Brian Dennehy

Americans get used—American actors—get used to saying, you know, “I wouldn’t say this.” Of course the response of some famous director is, “What do you mean you wouldn’t say this?” “Well, I just wouldn’t say this.” “I don’t care whether you would say it—the character would say it. It’s written down. That’s how we know he would say it. He wrote those goddamn words. You don’t have to say it, you don’t have to work it at all.” Which is the proper response to actors who say, “I wouldn’t say that.” “I don’t care whether you would say that or not.” So the thing is when you take on O’Neill, or Chekov, or Ibsen, or Strindberg, you find a way to do it.

Moderator: Do you have a favorite O’Neill play? Or a favorite role?

Dennehy: Well, the funny thing is—it’s funny, I had this conversation one night with Jason Robards, who I was privileged to know, and we were talking about it. He came to see me about something, I can’t remember what, but it was O’Neill—and we went out afterwards, he wasn’t drinking at that point, but I was, and we’d spent quite a few bibulous evenings in years past, and we were talking about it, and he said that his favorite O’Neill play was Touch of the Poet because he had done it twice and failed twice. I did it once and failed once, and that makes it automatically your favorite play. Now people liked the production that we did in Chicago, but it was, it’s an impossible play, a very very very difficult play. But it’s essential O’Neill, because of course, Melody [Cornelius “Con” Melody, the Irish-born protagonist of A Touch of the Poet] has created this illusion about himself which he clings to, and as I said before about O’Neill saying, what Slade says in Iceman Cometh, “I’m cursed with the necessity of seeing both sides.” What happens in Touch of the Poet is that Con Melody, who’s beaten up, and his pride is stripped away from him, finally becomes the person that his daughter has been saying throughout the whole play: “You are this other person. You are this trashy, Irish bum. A drunk, and a faker, and a poser.”