Preparing for the play, HOME AGAIN

HOME AGAIN
A new play based on the life of Thomas Wolfe

I will be writing a daily blog about preparations for this the third play I have written with William Gregg, artistic director of the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre at Mars Hill, N.C. It is one of the great regional theaters in America and I consider myself very lucky to be involved with these incredibly fine actors and the director, Bill himself.

For starters, I’d like to do a rundown of how I see each of the main characters in the play:

THOMAS WOLFE was one great big 6’4” 245-pound bundle of contradictions. He was first and foremost passionately dedicated to his art, all else came second in his life. He never owned a home, never learned to drive a car. He was at times a brooding loner, at other times the most gregarious life of the party. His prose seemed to flow with effortless eloquence, however, he had a pronounced stutter when he was excited and trying to explain himself. Although a physical giant of a man, he remained boyish, the kind of man women want to mother and men want to protect.

ALINE BERNSTEIN was 20 years older than young Wolfe when they became passionately involved. It is a fact, he could never have written Look Homeward, Angel, without her financial and moral support. She was glamorous in contrast to Wolfe’s disheveled appearance, but not in the movie star sense. She was always neat a stylish down to the last button. She moved in the very highest artistic levels of New York, but there was nothing phony about her. In addition to being the most talented costume and set designed in New York for 3 decades, she was also a fabulous cook and the kind of woman who made here own clothes. She was every bit as passionate a romantic as Wolfe, but she had the practical down to earth side that he was missing. She never stopped loving him even though he broke off with her not long after Look Homeward, Angel came out. [He would keep coming back to her—for money and love—until his final illness…and she was one of the few he called to say he was dying.]

JULIA WOLFE was a stingy penny pincher, but she was never mean. She was very well educated for her time. Two of her brothers were among the wealthiest men in Asheville at that time and she herself had made a small fortune in real estate in Miami and Asheville. Her stinginess never extended to Tom, who would remain her baby boy until he died. He could do no wrong, even when he described her as the opposite to his father’s gregarious love of life and poetry. Wolfe could rave about the money-grubbers of Asheville [such as his mother] but the truth was her money sent him through UNC and Harvard and supported him until after Look Homeward, Angel came out. Hers was a textbook case of “smother love.” Her “baby” slept with her until he was a grown boy.


FRED WOLFE was the quintessential good old boy. Tall and somewhat awkward, he was always there to help. He never had an unkind word to say about anybody and just got up each day and did what he had to do. He sold ice cream for the Blue Bird ice cream company in South Carolina. Although he had a serious stutter, he was famous as the kind of salesman who could sell anything. People loved him.

FRANK WOLFE was a loveable rascal. He was a boozer and womanizer quite literally in his father’s footsteps. But [unless he wrote bad checks on your account] he didn’t hurt anybody with his behavior. Although he had a wife and children of his own, he would end up a sad wreck of a human being living in his mother’s boardinghouse because he had nowhere else to go. Wolfe hated him because Frank had taunted him for being a sissy when he was a child and he never forgave him. Frank resented his mother’s generosity toward young Tom. He was also bitter [and rightly so] about Look Homeward, Angel, where all his many faults were set forth for everybody to read about.

MABEL WOLFE was [as we southerners say] “good hearted.” She was the kind one would begin by saying, “bless her heart.” She had a pretentious streak, but she was genuine in her desire to better herself and move among the quality folks of Asheville. Appearances were important to her. She was also excitable in a way her Mama never was. Mabel was often out of control; Julia never was. But like the others, she was devoted to the family and rode the train across country to bring the dying Tom back to Baltimore. The day of the funeral, Mabel was hitting the sauce so heavily her Mama forbade her going to the funeral.

GEORGE MCCOY was the kind of small town newspaperman who always thought he had a dozen novels in his desk drawer, although even he knew he would never get around to actually writing them. A UNC classmate of Wolfe’s, he was devoted to him and admired [and maybe envied] his success beyond words.

MAX PERKINS was the greatest editor of the 20th Century. A typically reserved New Englander, he became personally involved with Wolfe in a way he did with none of his other writers—and they included Hemingway and Fitzgerald at the same time. The obvious reason was that Wolfe needed him more. Even as he tried to be the stern editor who knew it was necessary to take an axe to Wolfe’s out of control prose, he also appreciated this passionately romantic boy writer. Again, the reason is obvious: that kind of passion was something that would never be a part of his own life. And, even after Wolfe left him and Scribners for Ed Aswell and Harper’s, Perkins remained Wolfe’s friend and mentor. And as Wolfe lay dying, it was Perkins to whom he turned; and it was Perkins he entrusted with his literary estate.

Of course, one thing I’ve learned in my brief experience in the theater is that the actor must create a reality of his or her own on the stage. It doesn’t matter what the real character looked like or talked like; what is important is that the actor create a believable character for the moment on stage. I’m learning.