The O'Neill Center's Meryl Streep Party

Last night put me in mind of the old baseball line, "Tinker to Evers to Chance," the famous double play combination of the Chicago Cubs.  No baseball was played, but it was "Kushner to Shanley to Letts."  Each was introduced to talk about working with Meryl Streep in the film adaptations of Angels in America, Doubt, and August: Osage County.  For those who have never encountered Kushner, Shanley and Letts, they are three distinct and mordantly funny speakers.  When Joe Grifasi got up to introduce Meryl Streep and give her the Eugene O'Neill Center's Monte Cristo Award, he made rueful comment about following those three.  (He did just fine.)  And then Streep got up, thanked the writers, and glanced heavenward to send a cosmic shout-out to Wendy Wasserstein, who was a friend from Yale and in whose name she has given money to make certain that the O'Neill Center maintains a policy of completely open submissions.  Bobby and Kristin Anderson Lopez (the husband and wife team most recently known for composing the songs for Frozen) sang a tribute song they had written that made use of many rhyming possibilities of honoree's last name.  I believe the song ended with a salute to "Meryl Fucking Streep," which MFS seemed to enjoy mightily.

The O'Neill celebrates its 50th birthday this year and this event is being marked by an exhibit at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library (under the supervision of designer Skip Mercier) and the publication of a book called The O'Neill (clever title, yes?) that I have spent the past couple of years writing.  A number of the people mentioned in the book were at the Monte Cristo Award party at the Edison Hotel last night, and it was a pleasure to connect or re-connect with them.

The book is officially being published in a few weeks, but I was sent an advance copy and lugged it with me in hopes of getting it signed by George C. White (the founder of the O'Neill) and his wife and collaborator, Betsy.  They had written me a letter in response to reading the book that was enormously gratifying.  Essentially they had said I had gotten it right.  And it turns out that I had dug up things that neither had known about.

Though I never got to interview Meryl Streep for the book, she had sent a substantial and quirkily-detailed letter of her memories which she permitted to be used as a foreword.  (I had actually seen her in her first O'Neill outing, playing a princess in Jonathan Levy's children's play, Marco Polo, in which she was supported by Grifasi and Christopher Lloyd.)  Betsy was kind enough to guide me over to "MFS", who signed her foreword for me and then began looking through the book, commenting on pictures of friends in their younger days and on the too many that are no longer with us.

As it happens, a number of the people whom I mention in the book have left us within recent months.  Phyllis Frelich, the leading lady of the National Theatre of the Deaf, died recently, as did Philip Hayes Dean (who wrote a play about Paul Robeson that Lloyd Richards directed) and Martin Gottfried, who figures prominently in an anecdote Ron Cowen tells about the late critic advising him to get out of playwriting (and about how some other critics surrounded Gottfried and pummeled him for being a jerk).

The loss of these people reminds me of the importance of getting our history while we can.  I can't pretend that the book is cheap, but it's filled with evocative pictures and some stories I think you haven't heard.