“I feel like getting attention is like getting love,” actress Linda Lavin told me in a whisper in 2012, recalling performing for her family as a child. young one of our interviews when I was a Times theater reporter. He was brilliant on Broadway and off then, in some of my favorite plays – Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities,” Nicky Silver’s “The Lyons” and Donald Margulies’s “The Gathering.”
Lavin died on Monday and I’ve been thinking about him all week – but really, thinking about the message about listening/getting love. I grew up in the 1970s watching her on the CBS sitcom “Alice,” playing a mother who is a waitress at Mel’s Diner. His demeanor is good and confident, but I remember that he was not as colorful or funny as the other workers in the restaurant, like Flo and Vera, and maybe not the love His humor comes more from playing dry, straight, with good timing and tone – even the “uh-huh” aimed at his son, Tommy, or his boss, Mel, can laughing. I like “Alice,” but I don’t necessarily love Alice.
During that 2012 interview, Lavin told me he knew he wasn’t popular. He has a ghost. He has high expectations for other people and for himself – those expectations seem as if they come with a lot of pressure, including the stress he puts on himself. He talked about his collision with some of his colleagues at the game”Another Desert City” – How he wants to show his character, a recovering alcoholicas sober by the end of the play. Some colleagues have different views of his choice, but he is firm, drawing on his own sincerity as the North Star for character even as the game is told.
Lavin eventually left “Another Desert City” before it moved to Broadway; Another favorite actress of mine, Judith Light, took on the role and later won a Tony Award for her performance. Lavin starred in “The Lyons” on Broadway that season, and received a Tony nomination himself. This show had a bigger role and he was perfect in it – another great performance of great timing, voice and emotion.
Sometimes I find myself singing the first two lines of the theme of “Alice”, which he sang in the play: “I was sad. I was ashamed. ” I said about these lines, as a lonely child who also makes his family hope to get attention. And I relate to his words about listening and loving, too.
Lavin, at last, received attention and love for the body’s excellent work. He is also a difficult person with difficult needs, but aren’t we all?