Pill-popping, foul-mouthed matriarch Violet Weston is always out for a quart of blood in Tracy Letts' epic tragi-comedy of family dysfunction "August: Osage County."
It's a giant part, demanding an actress with potent presence. So it's a small wonder that Alliance Theatre artistic director Susan V. Booth spent more than a year luring Brenda Bynum, the one-time first lady of the Atlanta stage, out of a blissful retirement to play the lead in the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner.
Nothing like her smoking-in-spite-of-mouth-cancer character in real life, the uber-balanced Bynum talked in sunny tones one recent morning about what appeals to her about playing the vicious Violet.
Q: Beside the opportunity to work with favorite actors you've been in the trenches with before, what led you to give in to the Alliance's entreaties to come back after 15 years mainly away from the stage?
A: I thought there's not going to be another play like this and, come on, a role like this for a senior citizen woman? You can count those on the fingers of one hand in the entire history of dramatic literature. I thought, "Can I still learn lines? Can I still run up and down steps? And can I keep up with those dadgum young people?" So it took me over a year to decide if I wanted to do it and they were very patient and allowed me to work through my own doubts about coming back.
Q: And you're glad you did?
A: I've had no regrets whatsoever. It's a wonderful experience, absolutely. I've loved working with Susan, the ensemble is the best I've ever been a part of, just glorious. Someone asked me the other day how I have energy to get through it. I said, "I've got 12 fabulous actors up there and I know if I fall over, they'll catch me." You could never tell by the relationships on stage how wonderful the relationships off stage are.
Q: You've said you had a personal epiphany that it was time to retire in 1995 after the long Alliance run of Parts One and Two of "Angels in America." Was it?
A: I have been so happy. I have such a great life sitting on my back porch looking at hummingbirds. [Along with playwright-husband Cary], we travel and I play with my grandchildren. I have really relished this slothful life I've been living. It's wonderful. Your kids grow up and leave mom and you're just like, "Hey, I can just hang out and party!"
Q: How do you stay positive? Not all retirees are.
A: I just turned 70 years old, boy, and I'm proud of it. Every decade gets better. More fun. No problems. I'm lucky, I'm very lucky.
Q: Yet here you are, bringing to life a character addicted to downers, who is maybe the ultimate downer, someone who spoils for a fight with the very people she should love. What do you love about the playing Violet?
A: I like it because it uses me up completely and that's what you want. This work, theater, matters so much. Art matters so much. After I retired, I saw the movie "Aliens," with Sigourney Weaver and she gets on that elevator and straps on all that ordinance, weapons and munitions, rides up and the doors open and she's ready to take out the monster. I said, "Here's the [kind of] role that would bring me back."
Well, Violet is as close to that as any old lady role is ever going to get. Violet comes out of her bedroom and she’s got guns and knives and bullets and brass knuckles and she does her best to [emotionally] take everybody out. And there is something so exhilarating about that. I love it, whooo, I just love it. So yes, it is a role that takes everything you’ve got. All of your breath, all of your brain power to remember the lines, every bit of energy. I mean, that’s good. You want to do something that pulls from everything you’ve got.
Q: Are there other actors or actresses whose work you watch for that same sense of giving it all?
A: My role model in acting is Jim Carrey. Over the top, baby, no net, no regrets!
Q: Wow, that's a surprising inspiration!
A: I know it sounds like the last thing in the world a serious actor should say, but I really believe you have to let your defenses go away. You have to just open up, you have to be available to wherever the passion of what's happening takes you. There's a lot you don't find if you're not willing to walk the plank. I believe that actors should walk the plank.
Q: Contemporary playwrights such as Tracy Letts and novelists including Johnathan Franzen are so expert at taking a scalpel to families and the way they carve things up, it's like there's not much reason to believe loved ones could possibly love one another. What do you think of that point of view?
A: One of the maxims for me about acting is that you cannot cure your character. I cannot stand in judgment of Violet. When I'm doing her, every motivation and every reason she has for being who and what she is, that's real to her, that's justified to her. She doesn't regret, she doesn't judge her own actions. And she keeps saying throughout the play, "I'm just trying to tell the truth." And she means that.
So I have to go into this with the feeling that this fierce woman is just trying to tell the truth about what she sees around her. And if you think about it, a lot of times she is absolutely dead on. She’s sees things that nobody else in the play is willing to see or own up to. ...
As far as the playwright’s cynical view of what American family life is, there is no question that there are families like this. But there are also families that aren't like this and individuals who are not and there are redeeming possibilities. In his use of Violet to keep talking about telling the truth, I prefer to believe it’s more that if we can acknowledge the truth about life and relationships and speak the truth to each other, we could make it better.
On stage
“August: Osage County”
8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through May 8. $20-$50. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org.
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