Dan's Papers - July 4, 2008 - Kate Burton "Shares" in Durang's Beyond Therapy

Following its roiling success at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy will continue its run - at a new location. On July 8, the play will open at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor.

Beyond Therapy, which opened on Broadway in 1982, is an absurd excursion into the "me generation" of the self obsessed '80s, where (in New York at least) type A-personality adults were more likely to have therapists than significant others. It's the story of Bruce and Prudence, who meet through a personal ad, and try with the help of their therapists to make a go of it. But their short path is rocky, ludicrous and entirely entertaining, at least for the audience.

In the true sentiment of the '80s, when tell-all television shows and true confessions reached new heights, Bruce's therapist, Dr. Charlotte Wallace, advocates expressing feelings at all costs, as she speaks to her clients through a Snoopy doll. That role will be played by Kate Burton, a three-time Tony Award nominee and Emmy Award-winning actress who portrayed Dr. Ellis Grey on the ABC hit, "Grey's Anatomy."

"Is my character in Beyond over the top? It's impossible for me to judge her since I play her. She is larger than life," said Burton in a phone interview from her home in Los Angeles, where she was beginning a much-needed 10-day reprieve between productions.

"I found something new in every performance," she said, speaking of the Williamstown run. "I work from the outside in with a character, making big choices. But the more I did the play, I found that the easier I am with Charlotte, the more successful I am with her."

Many people wouldn't associate Burton, the daughter of Richard Burton and Bay Street Theater Artistic Director Sybil Christopher, with comedies, but she, in fact, made her mark on Broadway in a 1982 production of Noel Coward's Present Laughter, directed by George C. Scott, followed by a turn in Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury. Then came heavier roles in Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter and Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane. In 2002, she was nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Play in the revival of The Elephant Man, and the same year, for Best Actress in the title role of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.

"It's interesting, after having done so much Chekov, to do Durang," said Burton, in her rich voice with elegant diction. "He's very particular, incredibly witty, passionate. His plays are inhabited by characters who are vulnerable. They wear their emotions on their sleeves."

As with any character, it took some searching for Burton to arrive at an approach for Charlotte, and it came unexpectedly. The cast for Beyond rehearsed in New York, which Burton called "a pain in the bum because in Williamstown there are no distractions." But ironically, she had a revelation about Charlotte in the most New York of places: the subway. "I was sitting on the subway - I've done my best work there, that's the beauty of New York - when I had a visceral memory and something clicked."

Burton went on to describe her experience working with her classmates (including Frances McDormand, Melissa Smith, Warren Keith) doing "crazy nutty plays" at the Yale Cabaret, which featured student performances of more off-beat works. According to Burton, the Cabaret was "where we all learned what we really needed to know." She remembered the excitement and pressure of working in that space, and what she learned there.

"I realized on the subway that my work at the Cabaret was my genesis as a comic actress," she said. "Somehow, working on my lines for Beyond brought me back 25 years to that awareness."

Burton described working on the play as "very thrilling, very exciting," for several reasons. First, with Durang and director Alex Timber both from Yale, Burton said it felt like "coming home." In addition, she is excited to be working with the cast. "This is a beautiful thing, this association of Bay Street and Williamstown," she said. "You work with the top actors in the world."

The cast for Beyond includes Katie Finneran, whom Burton describes as a "brilliant comic actress," as well as Matt McGrath, Darren Goldstein, Bryce Pinkham, and Darrell Hammond from "Saturday Night Live."

For part of the run in Williamstown, Burton was with her two children, 10-year old daughter Charlotte and 20-year old son Morgan.

"My daughter is a backstage child," she said. "Morgan is at Williamstown now as an actor, but he is also a budding playwright. He goes to Brown [her alma mater] and recently had that great moment of being passionate about theater." Burton seemed tickled that her son is possibly developing into a writer. She readily admits she did not have that calling, although there was a hope on the part of her father, Richard Burton, that she would. "My father was a voracious reader, a closet writer, and he wanted me to be a writer," she said. "In fact, one of the reasons my parents named me Kate was because they thought 'Kate Burton' would look great on a book jacket cover."

Born in Geneva and raised in New York, Burton lives in California with her husband, Michael Ritchie, artistic director of the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles and a producer of the Broadway musicals The Drowsy Chaperone and Curtains. In just a few days, she will be heading east again, for round two of Beyond. Considering it was written more than 25 years ago, the question arises of its relevance in 2008.

"Beyond had its Broadway debut the year I started my professional career, 1982. It totally resonates today. All the things the lead characters go through are still going on. It's just two people trying to figure out how to get a relationship going," she said.

In addition to the successful cast, for which Burton is very grateful, she is also delighted to be a part of a play that is a solid literary work.

"I've come to realize that structure is one of the most important elements in a play," she said. "Beauty Queen and Hedda Gabler are perfectly structured plays, and Beyond is perfectly structured. Having done this for 25 years, you know when the play works."