A talent as embracing as her heart

Amid the understandable torrent of praise for her devotion, let us now praise Dana Reeve for her talent.

Start with the singing. I first encountered Dana in 1987 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where she was a member of the Cabaret, which put on musical revues. Then in her mid-20s, she gave a rendition of Bob Merrill and Jule Styne’s “The Music That Makes Me Dance” that brought down the house (and won the heart of Christopher Reeve, a WTF regular). Just to type her name is to evoke other great Cabaret moments since then: “I’ve Got a Name,” “The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” or her slam-bang duet with Reeve on Cole Porter’s “It’s De-Lovely.”

Then there was the acting. As Sophia in my alfresco adaptation of “Tom Jones,” playing opposite Tony Goldwyn and George Wendt, she overcame 95-degree heat, mosquitoes the size of blimps and full 18th century garb with humor and unflagging ebullience. There was her country maid in “Wild Oats,” thrilled to have a placid Quaker existence upset by traveling thespians, and the anguished wife in Joanne Woodward’s production of “The Big Knife,” in which she indelibly played a woman exhorting her movie-star husband to reclaim his ideals.

Or the time I asked her to play all the female roles in a night of Hemingway’s life and works at Manhattan Theatre Club. In his great short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” a man and a woman are at a tiny Spanish train station; she’s on her way to have an abortion that he wants her to go through and she doesn’t, and he keeps chattering inanely. Finally, she asks if he’ll do her a favor; he replies that he’ll do anything for her. And she explodes: “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” It’s like a bomb going off on the page ... and I can still hear Dana’s voice on the stage.

In her last performance at Williamstown -- a main-stage incarnation of the old Cabaret, the forum via which she and Chris had met 16 years before -- she sang “Some Enchanted Evening.” Not the dramatic, no-holds-barred Ezio Pinza treatment, but a harsh, rueful meditation on love and loss that gripped the crowd, a striking example of how to invest familiar material with a fresh new take.

It’s somehow appropriate that this was one of her final appearances onstage, because the last year and a half of her life was packed with more sadness than any human should be asked to bear: Chris’ death, her mother’s passing, her own diagnosis. But, true to form, she soldiered on. At a WTF benefit saluting Blythe Danner in New York, Dana -- who had taken Chris’ place on the theater’s board -- showed up looking like a million bucks. The afterglow from that appearance made the news earlier this week all the more painful.

At the Juilliard remembrance for Chris in fall 2004, the place was packed with theater pals, rows of wheelchaired quadriplegics whose lives his foundation and energy had touched, the famous and accomplished -- Meryl Streep, Robin Williams, Glenn Close, Sen. Tom Harkin. We’ve all been to memorials that went too far or too long, but trust Dana (with help from Matthew and Alexandra, Chris’ older children) to know how to put on a show.

She spoke with steely affection that never spilled over into the maudlin, and aside from hers, the most moving remarks came from young Will Reeve -- 12 years old, talking with poise and humor about the dad who came to his school hockey games and cheered him on -- and two of Chris’ nurses, hardly stars or public performers, trained not to display emotion, whose clear affection for an extraordinary patient made their halting words all the more powerful.

Hemingway once defined courage as “grace under pressure.” It was true of Christopher Reeve, and it was equally true of Dana. She leaves us fond memories of her talent, a terrific son, the admiration of all those who knew her ... and of so many more who didn’t.

A few years ago, she was putting together a book on Chris and called to verify a phrase I’d quoted to her from English author Flora Thompson’s “Lark Rise” trilogy. Ironically, the line she wanted to use for Chris applies uncannily to Dana herself: “You are going to be loved by people you’ve never seen and never will see.”

Steve Lawson is a playwright and the executive director of the Williamstown Film Festival.