By Simi Horwitz
Her scrunched-up nose and mouth aquiver, like an allergic chipmunk in the throes of seizure, actress Tovah Feldshuh is emitting the strangest noises this reporter has ever heard."Pfh, pfh, pfh, pfh, pfhhhh " She is, in fact, engaged in a yoga warm-up, "I'm getting in touch with my breath. It's the essence of acting." The leotard-clad Feldshuh stretches out on the floor of her spectacular Central Park West apartment--she shares it with her husband, attorney Andrew Levy, and her two kids--ready to begin her morning workout, private trainer at her side.
Throughout the interview--and there are endless interruptions, phone calls, messages, household crises--we are pitching questions to an exercising Feldshuh. Sometimes she's flat on her back, pelvis up, pelvis down; at other moments, she's upright, knees slightly bent, one leg gliding past the other. She's a cross-country skier, Nordic-Tracking through the room and out into the foyer, 10-pound weights in hand, elbows grinding back and forth.
We meet with the three-time Tony-nominated actress one day before the opening night of "Tallulah's Party" (Off-Broadway's Kaufman Theatre, March 19), and two weeks before its abrupt closing. There is still the possibility that the show will be reincarnated at the Carlyle Hotel on East 76th Street. Feldshuh calls the title role the culmination of her career."I sing, I dance, I improvise with the audience. Everything I've done has been preparation for this!
"I love Tallulah!" Feldshuh explains between upper torso twists and turns. "She was unbound. I take my law-abiding, 30-mile-an-hour, mother-of-the-year, bourgeois little life and throw it the f--k out the window and do what the f--k I want with that kind of language! I get to take cocaine, smoke, and drink Jack Daniels."
The 40-something New York native is super health-conscious, has recently lost 20 pounds, works out with her trainer three times a week, and lives on a special cabbage-soup diet. Indeed, at one point, a member of her household staff brings her a cup of the soggy cabbage. "Inez," she peers into the cup, not happy."I need more liquid!"
Set in 1957, "Tallulah's Party" recounts through song, dance, and monologue, Tallulah Bankhead's troubled-yet-determined journey from Bible Belt southern belle to theatrical icon. The largely one-woman vehicle co-stars three male singers who serve as backup. Tallulah is a fascinating challenge on several levels: There are the vocal and physical demands. "Da-a-a-ahling," Feldshuh intones, loping around her creme-colored art deco living room to demonstrate Tallulah's voice and gait. But more important, there's the legendary actress's complexity.
"Tallulah was a multifaceted human being, an upper-crust Epis-copalian, who was able to escape her fundamentalist town and 'make it to America' [a line in the play] to become a great actress. She faced humiliation and was able to press on. She had a contract with her public! She was driven to create her own life," Feldshuh continues. "She invented herself and that was her tragedy. Her invention distanced herself from her own neshuma--the light of the human soul." Feldshuh makes the point that many larger-than-life female stars have been the performance domain of male stars in drag. She insists she has no problem with men-in-drag doing female stars. Still, she believes that because "this piece is created by active heterosexual women" there is an added dimension. "We're not interested--Feldshuh bangs the table angrily--"in Tallulah's iconography. We're not interested [more table abuse] in making fun of her. We are interested in her dignity, her struggle, the way her persona--the one she created--put key in lock and led to her death. My demand as a woman is to make sure she gets her due!"
Feldshuh has played a range of roles--from a high-strung tenor's wife in "Lend Me a Tenor," to a feisty girl-plays-boy in "Yentl" and the class-switching Kate Hardcastle in "She Stoops to Conquer." And she boasts an array of alter egos in her one-woman show, "Tovah! Out of Her Mind!" Yet, she is almost always identified with middle-aged Jewish characters. The type-casting infuriates Feldshuh. "I resent it. I'm an actress of untold scope!"
Consider her response to David Merrick's offer that she understudy Bernadette Peters in "Mack and Mabel," 20-plus years ago when Feldshuh was just starting out: "I refused. He said, 'You're out of your mind. If you go on for Bernadette Peters, you'll break through.' I said, 'I'll break through if you give me a real role.' And he did. In a play called 'Dreyfuss in Rehearsal.' And when that closed, I got other roles." Feldshuh points out, " 'Mack and Mabel' went out on the road and closed in five weeks. So let's not get fancy!"
More recently, she turned down Emma Goldman in "Ragtime." Her explanation: "Emma Goldman is the fifth lead, sings one song, and I would have had to spend 11 months in Toronto. It's not 'Oh!' "--a sound of delight and joy. "It's 'O-o-oh.' " This 'oh' evokes pre-vomit disgust. "To appear on stage in a friggin' outfit looking like a fat prig and do it for 24 months! I'm a woman--" she stops to think, "--like yourself, of appetite and intelligence. [Thanks, Tov.] What the hell do I want to show up for two years to sing one song and look like that. Jesus. Lord. To quote Alfred Lunt, 'You can buy me, but you can't bore me.' "
Harvard or the Guthrie
Brought up in Scarsdale, the daughter of a lawyer who also owned horses, Feldshuh says frankly that her early goals were to be "excellent in whatever. I came from a serious family. We were not allowed to grow like weeds." Accepted at Smith, Vassar, and Sarah Lawrence, Feldshuh attended the last, where she majored in philosophy. In her spare time, she acted in school productions. By the time she graduated, she was on Harvard Law School's waiting list and had earned a full two-year scholarship to the Guthrie Theater: "Four were handed out that year." Following her tenure with this legendary repertory company, she was cast on Broadway in "Cyrano," starring Christopher Plummer, which in turn led to her signing with an agent.
In the two and half decades since--with three Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critics Circle Awards, an Obie, and a Theatre World Award--Feldshuh has worked steadily. And, "no," she says, her one-woman shows are not indicative of a lack of good parts: "I'm working now more than ever." She has a recurring role as the tough attorney Danielle Melnick in "Law & Order," and will be appearing on that critically acclaimed TV show again, April 22. And she has leading roles in two upcoming films: "The Corrupter" and "Blauseman"--the latter produced by Dustin Hoffman.
"You adapt or you die. I'm no genius, it's just that I have no problem playing a 55-year-old, a grandmother with a fat ass in a TV show or film [as opposed to an ongoing role in a play]. Anyway, we're not so important that anyone remembers." She extends that idea to negative reviews: "My mother always used to say, 'Remember they're reviews today. Tomorrow you wrap fish with them.' "
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At the moment, Feldshuh is hopeful that she will be able to recreate--"I don't impersonate"--Tallulah somewhere else. She is also sad. "My heart is heavy! I miss Tallulah deeply! I realize my doing Tallulah does not cure AIDS, solve the Middle Eastern crisis, or address where the President is putting his penis! "
Tallulah couldn't have said it better.