kind of work--on Broadway. He designed costumes--only to quit without picking up a paycheck when the dresses he made for one production fell apart at the seams on opening night. He acted, picking up an Equity card for such roles as carrying a flag in “Othello.”

Finally, in 1975, in free moments between zipping up the likes of Kevin Kline and Patti Lupone in his job at the Juilliard costume department, he drew upon the memories of his father’s funeral to write a dark comedy called “Casserole,” about a family so caught up with the food brought by sympathetic callers that they forget to bury Daddy’s body.

The play was a hit at Playwrights Horizons. Within months, he followed up with “Vanities,” the long-running Off-Broadway show that brought fame and fortune to Heifner at age 29. It starred his SMU classmate Kathy Bates, last year’s winner of the Oscar for best actress for her role in “Misery.”

None of his plays since then--and there have been several--have matched that early success, a phenomenon that undeniably helped Heifner but also applied incredible pressure.

“Suddenly, we were all over the world,” he recalled. “It was fun, but hard work and overwhelming. It was a blessing and a curse. It gave me a career, but it made me think that everything you wrote would be successful that fast.”

He remembers coming out to California for a production of “Vanities” at the Mark Taper Forum. The show starred Lucie Arnaz, Stockard Channing and Sandy Duncan and was a huge hit that immediately put him in demand. He was soon offered the choice of several opportunities, including a role developing a new TV series that came to be known as “Dallas,” as well as the chance to work on the screenplay of the hit movie “Grease” and a film based on the best-selling book, “What Really Happened to the Class of ’65.”

He turned down “Dallas” and “Grease” and chose to write “What Really Happened to the Class of ’65.” But nothing came of that, and then he escaped the deal makers--first by running off to Europe, then back to New York.

But, over the years, New York and Broadway, in particular, seemed less and less hospitable. Part of it may have been his work, but part, too, he blamed on the rising costs of productions. The original production of “Vanities” cost $500, he said. As new productions began to require $1 million to get off the ground, it grew harder to find producers willing to take chances.

Until now, “Bargains”--which he wrote five years ago--has brought nothing but frustrations. Although the play was optioned by both Broadway and television producers, neither production ever happened. Heifner actually wrote the first version of this show in 1987, when SMU commissioned him and fellow graduates Beth Henley--who won a Pulitzer Prize for her play, “Crimes of the Heart”--and James McLure to write one-act plays for the college’s 50th anniversary. His contribution was what later became the first act of “Bargains.”

After the SMU production, he finished the play, which received its first reading in New York in 1988. It was immediately optioned, but, when the options expired, a friend of his, actress and Texas native Margo Martindale, who had worked at the Old Globe, suggested he send the play to O’Brien.

O’Brien read it and put it on the Play Discovery Program series of readings and then on the current season’s lineup.

Over the years, Heifner, who for the past two year has lived in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles, made some updates in the script. The two children of the yuppie department store manager, who were originally named Blake and Krystal, after the “Dynasty” characters, are now Diana and Fergie.

Heifner also has two more plays in the works, “Heartbreak” and “Sing Baby Sing,” a four-person musical about a group from the 1940s, starring Tom Hulce. He will try out both shows at the Gathering of Big Fork in Big Fork, Mont., later this year, where Old Globe associate artist Stephen Metcalfe will go to work on his musical, “White Linen.”

And Heifner has just finished a script for the CBS series, “Designing Women.”

As for “Bargains,” he’s pretty happy about the way it turned out--at least as happy as he can be a week before opening night when all his self-doubts rise to the surface.

“Right now, we are in a horrible place,” he said. “This is the hardest time, when I go, ‘Am I going to enlighten an audience or bore them to death? Do I have something to say, or is it all going to sound stupid?’ At times, you’re wonderfully surprised, and at times, you’re appalled.”

But, after expressing self-doubt, the confidence quickly bubbles back to the surface.

“What kept me going through those years of theatrical failures and hearing ‘It’s not as good as “Vanities,” ’ was that I’ve never been interested in topping myself,” he said. “Each play has been a different challenge for me. And I have to assume everything I do is better than the thing before. I could never write ‘Vanities’ at this point in my life.” Kathy (in ‘Vanities’) asking what to do with her life was Jack at 29 wondering what to he should do with his life. ‘Vanities’ answered the question. I became a playwright.”

And one aspect of the show he loves without any reservations is Ralph Funicello’s set. It sends his memories flooding back.

“Ralph Funicello went to Texas to look at department stores. This is identical to the store my mother worked in,” Heifner said, shaking his head. “The latticework, the linoleum floor, the pillars . . .”

He smiled. “Did you take a look at it? It’s wonderful!”