“I will confess that the role is completely kicking my ass,” says actor Ian Barford who stars as Wheeler in Tracy Letts’ Linda Vista, currently playing at the Mark Taper Forum. “It is nearly three hours. I never leave the stage. There’s a tremendous volume of language and a soul-crushing second act. Doing that eight times a week takes everything I got.”
We’re speaking by phone on an afternoon before Barford is about to launch the first of his eight performances for the week. Linda Vista tells the story of a man/child in his mid-50s whose marriage has fallen apart and his relationships with women are not going to win him any awards. In short, he’s a misanthrope. Perhaps the ultimate misanthrope.
Barford originated the role when the play first premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 2017. He’s happy to tackle the role again. A role that even his wife, director Anna D. Shapiro (who directed Letts’ August: Osage County on Broadway in which Barford appeared) said “is a version of a man [Letts] might have become if he’d made different choices in his life.” Barford says that could apply to him in some ways, too.
“I think we all have a little Wheeler in us. I think there’s an element of this play that is exorcising some demons from his own life. Many of us men have deep regrets about our behavior in the past regarding women. I had a ‘Wheeler phase’ when I was in my 30s. The Wheeler archetype is quite alive in the world. You’re consumed by your own pain and you become self-centered and righteous and you become ruled by your pain, your anger, sadness and loneliness. The guy is tremendously lonely. He doesn’t know how to help himself. Thankfully when I was in my 30s I understood that I was powerless to help myself with some of the problems I had. Thankfully I began to see a therapist and that was an important part of my development.”
Since doing Linda Vista, Barford is surprised by how some women perceive his character. “The first thing I want to say, which has been a real revelation for us and I wouldn’t say it’s the majority, but we’ve been surprised how many women have said they identify with Wheeler. That’s unexpected because he behaves in what we assume are traditional male ways. I think beyond that a lot of women will be well satisfied in the second act of the play where he gets put in his place in more ways than one. All of the women in the play are at least a step ahead, if not a couple steps ahead, in terms of their development and their self-awareness.”
In Linda Vista the audience gets to experience how Wheeler handles someone who genuinely loves him and another woman who offers everything you imagine a mid-50s guy would want: youth, attractiveness and great sex.
“I think Tracy does a masterful job with this role because he does not shy away from the reasons why the morally righteous in the theatre will be well-satisfied in seeing his shortcomings and his moral complications. But at the same time, he never quite abandons him. Tracy allows us little windows to see why he might feel that way. Which is so smart, but people love to hate him or hate to love him or a little of both.”
Which brings us to the inevitable question about how much of the rewriting of Linda Vista was a direct result of the #MeToo movement and whether Letts took that into consideration. “I think the answer is, yes,” says Barford. “I’d be hesitant to talk about that because I think Tracy would be better equipped to talk about the how and the why of it.”
He then goes on to discuss the end of the play, which for obvious reasons won’t be revealed here. The addition of new lines, says Barford, came with this production. “I feel he is dignifying the reality of what women have to deal with every single day from men. That’s new. That was not in the original version.”
As our conversation comes to a close, I ask Barford to see if something the writer H.P. Lovecraft said about misanthropes applies to his character. Lovecraft said, “Man is most contemptible when compared to his own retentions. It is better to laugh at a man from outside the universe than weep for him within.”
“Well that’s an interesting idea,” he says. “I think that is probably germane to this. I’d be hard-pressed to imagine anyone going to watch the play is going to think one thing about him. He is noble. He is pathetic. He is insightful. He is blind. He is appealing. He’s repulsive. He’s funny. He’s stupid. It’s so beautifully full and complicated in a very human way.”
At the end of each performance, is Wheeler the kind of role Barford can easily put behind him ?
“For better or worse I’m the kind of actor who brings himself to my roles. I’m not one of those who can just put a mask on and just walk offstage and leave it on stage. It’s wonderful to experience all that humor that Tracy has and even some of the hopeful and tender moments in the play, of which there are few. But that second act is a take down – big time. It’s brutal. And he fucking deserves it.”
Linda Vista continues at the Mark Taper Forum through February 17th.
Photos by Craig Schwartz/Courtesy of Center Theatre Group