More about Murphy

But first an Old Hickory update: I ran lines with Bette out in the sun on a beautiful Saturday morning yesterday. I gave her a highlighter and asked her to mark words or sections that I messed up, but not to stop me (I really need the momentum of beginning to end right now). When all was said and done there were a lot of little marks, words that I changed slightly, but not major screw ups. In short, nothing that would impact someone's understanding of the material. But most of them are better as written, and I need to spend some time over the next few days, polishing that up. Bette just loves this piece. She is the biggest supporter I have. She always has been right from the get go, but when something I write really turns her on, she is priceless; and Old Hickory really means a lot to her. She says it's the best thing I've done since Thirty Odd Years, and I think she's right.

Now to Murphy. He was another of those father figures in theater (Ed Morehouse is another) who you relate to just in a very deep way. Murphy was quite the character, he knew more about more things than anyone I have ever known. He had directed for the Charleston Light Opera Guild for years, and then, around 1980 or so, decided to leave them for the Kanawha Players, where I was entrenched. I did several shows with him, not always, or often the lead, but it was always a learning experience. I think he directed Auntie Mame, he directed Private Wars (aside from the Albee stuff the best perf. I did in Charleston probably) and he directed Anne of the Thousand Days. One night, after a performance of Anne (I played one of Anne's lovers early in the piece) a fellow in the audience from England said that my accent was wrong for someone in the royal house . . . I mentioned that to Murphy who, without missing a step, pointed out that my character had been boosted to aristocracy by Wolsey, having come from humbler circumstances in North Umberland . . . he knew what he was doing alright.

One time I was going to go fishing with a friend and I called the dept. of natural resources to get some tips and the voice on the phone was giving me all sorts of info about depth of the fish and all sorts of minutia . . . and then I realized it was Murphy! He could talk fishing/opera/accents of royalty/you name it . . . amazing man. the thing he most liked to talk about was his daughter Cathleen, who I never met.

So this vibrant, brilliant man went to a doctor for a checkup in January. They found a spot on his lung . . . he started chemotherapy and he was dead in August. Scary it was so quick. He never let it get him down though. I was honored to be in the last show he directed, Death of a Salesman. I played Howard Wagner. Murphy was especially loving and supportive during Salesman. As always, after opening night a few of us would go outside during the cast party and drink a bottle of Bushmills, nice tradition! He came and hung out on my front porch a few times with other friends from the theater crowd. We'd drink beer and smoke weed and just be together. No phony bullshit. I remember him saying how someone was drunk and approached him in a bar and said: Murphy, I hear you're dying. Murphy's response: 'Well I'm not dead yet!' He never lost that feistiness.

I went to see him in the hospital, in July. It was the last time I was to see him alive, but I didn't know that, of course. Anyway, I said to him: Murph, I'm thinking about moving to New York. To act. His response: Goddamnit, do it! You can always move back here if it doesn't work out. I was up there for a while, got tired of all the fags.

Of course. Direct. Blunt. To the point. 'Goddamnit, do it'. That was a moment that is seared into my being. Murph was one of three people that I knew that died that year; but he was the closest to me of the three in a lot of ways. All those deaths woke me up to the reality of what is gained and lost in thinking about doing something instead of doing it; and Murph's words were my rallying cry. It was just a few weeks later that he died. I told him about my plans to move to NYC before I told my parents. I was convinced of what I wanted to do, but thought people would think me crazy; but more often than not that fear was unfounded. People got behind me in so many ways, and my parents chief among them. their response when I told them? 'We want you to be happy'. It must have really hurt them to lose me, but they weren't about to try to talk me out of it.

I think Murphy's reaction gave me the backbone to tell my parents, and then to move forward with my relocation. I think of that moment often. There is a long chain of people and events that have lead me to wherever it is I am today . . . but I really can't thank Tom Murphy enough for those three words. Words to live by: Goddamnit. Do it!

I think I'll say them to myself right before I go on stage Thursday night.