A Conversation With Lindsay Crouse

New England Beginnings,
The Charms Of Gloucester
And A Memory In The Theater

By R. J. Donovan

Massachusetts has been home to its share of famous faces. However, it might surprise some to learn that the tranquil blonde woman blending effortlessly into the landscape along the Gloucester coast is an Academy Award nominee.

Actress Lindsay Crouse has called Gloucester home since her childhood. Her father, renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Russel Crouse, originally brought his family to the North Shore to spend summers at Cape Ann, both for inspiration and to escape the rigors of Manhattan. Lindsay hasn't missed a summer since.

This summer, she's portraying another New Englander, Emily Dickinson, in The Gloucester Stage Company production of Willliam Luce's “The Belle of Amherst."

Lindsay said that her parents first came to Gloucester in the late forties to visit a friend, comedian Jean Dixon. “She lived in Annisquam right on Lobster Cove and had a beautiful house” Lindsay said.

Dixon mentioned to the Crouses that there was a house for sale nearby and suggested they take a look at it. But there was some hesitation. "My father said to my mother, ‘Oh Anna, all those birds.’ He was a real city man,” she laughed.

The Crouses ultimately fell in love with both the house and the town.

“The rest,” says Lindsay, "is history.”

So many years later, the charms of Gloucester remain as vivid as ever.

“It's got this wonderful combination of the rocks and the woods and the sea. That landscape does something to people," she said. "The place has a magic about it.

In contrast to the quiet summers of Gloucester, life in New York as the daughter of a respected playwright meant that Lindsay regularly interacted with some of Broadway’s brightest names.

“Frederick March would be downstairs at a party. Ethel Merman and Mary Martin would be singing and Irving Berlin would be playing the piano,” she remembers.

But she makes it clear that she did not live in a celebrity home, adding that, as a small child, she didn't really know who a lot of those famous folk were. "We just said hello and talked. There was no fuss about it."

This summer's production of “The Belle of Amherst” (left) came about when Gloucester Stage Company's Artistic Director Eric Engel asked Lindsay if there was a play she might like to do.

"Out of my mouth came 'The Belle of Amherst' -- almost before I could consciously think of it.”

She had seen Julie Harris do the one-woman play years ago and said she never forgot it.

In her opinion, many people who eventually wind up working in the theater naturally gravitate to it because they've had a life altering experience attending the theater.

"That was true a few times for me," she said, "and one of them was certainly watching Julie do ‘Belle of Amherst’.”

She said, “All these years, I’ve cherished it so. And I’m finally at the right age to be doing it." Coincidentally, Julie Harris, who originated the role and received a Tony Award for it in 1977, subsequently became a longtime friend.

The play is special, Lindsay said, because “It reveals not only the poetry of Emily but what a poet is. In the play, (Emily) says ‘when I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.’ It’s the power of the word. It strikes at the heart.”

With the memory of that performance still with her, Lindsay said she’s following in her friend's footsteps “with great humility and great respect.”

“The Belle of Amherst” is at Gloucester Stage Company (in repertory with “Dear Liar”) through August 12. For information, call 978-281-4433.

Photos courtesy: Gloucester Stage Company

-- OnStage Boston

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