"A Streetcar Named Desire" comes with a hell of a lot of baggage, asserts Chris Bauer, who is making his Broadway debut playing Mitch in the current revival of Tennessee Williams' iconic work.
"There are so many expectations on all sides in connection with this sublime material," notes the amiable but intense Bauer, a 38-year-old Los Angeles native, speaking with me on the phone. "Everyone has an opinion on how it should be done. I've had people come up to me in restaurants to tell me that they played Mitch in a school production in 1960 and that there are certain points I should consider. I've had directors stop me on the street and say, 'You do know that Mitch hates his mother.' I'm not at all sure of that, but I don't argue."
Bauer is not complaining. He loves every minute of it, contention and all. Nevertheless, the play's familiarity -- and the audience's built-in ideas about the piece and its characters -- is daunting.
Bauer, whose Mitch is every bit the sensitive oaf, admits that he faces a "double whammy" going on stage each night with the image of other actors who've tackled the character on his mind -- most notably Karl Malden, but also co-star John C. Reilly, who played him in a Steppenwolf Theatre Company production. "I wish I could block all that out," he comments, "but I can't."
That said, Bauer hopes his Mitch is layered, embodying levels of complication, a man in the throes of a great personal crisis.
"Mitch isn't just a mama's boy," he underscores. "He's Stanley's peer, travels with these guys, although he's also the butt of their jokes. He's rough around the edges but journeys to a more refined place. At the beginning, he wants to belong to the kind of world Blanche belongs to, but until she appears it's a latent desire. He's lonely and petrified that when he loses his mother, he will be alone.
"But in the end, he rejects Blanche. It's a knee-jerk reaction that he regrets a split second after he makes it," Bauer continues. "But Stanley's voice is the loudest in his head at that moment. When she kisses him, it's what he's been waiting for. But then she pushes him away, and that's enraging. His sexual and emotional frustration bubbles up. She says, 'Marry me,' and he says, 'You're not clean enough to bring home to my mother.' He's stuck in two worlds, he's never on sure footing, and he's easily confused. His tragedy is that he has longing for something better, but no bridge to get there."
Bauer, who is perhaps best known for his five-year stint playing Fred, the stay-at-home blue-collar husband on the TV drama "Third Watch," says that with any role he undertakes, his goal is to "subvert audience expectation. I get a thrill from that purely creative energy. It's contagious."
His greatest acting influences are Marlon Brando and Peter Sellers: "What they have in common is a sense of humor used in a violent way. They are two subversive artists."
Besides "Third Watch," Bauer has also appeared regularly on such TV programs as HBO's "The Wire" and ESPN's "Tilt." He had a leading role in the HBO movie "61*," directed by Billy Crystal, in addition to featured roles in an array of theatrical films. He has performed at many regional theatres, including the Goodman, Steppenwolf, and Yale Repertory. And he is a member of the Atlantic Theater Company, performing most recently in its productions of "The Night Heron," "The Hothouse," and "Mojo."
A Propitious Encounter
The son of an accountant, Bauer never thought about an acting career until he started appearing in high school plays. Still, he attended the University of San Diego for a couple of years before moving to Hollywood, determined to give acting a real shot. He recalls the audition -- for a summer acting class in Great Britain -- that changed his life:
"David Chambers, an acting teacher at Yale School of Drama, happened to be there, saw my audition, and invited me to come to Yale. I said, 'But I didn't even finish college.' He said that was okay and that if I didn't care about getting an M.F.A. degree -- in which case I'd have to finish my undergraduate degree first -- I would earn a certificate after three years."
Bauer concedes having some hesitation, not least because of his age: "I was entering the program at 22, while most of my classmates were closer to 32."
Nonetheless, Bauer enrolled at the Yale School of Drama, an event made all the more stunning because he gained admittance solely on the basis of Chambers' recommendation. He never auditioned. Three years later Bauer emerged, certificate in hand and deeply scarred.
"It was a good experience in that I finished the program and while I was there I got to appear in 32 plays," he says. "But they were predisposed to be critical of everything you did. With so many of these schools -- Yale, Juilliard, NYU -- they believe there is a 'right' way and a 'wrong' way to act. The students become so concerned with doing it 'right,' the acting becomes flattened and lifeless. The grace, mystery, and sense of self are totally absent. Yale screwed up my head so much that by the time I was through, I experienced no joy in acting."
His experience in New York following graduation was equally mirthless. And the fact that he had no marketable skills with which to make a living didn't help:
"I worked the telephones at an oil company for a while, where I was given a list of names and told that if any of these people called, I was to refer to them as 'Your Eminence.' My other job at that time was passing out flyers for a bar that was opening near Lincoln Center. And I was constantly running into my acting teachers from Yale!"
Humiliated, Bauer decided to make a total break from the past, "move to another city, start from scratch, and build from there." He chose Chicago, knowing it was a theatre town far removed from the worlds of New York and New Haven. In Chicago he began working with Steppenwolf.
"That theatre is devoted to the actor, the actor's vision -- and everyone else is subservient," he comments. "And they encourage a level of reality in acting that I just love. It was a joyous experience."
The Broadway System
Within short order, Bauer was appearing in films and television programs, especially enjoying "The Wire," a police drama that follows one case for an entire season.
"'Wire' is the best television writing out there," he says. "It has interesting social and political themes. For one season I played the criminal, a union officer who gets involved with the Mob in order to bring more money into the union in order to help the families of the union members. It was not simple. I could have done that role forever. It was my Count of Monte Cristo." Bauer is referring to the role played by Eugene O'Neill's father for much of his career.
At the moment, however, Bauer's thoughts are on Mitch: "The hardest scene for me continues to be when Mitch talks about his mother. Suddenly he is overcome with emotion and just as suddenly he has to cover it up. It's so rapid, like a little ballet."
But undoubtedly, Bauer understands Mitch: "When he says to Blanche, 'You need somebody and I need somebody, too. Could it be you and me, Blanche?,' it's his version of a marriage proposal. It's indicative of his dilemma that he can't say it outright. But at the same time, what he's saying is exactly what he means. It's a perfect contradiction."
Despite the subtleties of his interpretation, Bauer acknowledges that performing on Broadway is far removed from acting in regional or Off-Broadway productions, which he likens to acting on the small screen.
"Broadway informs our concept of acting, yet its scale is so different from film or Off-Broadway," he observes. "On Broadway, you have to find a way to amplify everything you're doing without losing the reality, without wrecking it."
He adds that the "system" of a Broadway theatre continues to be alien, from the dressers to the dressing rooms on different floors -- "Mine is on the fifth floor" -- to the crowds waiting outside each night for autographs, as well as the opportunity to offer their spins on the production.
"Of course, it's fun after you've given a good show," he notes. "It's not that much fun if you don't think you've done well."
Bauer knows all too well that most actors would give their eyeteeth for such problems.