Welcome to ODYSSEY ~ KEIR DULLEA ONLINE @keirdullea.org a site dedicated to the career of actor Keir Dullea. Best known for his role as Commander Dave Bowman in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. In a career that has spanned five decades, Keir has worked in film and television including Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Castle, Damages, The Hoodlum Priest, Bunny Lake Is Missing, The Fox, Paperback Hero, David & Lisa, Madame X, Isn't It Delicious, and the sequel to 2001, 2010: Odyssey Two. Keir's favourite medium is the stage where he's starred in such projects as the original production of Butterflies Are Free, On Golden Pond, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, Doubles, Dr. Cook's Garden, I Never Sang for My Father, The Shawshank Redemption, Tales from Hollywood, The Cherry Orchard and many other workshop productions.
Upcoming Projects
Film:HBO'S Fahrenheit 451 playing The Historian Status: Post-Production
ODYSSEY ~ KEIR DULLEA ONLINE @ keirdullea.org is a website dedicated to the work of American actor Keir Dullea. I am in no way affiliated with his person, his management, nor his family. All content, except otherwise noted, is copyrighted to their original owners and no infringement is intended and no rights implied. Content contained within are subject to fair use and used here either in whole or in part as a commentary on the work and career of Keir Dullea.
I have a review of Keir and Mia from their most recent production of ON GOLDEN POND from the perspective of a fan attending the performance. I was given permission to post this from Nichole Clay, a member of the Keir Dullea Appreciation Society Facebook Page.
The stage adaptation of Ernest Thompson’s “On Golden Pond” was a real treat at the legendary Bucks County Playhouse. The legendary drama takes place at a summer house near the pond in Maine where a older couple regularly vacations for four months.
Here, we are introduced Norman Thayer, portrayed by Keir Dullea, a retired English professor whose experiencing slightly memory loss and being fearless of approaching an untimely death. His wife, Ethel, played by Dullea’s real life wife and collaborator Mia Dillon is a cheerful, positive, and long-suffering wife who is honestly devoted to her pessimistic husband.
At beginning of the play when Keir enters the stage as Norman Thayer, the audience applauded. His Norman Thayer’s character come alive: his outspokenness, crankiness and especially his frequent sarcasm was out there. Everything from being lazy to fix the broken screen door to looking at the classifieds in the newspaper. And Dillon’s character Ethel was full of life with calm and sweetness, even with the scenes of her childhood doll named Elmer. The couple, who had been acting together for sixteen years on stage and occasionally in independent films, have a strong stage chemistry that I admire. They brought Norman and Ethel in their own way.
For the first time after closely rolling Keir Dullea’s acting career in film and television, especially legendary known as Commander David Bowman in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and playing characters that are troubled, chauvinistic, devilish, earthly and mostly sophisticated, I ever seen him in a sarcastic and humor character, a range that he never given a chance in the film and TV media. Mia, for her role as Ethel was serene, positive and filled with devotion. I admired the reconciliation of Norman and his estranged daughter and enjoyed the new found relationship of Norman and his daughter’s stepson Billy Ray, Jr., one of my favorite scenes in the play. Norman ends up becoming close to his new stepson, even picking up slangs from the teen boy.The ending was very touching between Keir and Mia’s characters when the main character encounters a “false” health scare, even they share a kiss before going outside to look at the pond at their summer home.
From the beginning to the end, “On Golden Pond” was a marvelous play with a excellent direction, a great cast and a fantastic stage that brought to life.
Nichole
Thank you Nichole for such a wonderful review and experience.
Another article where Keir talks about the aspects of theatre.
Real-life couple brings ‘On Golden Pond’ to the stage
By Rita Charleston
A real-life married couple since 1999, Keir Dullea and Mia Dillon have worked together several times before on stage, sometimes playing spouses, sometimes not. Now they’re taking on another husband/wife role as Norman Thayer and Ethel Thayer in Ernest Thompson’s “On Golden Pond,” playing at the Bucks County Playhouse now through Aug. 2.
The play begins as summer warms Golden Pond, the beautiful lake where Ethel and Norman have spent 48 summers. This year, their tranquil plans are turned upside down when their daughter and her new boyfriend arrive to drop his teenage son off for the summer. This play is all about growing up, growing older and learning to manage the ties that bind.
“This is about the eighth time Mia and I have worked together and we love it,” says Dullea. “Because we are husband and wife, as actors we have much more to draw on because we already have that relationship. The last time we played husband and wife was when we did Big Daddy and Big Mamma in ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.’ ”
And now the duo, both with ties to our area, ( Dullea attended The George School in Newtown, Bucks County, and Dillon went to high school in Newtown Square, Delaware County) are gearing up for this iconic play.
In the 1981 film, Henry Fonda played the role of Norman Thayer., but Dullea prefers to be his own man in the role. “I saw the film when it originally came out, but I prefer to find my own way, and do what I feel is right for the role. I think the temptation is to go a bit soft with the character because on the surface Norman comes across as a bit grouchy. But actually he’s a very pleasant man, a retired professor, and has a lot of things going for him which makes him very interesting.”
Dullea himself has a very interesting past. Raised in New York City where his parents ran a bookstore, he attended Rutgers University and San Francisco State University before deciding to pursue an acting career.
Since 1957, he has appeared in more than 25 feature films, including “David and Lisa” (winner of the 1963 Golden Globe award: “New Star of the Year”) and “2001 A Space Odyssey” among others. He has made more than 50 guest appearances on television series, appeared on Broadway and London’s West End, as well as numerous regional theaters.
“I love exploring a role, and each time you do it you have the opportunity to get it just right, although you never arrive at the place where you think you’ve got it just right, where you feel confident. But, as actors, we keep trying.”
Bucks County Playhouse is on South Main Street in New Hope. For tickets, call 215-862-2121 or check www.bcptheater.org. SOURCE
Another article on Keir and Mia’s play ON GOLDEN POND currently playing at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania. The article is all about how Keir and Mia work together as both husband and wife and as fellow thespians.
Theater: ‘On Golden Pond’ at Bucks County Playhouse
By Ted Otten | For The Times of Trenton
on July 15, 2015 at 7:00 AM, updated July 15, 2015 at 7:08 AM
0
Reddit
Traditions, like Ethel and Norman Thayer spending their summers at their cottage on Golden Pond in Maine, are sometimes abandoned or altered by the forces of both man and nature as the lead characters in Ernest Thompson’s “On Golden Pond,” directed by Jonathan Silverstein, now playing at New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse through August 2, discover during the five months that it takes this touching play to happen.
Norman retired not long ago from his teaching job at a university, a job that allowed the Thayers the luxury of their long summer holidays, but Norman is getting on in years and some things about daily life are more difficult and troublesome than they used to be. Many of his contemporaries and colleagues have passed away, and he no longer has the intellectual stimulation of the classroom. Fortunately, he has Ethel, a patient and understanding wife. Although the couple had lost contact with their only daughter Chelsea, she suddenly arrives with her fiancé and his precocious son. For many reasons, this year’s vacation will be different whether they want those changes or not.
Playing the Thayers in New Hope are real-life married couple Mia Dillon and Keir Dullea who have worked both separately and together before and after their marriage in 1999 on stage and screen although they much prefer working together these days especially with roles like the Thayers being offered to them.
Both actors have local connections. Dullea attended the George School in Newtown and spoke highly of their theatre department which he said was where his first inklings of becoming an actor began. Dillon graduated from Marple-Newtown Senior High in Newtown Square, but they didn’t meet until they both appeared in a play directed by Dullea’s wife, Suzie Fuller, who died in 1998.
Since the play is new to them, Dillon and Dullea appreciated the fact that they were constantly together beyond the all-too-brief time of their stage rehearsals and could discuss their characters whenever a new idea came to them although Dullea credits director Silverstein with many insights into the complex character who is Norman Thayer.
“If you need a classification for this play, I’d say it’s a serious comedy, but Norman has far more depth, deeper recesses, more corners than most comedy characters have. He has the kind of wit that some people find caustic, and often his attitude is taken far too seriously by others,” said Dullea who is only a year younger than the character he plays but has not experienced Norman’s problems with memory loss and disorientation.
“Norman is a little harder to live with than Keir,” said Dillon who spoke while Dullea was deciding his answer to the difficult question, “Do you like Norman as a person?”
Dullea isn’t sure he likes Norman, but he respects him, and Dullea said, “Norman uses intellectual things like puns and word play as a smoke screen because Norman is a man who doesn’t show his real emotions very often. Perhaps he isn’t comfortable with them. Chelsea is not at all like her father in that way, and this is part of their incompatibility and why they have been out of contact all these years.”
Dillon sees Ethel as a compassionate and practical woman who’s more aware and more intelligent than most people, perhaps including Norman, have realized.
“Norman teases because he cares,” said Dillion, “and Ethel has learned to accept that approach and live with it, but Chelsea is different from her mother. Some people choose to show love by teasing, and Norman is one of those people. But that can be a tricky thing. It can be very funny to a third person or a bystander, but it may be heard as being cruel by the person to whom it is directed.
“Ethel’s mother-daughter relationship with Chelsea is not that of best friends, and I don’t think that Ethel realizes how hurt Chelsea has been and how often by Norman’s teasing and his remarks that Chelsea perceives as being cutting. Ethel would have a more practical outlook on things and say ‘Get over it!’ and mean it , not in a frivolous way but in a way that shows her practicality and that she realizes that people have to just pick up and get on with their lives.”
Both Dillon and Dullea are enthusiastic about Thompson’s play, but they harbor a desire to return to the Tennessee Williams’ classic “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” They recently did a revival at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival in which Dullea, who had played Brick in the play’s first Broadway revival in 1974, played the commanding Big Daddy and Dillon played his long suffering wife, Big Mama Pollitt.
“On Broadway with Elizabeth Ashley as Maggie the Cat, I had a superb example of characterization by Fred Gwynne who played Big Daddy. It’s such a shame that people remember him only as Herman Munster, but he was a meticulous, classically trained actor who dug into his characterization with both hands because he saw that the character was worth probing,” said Dullea.
“I think Norman is that kind of character too.”
IF YOU GO
“On Golden Pond”
Where: Bucks County Playhouse, 70 South Main Street, New Hope, Pa.
When: through August 2; Tuesday & Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Another interview with Keir and Mia regarding their play ON GOLDEN POND at the Bucks Playhouse.
Research Through Living: Keir Dullea and Mia Dillon are starring in ‘On Golden Pond’ at the Bucks Playhouse
Actors do a lot of things in order to play a role. They memorize lines, rehearse, think about their character’s motives, and discuss the play with the director, the writer when possible and their fellow actors.
In playing the part of Norman Thayer in Ernest Thompson’s 1979 play, On Golden Pond, Keir Dullea has found another way to connect to his character. In the play, Norman is an 80-year-old man, dealing with several issues, including his strained relationship with his daughter, Chelsea, and memory loss. And Mr. Dullea says part of his preparation for the part simply involved getting older.
”I’m not very far from the age of this character,” says the 79-year-old Mr. Dullea. “I’m not trying to play old, I just play me because the age is about right. I don’t have Alzheimer’s and I don’t have serious memory loss but both my wife and I have had the experience of going upstairs, reaching the top and saying ‘What did I come up here for.’ A couple of times a week, I go from one room to another and can’t remember what the hell I came in for. So that’s useful.”
Mr. Dullea and his wife, Mia Dillon, are starring as Norman and Ethel in a production of On Golden Pond to be staged at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania, July 10 to Aug. 2. In the play, Norman and Ethel are settling down for the summer at their vacation home when they get a letter from their daughter, Chelsea (Christa Scott-Reed), saying she’ll be arriving to celebrate Norman’s birthday. She brings her boyfriend, Bill Ray (Don Noble) and his teenage son Billy (Cameron Clifford). The play explores the relationships between Norman and Ethel, Norman and his daughter, and Norman and Billy, who ends up spending the summer with the older couple.
On Golden Pond debuted on Broadway in 1979. It was adapted into a 1981 movie starring Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda, marking the only time that father and daughter appeared in a film together. It also won Mr. Fonda his only Oscar, and Katharine Hepburn her fourth. It was revived on Broadway in 2005 with James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggans.
”It’s a play that has a lot of surprising depth,” says Mr. Dullea, who is best-known for playing David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. “It has its funny side, if you’re going to describe it with one word, it’s a kind of comedy, but it has a lot of subtext in it that’s very interesting to explore.”
Mr. Dullea says he and Ms. Dillon have acted together about 10 times, and have played husband and wife a few times.
”We’ve been together 17 years, married 16,” he says. “A week after we got married, we were cast in a touring company of Deathtrap, in which I got to kill her off each night. More recently, two years ago at the Tennessee Williams Theater Festival (in New Orleans), we played Big Daddy and Big Mama in ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.’”
That production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was special for him because he played Brick in a Broadway revival of the play in 1974.
”I always wanted to play (Big Daddy), but never thought I’d ever get cast, so to get cast and then play it opposite my wife was a special treat,” he says. “We love working together.”
The couple in On Golden Pond is one that has stayed together and is indeed prepared to die together, not that that they don’t have issues.
”Even in the most perfect relationships, there are certain kinds of abrasive things that happen with any couple, and that makes it even more real,” Mr. Dullea says. “If it was all just hearts and flowers, it would be kind of dull. And part of the drama of this is, in spite of everything, they do love each other. You find that out by the end of the play. You see that as the play progresses but you also see there’s stuff between the characters.”
Performing at the Bucks County Playhouse marks something of a homecoming for Mr. Dullea, because as a child he attended the George School in Newtown.
”When I arrived at that school, I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” he says, adding that George School was where he started acting.
”I didn’t know it then, but probably the seed was planted that resulted in my becoming an actor,” he says. “George School had an unusually heightened drama program that you could take separate from the junior class play, or the senior class play. You could take drama as a half-unit subject, and we explored (John) Galsworthy and (George) Bernard Shaw and (William) Saroyan, and we did acting exercises.
”And I loved it, but it never occurred to me that someone would pay you to have fun. So it never occurred to me to become an actor. But looking back on it I realize that really is where the seed was planted that later on resulted on in my deciding to be an actor.”
On Golden Pond will be at the Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., New Hope, Pennsylvania, July 10-Aug. 2. For more information, go to www.bcptheater.org or call 215-862-2121.
A wonderful interview with Keir and Mia about working together in their upcoming play ON GOLDEN POND and about him killing her off just a scant two weeks after their wedding.
