An almost grownup playwright

Heather McDonald on Broadway. And other 'catastrophes.'

Heather McDonald's thoughtful Broadway drama, "An Almost Holy Picture," stars Kevin Bacon: "I was at the theater one night and a woman said to her friend, 'This is a musical, isn't it?'"

NEW YORK (CNN) -- "The day after the opening, one of my daughters got the flu and threw up on the train all the way home. My normal life as a writer is not any different."

This may not be what a lot of envious playwrights would like to hear from Heather McDonald. But her stage texts are known nationally -- and now on Broadway -- for a kind of eloquent honesty that's reflected, in interview, in a comfortable, self-joshing laugh.

"I mean, it's true that when you have a play on Broadway, people respond to you in a way that's different. But as far as the effect on me and my life? -- I had a kind of postpartum collapse once the show opened. And I thought, 'OK, well that's probably the biggest thing that's ever going to happen to me, so I guess I won't write plays anymore.'

"I talked to Tony Kushner" -- the Pulitzer-winning playwright of "Angels in America" and "Homebody/Kabul" -- "and Tony said, 'Oh yeah, this kind of thing is sort of a catastrophe for a writer.'"

RESOURCES Heather McDonald's "An Almost Holy Picture" is about a parent's anguished search for self-forgiveness. Click here for an interactive gallery of scenes from Kevin Bacon's performance on Broadway  and excerpts from McDonald's script.

McDonald's "catastrophe" is titled "An Almost Holy Picture." Now in the final week of a sold-out limited Broadway run that opened February 7, the show is a demanding, evening-length monologue that the Roundabout Theatre Company has produced with Kevin Bacon playing McDonald's bewildered, searching Samuel Gentle.

Samuel, 45, is a former pastor and a somnambulist profoundly haunted by sensations of guilt. He and his wife have one child, a girl covered in light-colored hair. Ariel, as he names her, has congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa, a rare affliction referred to simply as lanugo and manifesting what Samuel describes as "a fine, silky hair that coats the face and body."

"In some light," he says, "she fairly shimmers."

But a terrifying tragedy from his pastorate -- in which nine children were killed in a bus accident -- and a trio of miscarriages before Ariel's birth have left Samuel wracked with remorse, starved for self-forgiveness. The arc of the play reaches its high point when he yanks photos of Ariel from an art gallery's walls, abashed to have her disorder displayed to others. In the process, he steals his beloved daughter's self-acceptance from her, leaving her newly conscious of her condition.

Although punctuated with a lot of humor -- and made an intellectual, set-prowling puzzle in Bacon's restless, anguished performance -- Samuel Gentle's journey trundles down a darkening path of uncompromising McDonald-honesty: What trials we may have to face are borne of our frailties, mysteries more of our own making than God's.

In the end, it's one of the photos that originally enraged and embarrassed Samuel that he describes for the audience, a shot of Ariel "with the white radiance of eternity emerging from the darkness." The thing he once rejected, he tells us, has become "an almost holy picture."

'That's why do theater'

For a two-month limited Broadway run, Kevin Bacon has interpreted McDonald's anguished, searching character, Samuel Gentle: "A really hard-working, smart, smart actor," she calls Bacon.

"It's a real shame," McDonald says. "I think we're in a period where theater has gotten intimidated by the power of TV and film. So a lot of people in theater try to do what TV and film do, instead of that particular kind of image and language that can only be done on stage."

McDonald isn't comfortable with the phrase "language playwright," a term that regular theatergoers sometimes use to describe her type of work. It normally refers to drama and comedy based more in its text than in action.

"I've never thought of myself that way," McDonald says. "I'd just write things down the way they seemed to come to me. And then I'd hear, 'Oh, this is very poetic,' or, 'You pay a lot of attention to the language.'

"In fact, I remember in rehearsal one day hearing Kevin Bacon saying something like that. And I said, 'You know, I really think you shouldn't be precious about the language at all. Throw it away.' And he said, 'Oh, good.'

"We were really lucky to get Kevin. A lot of stars could have been difficult. He was just fabulous. A really hard-working, smart, smart actor. He's a theater actor. And this is a real undertaking. Vocally, technically and then emotionally. I talked to him the other day, and he said, 'I'm just worn out. Physically, my voice is starting to be just shot.'

"And do you know that every time Kevin has been on TV in an interview about the show, they've shown clips from 'Footloose?'" which was released 18 years ago. "Do you believe that? In fact, I was at the theater one night and a woman said to her friend, 'This is a musical, isn't it?'

"But I really care a lot about language and the words. I mean, that's why do theater and not be in TV or film so much. Theater is a place where a kind of heightened language doesn't sound necessarily unrealistic. Like Tennessee Williams. Or Chekhov. There's something kind of sacred about people gathering to tell stories.

"And yet, sometimes I think this is a ridiculous profession. I teach, as well as write, and increasingly it's a challenge to get students to think theatrically. Their references are all to TV and film."

'Where is my mentor?'

McDonald's daughters are Marilyn Grace, center, and Louise. Her next play, "When Grace Comes In" -- premiering in July at California's LaJolla Playhouse -- has three children onstage "as real characters."

McDonald, 42, lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her two daughters, Louise and Marilyn Grace. This spring, she's teaching play writing at George Mason University in Fairfax and is known by her students and fellow faculty members as a busily produced American playwright.

Audiences from Sundance Theatre's play workshops to the Seattle Rep know her for prize-winning plays including "Dream of a Common Language," "Faulkner's Bicycle," "The Rivers and Ravines" and "Available Light: A Play with Music."

For that matter, "An Almost Holy Picture" -- under the faithful guidance of McDonald's longtime agent Peregrine Whittlesey -- was premiered on the West Coast at the LaJolla Playhouse and was then produced by Washington's Round House Theatre; Princeton's (New Jersey) McCarter Theatre; the Berkeley (California) Rep; Center Stage in Baltimore, Maryland; and Indiana Rep. All that came before director Michael Mayer staged it at the Roundabout's American Airlines Theatre on West 42nd Street in New York's Broadway district.

Seven major play scripts into her career, McDonald concedes that it's been great to have Bacon interpret her work at "what has been a pinnacle for me, working on Broadway with a lot of people who are at the top of their game."

But it's also been a shock to have an artistic director at Sundance say he wanted to have a range of writers in the theater program there -- "including some 'mid-career people' like me. And I said, 'What? What? When did that happen?' They wanted me to be a mentor for some young writer. And I was asking, 'But where is my mentor?'

"That's when I realized it's been 20 years I've been at it. Oh, God, I'm a grownup!"

And as for the "catastrophe" that Kushner has warned her about, "The only good thing for me, I think, is that I have a new play that was already finished before this Broadway production happened. It goes into production in June. And that's good because I haven't been able to write anything while this was going on."

McDonald's new show is "When Grace Comes In." In its LaJolla Playhouse and Seattle Rep double-premiere, Sharon Ott -- former artistic director of Berkeley Rep and now of Seattle Rep -- is staging McDonald's story of a senator's wife and mother of three.

"It's about how her life comes undone and what that does to her and everyone around her. I wanted to write a play that has a grownup woman at its center. It's not about falling in love or getting married or getting divorced. It's about her own journey. A 45-year-old woman at the center of the play.

"I was explaining to a student the other day that when I first wrote, I used a typewriter. They were like, 'What?' And I said, 'You know, I kind of miss it because when you wrote, you perspired a bit -- so you felt like you were doing real work.'"

This "mid-career" Broadway playwright turns to a sick child who's home from school on the couch. A total mom is suddenly in the room. But you can tell that Heather McDonald doesn't yet quite believe her Broadway success -- or her age.

"I'm shocked. For years, I was the youngest writer at everything. And I feel like I blinked, went to lunch and came back: And we're the grownups here now. We're the grownups."

It's an almost certain statement.

If you'll be in California this summer and would like to see the world premiere production of Heather McDonald's new "When Grace Comes In," the show is scheduled to run July 30 through September 1 at the LaJolla Playhouse, (859) 550-1010.