The Subject Was Roses plays Tues.-Fri. at 8 pm; Sat. 2:30 and 8 pm; Sun. 1 and 6:30 pm; through March 21. Tickets: $20-$65. Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles; 213.628.2772 or centertheatregroup.org.

Frances Conroy

Frances Conroy is no stranger to kitchen sink drama. After all, her Six Feet Under character Ruth famously threw a pot roast across the floor in the HBO cult hit series pilot after hearing her undertaker husband had just died while driving their brand new hearse. Now she paces a linoleum floor eight times a week as Martin Sheen’s unfulfilled, Bronx-trapped wife in Frank D. Gilroy’s 1964 Pulitzer Prize-winning embodiment of the genre, The Subject Was Roses, directed by Neil Pepe.

When asked whether Nettie or other classic female leads such as Eugene O’Neill’s Mary Tyrone were cued up in her theatrical wish list, the veteran Broadway and Off Broadway Tony Award nominee, Drama Desk and Obie Award winner frames her answer in household terms.

“I don’t think that way,” Conroy states via phone one morning before a Tuesday performance. “I don’t have these, ‘Oh, I have to do that role.’ It’s hard enough to get through the day and get the dishes washed! I think when the next project comes up, whatever it is, it’s always a big thing to take hold of and immerse yourself in.”

With more than 50 stage credits ranging from the New York Shakespeare Festival to the Guthrie Theater to Lincoln Center, the 56-year-old actress has had plenty of rich opportunities to do so. While Six Feet Under earned her a Golden Globe Award, four Emmy nominations and a new mass audience, the red-headed Juilliard graduate has long been a favorite of iconic playwrights and directors. She toured with John Houseman’s The Acting Group, made her Broadway debut in the short-lived 1980 production of Edward Albee’s The Lady From Dubuque, directed by Alan Schneider and starring Irene Worth, tackled Kate at Stratford in 1985’s The Taming of the Shrew under Zoe Caldwell’s direction and won a Drama Desk Award for David Hare’s 1989 The Secret Rapture.

Conroy became Arthur Miller’s go-to-gal in the ’90s with The Last Yankee (Obie Award), Broken Glass and the movie of The Crucible before culminating in a Tony nomination as Patrick Stewart’s WASP-ish wife in the playwright’s The Ride Down Mt. Morgan in 2000. Conroy was performing in the comedy when she was asked to fly to Los Angeles after a Sunday matinee to do a Monday morning network audition for Alan Ball’s new funeral parlor foray into cable television. She learned she had landed the role en route back to New York later that day.

“Arthur was the dearest man in the world,” she says. “He and Inge [Morath] were these wonderfully vibrant people who loved to laugh and were living very important lives. I loved them. She had this twinkle in her eye and so did he. Arthur loved wearing blue jeans. He was such a tall man and had terrible posture and would suck hard candies when he was in rehearsal. He’d just sit there happily listening. He would never step on the toes on the director. Never. Arthur would always let the director speak first and then he’d say well, I have a couple of thoughts. Then he would carefully read all these notes he had quietly written down as he watched. They were the best notes an actor could ever hope to have: simple, easy to understand and very to the point.”

A Rose to New York Life

When Martin Sheen’s son Ramon Estevez approached Center Theatre Group Artistic Director Michael Ritchie to mount a revival of The Subject Was Roses, he had no idea Ritchie had a long history with Conroy that dates back to his stage manager days at Lincoln Center in the late 1980s. The two had both been part of productions such as Our Town and Americans Abroad, plus had tried to work together during Ritchie’s tenure at Williamstown. Ritchie called Iris Grossman at ICM and she contacted Conroy.

According to Conroy, Estevez had been talking to his father about revisiting this play for quite some time. Sheen had originated the role of Timmy in the 1964 Broadway production starring Jack Albertson and Irene Dailey and had gone on to reprise his part alongside Albertson in the film version with Patricia Neal. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as the Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Albertson picked up a Tony for Best Featured Actor and Sheen earned a Tony nomination. The show launched Sheen’s career. When he decided to play the father, Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker) became an early choice for Timmy.

“Martin, Ramon, Brian, Kelley Kirkpatrick from CTG and I met over at the office they [Estevez Sheen Productions] have at Warner Bros. about three weeks before rehearsal so that basically Martin could talk to me,” recalls Conroy. “It was a nice meeting and we talked about this and that. I realized he had first met Brian when Brian had a role in Emilio’s movie Bobby. Martin was very, very fond of him. There was a real kind of father-son bond there. It was sweet. So that’s how it came about.”

LA audiences last saw Conroy on stage in 2006 at the Kirk Douglas in David Greig’s Pyrenees.  Her previous Taper production was the 1999 world premiere of Neil Simon’s The Dinner Party. Prior Southern California appearances include Heartbreak House (South Coast Repertory), The House of Blue Leaves (Pasadena Playhouse), Mrs. California (Coronet Theatre and Taper’s New Festival for Now), Romance Language (Mark Taper) and Richard III (Old Globe).

Conroy had never read The Subject Was Roses, seen any of its revivals or watched the movie — a fact she admitted to Patricia Neal at the opening night party. She even resisted looking at mementos Sheen brought into rehearsals or peeking at the commemorative brochure for sale in the Taper lobby.

“I love seeing movies from that time period but I’m glad I never saw the film,” she admits. “Martin brought in all this memorabilia from the first production and I never looked at it. I was so focused on figuring out what in the world we were doing in this production. Lines and what each scene was about. About a week ago I looked through the brochure you can buy with the beautiful photographs in it from Martin. And I’m glad I didn’t even look at that. I didn’t want anything in my mind because it has no relevance to me whatsoever.”

The play takes place in 1946 and centers on the return home from World War II of John and Nettie Cleary’s son Timmy. Their marriage has long ago settled into its own dysfunctional battle between bitterness and resigned disappointment with both pinning hopes on their son’s arrival to bring a much-needed respite. The crash of 1929 stopped John’s rocket-like rise from dirt poor Irish Catholic to successful cock-of-the-walk coffee merchant. His middle class wife Nettie, raised by a nurturing hotel man father who took his daughters to the opera, feels trapped in their Bronx apartment and is forced to ask him for money for household expenses. She sets up Timmy as her ally against his father in response to John’s philandering and lack of emotional empathy.

Conroy with Brian Geraghty and Martin Sheen

“I think she’s aware she’s been suffocating for awhile,” Conroy offers. “All the things she said about what she had growing up. The fact she tells her son she hates the Bronx. It’s just a life that’s been made more and more isolated. I think Nettie’s father had a very interesting life. These stories he brought home from the hotel opened up worlds to her and her sister Sophie of different countries and people who, as she puts it about John as a young man, ‘were going places.’ He was devastatingly handsome and very glamorous and unlike anyone she had ever known.”

Because the play is autobiographical, Conroy wondered what caused Gilroy’s family to move to the Bronx. By Conroy’s estimation, the New York apartment the bi-coastal actress has possessed since 1981 in Washington Heights sits roughly parallel to the fictional Cleary’s Bronx location across the Harlem River. Her character grew up both in Yorkville and the upper west side. Places where Nettie could walk everywhere, unlike the Bronx where you had to take a bus or train.

“Mine is one of those old buildings with the marble floors downstairs and the whole bit,” explains Conroy of her apartment. “I’m sure it’s similar to the building they lived in so it’s not like you have much privacy. I remember Martin being astounded because we were talking about Timmy running to the bathroom to throw up and all the times he got sick in the two-three days he’s home. I say, ‘yes, he’s in the bathroom.’ Martin said, ‘you mean there’s only one bathroom?’ Sure, it’s an old New York apartment! One bathroom. He’s like, oh my god!”

A key moment in the play happens when Nettie abruptly leaves the apartment with her coin purse without disclosing her destination and doesn’t come home for 12 hours. When faced with an angry John and worried Timmy upon her return, she purposely provides vague answers. Did Conroy come up with her own backstory to explain Nettie’s absence?

“I tried to think of what kind of a time it was then in the world. She was out of the Bronx. She had the modern equivalent of $500 on her. I’m sure she went downtown. It was right after the war had ended. There were sailors and soldiers all throughout the city who had just gotten back and had survived the war. There must have been an unbelievable feeling in the air in New York.”

Conroy says she understands a little bit of that feeling because her parents were married in Manhattan during exactly the same month and year the play is set - May 1946. “With any character, it’s a world you’re entering but certainly the fact I’ve lived in New York for so many years plus my parents met and lived in Manhattan. I have a sense through them what the city was like at that time. My god, just to be downtown! Nettie could have gone wherever.”

While she didn’t believe delving into too many details would ultimately prove beneficial, Conroy had considered a few options. “I thought, what can I cross off the list? She doesn’t bring anything home. She doesn’t have any new clothes on. She doesn’t have any new jewelry or physical manifestations of anything she could have bought. She says it all by saying ‘it’s the most freedom I’ve ever had in my entire life in these last 12 hours.’ That’s what it bought her.”

Despite Nettie’s lack of options, opportunities for women in the late ’30s coincided with the imminent advent of WWII to bring massive migratory changes to family life, Conroy points out.  Her mother, who grew up in Monroe, Georgia and majored in art at the University of Georgia, joined two older sisters in New York right after college in 1938.

“She loved New York,” Conroy shares with pride. “She had these fabulous jobs. She worked for Raymond Loewy, the industrial designer who threw a party every Friday for his staff. She worked for Republic Airlines out in Bay Shore, Long Island at the age of 26. We’ve got this beautiful photograph of her with everybody she worked with in front of a plane there. She was what was called a ground hostess for TWA at the East Side Airlines Terminal. I mean who flew then? My father flew because he was a VP of TWA but flying was a big deal. There was just a tremendous amount of energy in the air then. Huge shifts going on in the world.”

Conroy says she’s interested in seeing how the play “breathes” during the run. “I remember reading an interview Martin gave where he said it was an athletic event. And it is in its own way. You’re just getting it down the whole time you’re doing it. It reaches different moments as you go along. Each night is its own moment. That’s what is so mysterious about the theatre.”

A Local Theatre Devotee

Conroy is a fervent supporter of LA’s intimate theatre scene. Her husband, actor and solo performance artist Jan Munroe, has appeared in numerous local productions including Don Carlos, Hard Times and The Blacks: A Clown Show at the Evidence Room, Glengarry Glen Ross at the Egyptian Arena and Michael Sargent’s Black Leather at the Unknown Theatre last fall.

“Jan’s done a lot of beautiful productions in these theatres,” she enthuses. “I love these tiny theatres. I love to be able to sit in such an intimate setting and hear and see everything so easily. To watch these productions that people somehow miraculously find the time to rehearse when they’re working full time jobs and not being paid a dime, which I don’t believe in quite frankly. I just appreciate all that everybody does in any given piece I’ve seen.”

Conroy

Conroy admits her theatre attendance was limited during the Six Feet Under years because an episodic television show is “an endurance contest. I think of the people who do it as running a marathon. I remember crawling out from under a rock after each season and thinking, oh my god. I’m so tired. But the show was such a gift. How that all came together was such an act of love on Alan’s part. Being so careful in how he constructed and created and cast it. Peter [Krause] and Michael [C. Hall] had both gone to NYU and Lauren [Ambrose] had studied singing and acting on the east coast, so it was very interesting we all had theatre backgrounds.”

Her balance for that intense schedule was riding an older horse she’d purchased from the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. Munroe had given her private riding lessons in New York as a birthday gift at the start of the show, which led to an encompassing equestrian life in LA even after the show’s demise.

“I really lived that life. Jan would say don’t you want to do something? I’d say I have to go to the barn. Muck the stalls out and then ride my horse. I was taking dressage lessons and when he was too old for all that nonsense I would lead him around like a big dog. That’s just to say it was an all-involving thing I loved. I miss it now because my horse died two years ago. I have his ashes here in a big box in my house. That’s why there are many plays I haven’t seen here. My mornings and evenings were being over at the barn in this very interesting society devoted to taking care of these beautiful huge animals that are so fragile. So going to the theater now has been a lovely thing and my time in the evening has been very different since he died.”

Conroy has kept busy since. Soon to be seen projects include a turn as Robert DeNiro’s wife in the upcoming film Stone and a wealthy matriarch whose family employs and basically owns most of Happy Town, a new mid-season drama debuting in late April. “It’s kind of like Twin Peaks but not that peculiar.” With eight episodes shot, her life is on suspension waiting to hear if a pick-up instigates back-and-forth flights to Toronto again. In the meantime, Conroy plans to enjoy the LA’s cultural scene.

“Whenever anyone gets to go to a museum or a dance piece or a play, it is such an incredible thing to be part of,” Conroy sighs. “I bought tickets for us to go hear the pianist Richard Goode at Disney Hall when we were still in rehearsal. It was so beautiful. I thought what a wonderful gift we’ve had tonight. Jan bought champagne at intermission. What a lovely thing. It was sort of like having a late Christmas present. Any time anyone can go experience something in the arts, it’s all good.”

Photos by Craig Schwartz. Article by Deborah Behrens.