INTERVIEW: Kate MacCluggage takes a ‘Left on Tenth’ and lands on Broadway
Photo: Left on Tenth features, from left, Julianna Margulies and Kate MacCluggage. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by Rubenstein with permission.
The new Delia Ephron-penned play Left on Tenth is now enjoying Broadway run at the James Earl Jones Theatre. The show is a real-life tale of Ephron’s challenges and opportunities in recent years, including the loss of her husband and sister, a cancer diagnosis, and finding love later in life. The 100-minute work, directed by Susan Stroman, stars Julianna Margulies, Peter Gallagher, Peter Francis James and Kate MacCluggage. Performances continue through Feb. 2.
MacCluggage and James play a host of characters throughout the evening. They enter and exit the stage, donning different costumes, different wigs and different personas, helping to populate the theater with friends and acquaintances of the two main characters. At times, the proceedings are heartfelt and heartbreaking, and other times the narrative turns hilarious and farcical. That’s the joy of Left on Tenth; the play tracks how a life is filled with ups and downs, advances and setbacks.
MacCluggage, who appeared in Broadway’s The Farnsworth Invention, came to the production because she had a connection with the show’s casting director, Tara Rubin, CSA. The actor actually works as an audition reader when not appearing on stage, and she was brought in for an audition back in April. There, she met Stroman, a Tony-winning director, and Ephron, who wrote acclaimed screenplays with her sister Nora Ephron, and the ball kept rolling.
“And then we had a two-week process of workshopping the piece, of putting it up on its feet and talking it through, and then I got an offer,” MacCluggage said in a recent phone interview. “When it was going to Broadway, they said they would like me to come with it, which was even more wonderful.”
She remembers that during the audition process she was tasked with bringing two characters to life: one of Ephron’s girlfriends and a Verizon phone representative. MacCluggage nailed both roles, and she soon found herself in her second Broadway show.
“It’s a total, total dream,” MacCluggage said. “What I think is interesting about this piece in general is that it’s such a play. It’s so theatrical. Obviously because it’s an Ephron sister, there’s a screenplay-style quality to the writing, but the production itself is so theater. There’s something really theatrical about the set that we’re working on.”
She also appreciates how each evening the audience realizes that her and James are playing a ton of characters on stage.
“It’s like an inside joke as we keep coming back really quickly in these magical, seemingly impossible changes from one character to the next,” she said. “That makes it a real delight. And then on top of that, I’ve done shows before where I play a lot of different characters, but they’re usually big, broad farces. Like, I did 39 Steps for a while off-Broadway for about a year, and that’s a big, broad comedy. You get to make big, broad choices, and there are a couple characters I can do that with here. But for the most part, they have to feel like real people. They have to feel like people that Delia really loves and who really love her. I play most of her best girlfriends, and so that’s a real challenge to have 30 seconds to go off stage, change a wig, change a costume with an incredible team backstage who make it possible, and then come on and immediately be dropped in is as an actor. That’s a really wonderful challenge and a lot of fun. There are not a lot of shows where you get to do that.”
The backstage traffic of these costume changes is now down to an exact science. MacCluggage likes to describe the changing process to a Nascar pitstop. She walks off stage and is assisted with taking one costume off at lightning speed, all while a second costume is being put on almost at the same time.
“The wig team is changing my wig,” she said. “It’s kind of amazing when we first got into tech rehearsals. We were all a little like, I hope we can figure this out, and by golly we have. It’s kind of incredible now that it’s happening still consistently.”
To prepare for her many roles, MacCluggage read Ephron’s book, which the show is based on. In fact, she listened to the audiobook version, which helped because Ephron actually reads the memoir herself.
“That was really helpful to hear the way she talked about the people she loved in her life, helped me sort of clue into who they were to her, and that helped me sort of get more specific about the characters themselves,” the actor said. “I think what’s really special is that there are so many different ways to hook into the story. … When I’ve had friends come, they each have something different that they connect to and connect to really strongly. Sometimes it’s a second chance. I’ve had a number of widowed friends who have come to see it, and they have either experienced that, of having a second chance at love, or they’re hoping to. That is sort of beautiful.”
MacCluggage added: “There is obviously the illness factor. Unfortunately how many of us have had some kind of connection, either a diagnosis ourselves or cancer somewhere in our family. It’s so ubiquitous, so I feel like a lot of people connect to that. I had one friend actually, and I love this is what she heard in it. She didn’t grow up with a sister, and she has two little girls now. And she’s loving watching their sister relationship develop, and afterward, we were having a drink, and she said, ‘You know, I just really was moved by hearing the Delia character — Julianna Margulies playing Delia — talk about her relationship to Nora, her sister who had passed.’ She was thinking about her own girls and how they’re going to grow up with each other, and how meaningful that relationship can be, too.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Left on Tenth, featuring Kate MacCluggage, continues through Feb. 2 at the James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.