Conversation with F. Murray Abraham

I am sitting here on the island of San Jorge Oh in but probably is the most beautiful place in the world in Venice just across from the doges palace and I'm sitting here with Mari Abraham one of the great actress of our time who is among many other things the most stupendous that I have ever seen I went once was awestruck went a second time which is very unusual for me because I had to get to New York to see it but I wanted to watch twice at least and I would love to have seen it ten times all the things that you you managed to get from this part it's a great honor and pleasure to be with you Mary oh my goodness I don't know what to say thank you you can start actually by telling me if you would was this the first time you had played in the production that I saw at the the production was in New York at the theatre for a new audience I believe that was the first time I did the part but the best thing about that experience was that there was some time off between when I did it and then I came back to it some months later and it was much richer and it was the real value of repertory work I discovered but there's something about that role that became deeply personal for me my rules are always personal and I have a very strong connection but this one was particular because really lives he's amusing he's alive that's the mystery of the part really for me Marie I've read the play innumerable times I've seen it in real times it is the case that the character seems to come up and off the page into life not just in the way that characters do when they're on stage but in a very eerie and special way like he did something Shakespeare to make the character live but how because there's nothing it's very difficult to point you could point to certain set speeches hath not a Jew eyes but that's not what is actually necessarily making the character fully live where is it how do you do it I don't know about how the magic works but I know it exists and every time I do it even now when I'm working on it because I'm gonna present it tomorrow I it all came back instantly and it came back even more vividly than the time before that is very rare it's a tribute of course to you know Shakespearean naturally is genius but how and why it affects me so deeply but that's to a bottom he struck me too and I have to tell you Barabbas was dear to me as well you played in repertory Barabbas from Marlo's Jew of Malta and yes I played them both in the same day unbelievable and it was it was thrilling because of the it was almost as though I was taking revenge for the way was treated when I did borrow bus it was just like a pleasure it was like getting all that out getting all that crap out lid of the aggression is completely lifted in Marlow and it's just sheer rage sheer violence and the biggest surprise I think was the for the audience was that they couldn't take their eyes off of Barabbas even though he says what he says and does what he does they really kind of liked him because of his enormous energy and his pleasure it's a very sexy part by the way that it's interesting everyone else in his world is slightly compromised or weakened or I think when you said his world you put your finger on it he's definitely his world he is the primal he is the force in the play everyone else that's not true of Merchant of Venice every I mean for one thing the Merchant of Venice is not it's Antonio and then there's the world of Belmont and Portia so that it's he though has dominated our imagination of the play now for a better part of 400 years now he isn't the single dominant figure in a way that Barabbas is for Marlowe's play it's hard to understand why or how this character of this who is only in really three major scenes dominates the play even after he's gone the fourth act he's present in the fifth act that seems to me and how he continues to live even now he's become part of the language in these film noir movies the gangsters talk about seeing a about getting some ordinary astonishing he absolutely is alive and how for example when I first read it I came across the line I would not have traded it for a wilderness of monkeys I just knew that was the part I wanted to play more than any other part and I'd love Macbeth I loved my Lear yes I loved earlier as well but this one is different and I can't explain it all I can tell you is if I can do it again I will which is very rare I don't repeat roles but this one I want to that's fascinating I mean it must also feel it must mean that you feel that you haven't entirely exhausted every one of the nuances though you certainly have squeezed as much out as I've ever seen from what is as you say a remarkably limited number of lines this is not Iago or characters who actually speak a great deal in the play he speaks some but and I think people are always surprised about that when they come away and they realize how little they saw of him and how powerful he still is how present he is in their lives that's true people I think come to Venice all the time and ask where they can find Shylock's house and they're disappointed to discover well the most famous Jew event has never existed and that also speaks to the reason people still think of Sherlock but not a Barnabas the difference is Barabbas was thrilling to play and a lot of fun to watch he's a cartoon Sherlock is real interest he's real as Hamlet is real but in a different way there's something personal about for the audience whether you love him or not and some of those problems that people have with their line I am content I feel that in the original production he said it jubilantly joyously because that's what they wanted to see hi now I am a Christian ain't it grand very different now and I think that's also that funny line of Porsha's in this in the trial scene when she said which is the merchant and which is the Jew I think it was a big howler of a laugh because he had that great long nose in an orange wig I mean they had to scream with laughter maybe maybe on both towns Murray I mean it's certainly possible but I would have said that the joy with which you say he might have said I'm contempt to please the Elizabethan audience is tempered by the fact that he says I don't feel good and I need to go home and eat so Shakespeare had it both ways yeah exactly and I mean it's a very I mean part must be part of the pleasure of for a great actor playing the part the part is so multifaceted and so on you can't exhaust its pleasures the main reason I would like to do this part one more time is to solve that last line I am content I never got it I still don't understand it but I'd like to try one more time yes I don't know what it what it could mean myself and accept that it for me it's a line that is actually directed in a strange way to the to the spectators of the audience what do you think he feels not this is what he feels but what do you what did what what do you think it must feel to say I'm content at that moment and that's now you see you see that's why I should do it again I'd do it that way I'll stop and I'll walk right down to the footlights and say yeah not a great idea thanks you're welcome with certain characters it seemed to me there was almost automatic writing I think Shakespeare started a character and the character took over and I believe that was one of those characters where some voice came welling up out of him and he just transcribed as it were exactly and it ran away and there's an improvisational nature to some of his his characters and this is one of them it happened in a rehearsal that the person who was playing Antonio when he's tied down and his breasts are exposed and I'm about to plunge my knife into his chest before the show he said Marie I have an idea and I said don't tell me and he said no no I think I I think I should no surprise me and at that moment onstage when I started to do it he's back full in my face it was a terrific moment and I was really shocked you're holding a knife at that and I was really you know playing furiously and the first thing I thought was the shock and then I thought I really respect this guy and then I spat back in his face and I said ha ha ha and the audience was just gasping but that was improvisational - there's something there are certain roles that encourage you to do that to find the thing in the moment that's that's a gift part of the deliciousness of that story is of course you didn't know what was coming but then he didn't know it was coming either that's right you

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Id: vCv4qgdP18I

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 10 2019