What’s it like to drive around the
country with your mother, living out of a van? What’s it like to not know who
your father is but know only too well who your mother is: a brash, irritating,
conniving, self-serving sleep-around gal who’s currently pregnant by a man
whose name she can’t recall. What’s it like to be a teenager searching for a
home, any home, which will provide, for the first time in your life, some
safety, some sanity? These, and more, are the questions Alexis Molnar had to
answer after she landed the role of Lottie in Chad Beguelin’s new comedy,
“Harbor,” which is having its world premiere at the Westport Country Playhouse.
Although the play has received
mixed reviews, there has been nothing but praise for Molnar’s work. One critic
wrote: “The most successful performance of the evening is delivered by young
Miss Molnar, who also has the best-written role in the play.” Another
commented: “Lottie’s character … seems carefully drawn, and Ms. Molnar does a
great job of showing her smarts and her despair.” In my review, I praised her
by writing that her “poise and timing are a marvel.” Of the character Lottie, another
critic wrote: “Alexis Molnar captures her portrayal perfectly.”
High praise indeed for a 17-year-old
actor who, she says, “came late to acting.” I met with Molnar in one of the
Playhouse’s dressing rooms after a recent matinee performance of “Harbor” to
talk with her about her background, her experiences in creating Lottie, and
what it felt like to be working with such seasoned professionals as Kate
Nowlin, Bobby Steggert, who was nominated for a Tony for his work in “Ragtime”
on Broadway, Paul Anthony Stewart, and Beguelin, a two-time Tony nominee for
“The Wedding Singer” and the man who wrote the lyrics for “Elf.”
Alexis Molnar
Molnar is a Jersey girl, born in New Brunswick and raised
in Bedminster. She attends Gill St. Bernard’s high school in Gladstone, N.J.
“It’s the whole suburban town thingy…rich kids, preppy,” she said, curled up
comfortably in a chair, her legs, sheathed in tight-fitting gray slacks,
crossed beneath her in quasi-Yoga fashion. “I just started my senior year
yesterday. It’s not fun going back. I like the whole social aspect of it but
then there’s academics on top of this,” referring to the play. “It was such a
fall back down to reality. I’m still 17 and I have to go to school.”
Molnar’s life has not been as
insular as she would first lead you to believe. After all, she did spend a
month attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London after her sophomore year in high
school. “It was one of the most life-changing experiences I’ve ever had,”
Molnar said. “It was so phenomenal, but I was really intimidated because I
thought, I’m American, I’m not going to compare…even be in the same rank with
these other kids, these English kids, but I pulled my way through and came out
one of the top in my class. I’m really proud of myself for that.”
Being at RADA also had other
benefits. Molnar laughed, rearranged her legs, and explained, “I felt sort of
grounded. I don’t know if that’s the best choice of words but I felt so much
more confident. RADA really brings things out in you. It just opened me up. I
guess the freedom of it all. And then, my parents allowed me to be an adult in London . There was also
the freedom to explore the work (RADA) gave you. I gained so many new
perspectives.”
Molnar’s initial intimidation in
attending RADA might have stemmed from the fact that, as noted, she believes
she has come somewhat late to this particular party. “Normally, child actors
start doing this when they come out of the womb, but I started professionally
when I was 13 years old,” she said. “I tried to be a sports kid but I really
didn’t know where I fit it. I was on the soccer team, I tried tennis, I tried
track, I tried it all but I never really got the chance to fully indulge myself
and enjoy it.”
However, there was another talent
lurking in the background, one that would soon blossom. The seed was planted
when Molnar was in the fourth grade. She got to sing a song in a school concert
and after the show the music teacher commented to Molnar’s mother that her
daughter had a pretty good voice. Soon, Molnar was taking singing lessons, and
then acting and dance lessons.
“I didn’t know about the business
then,” Molnar said – she was in fifth grade at the time – “I just thought,
recreationally, something will come out of it. Then I started getting involved
in workshops in the city,” she said, referring to New York City , “and I got a different insight
into this crazy world of performing and that’s when I decided, this is what I
want to do.”
Molnar got her first professional
job appearing in a Nike commercial. It was filmed on the day of her fifteenth
birthday. She recalls that before the shoot she was on the phone with her
mother in tears – she was so excited. “Now, looking back on it, it was only a
commercial, but for starting off so late I thought I had lucked out.”
Molnar has continued to luck out.
She acted in “The Tempest” at RADA, has made numerous appearances on TV shows,
appeared in minor roles in feature films and acted in high school productions
of “The Dining Room,” “Tartuffe” and Kiss Me, Kate,” and is now in “Harbor.”
In just a few short years she has
learned how to approach a role and make it her own, as is evidenced by her work
in “Harbor.” With the help of an acting coach, who is also a friend, she does a
lot of “back story” work to prepare. “First I read the whole show and then I
write down everything my character says about people and what people say about
my character, and then I write down qualities about myself and just build this
whole entity, and then I kind of mold this all into what type of character I
am, what type of girl. Then I just start thinking about things that are
relatable, that can help me, that will give me some insight.”
One of the things she did in
preparing to play the role of Lottie was watch “Paper Moon” and “Annie.” She
also started reading Edith Wharton’s “House of Mirth,” which is mentioned
several times in the play and features in a touching moment when Lottie pulls
back and gives her mother some undeserved dignity. But first, Molnar had to
land the role, which was a process. As she remembers it, she had just returned
from a trip to Florida
when she got an e-mail from her manager telling her she had an audition the next
day.
“Things weren’t landing,” she said,
meaning that she hadn’t gotten any roles recently, so she went in without any
great expectations. “I had just gotten my hair straightened and I looked all
pretty and then I noticed every single girl there was 18 and older. Okay, I
said to myself, I’m obviously not going to get this. I went in and I read and
they liked it and they said, ‘We’ll let you know,’ and that can mean anything.
About 20 minutes after, I’m walking to the car and my manager calls and tells
me I have a call-back the next day to meet with Chad,” the playwright. “It’s a
call-back,” Molnar said. “That’s pretty cool.
The next day she met with Beguelin,
but also noticed a lot of other names on the call-back list, names of people
with Broadway credits. “The other girls I saw were still much older, but I said
to myself, I got a call-back so I must be doing something right.”
She obviously was doing something
right. Again, the response to her call-back was, “We’ll let you know,” followed
by another call-back, and then another with Beguelin and director Mark Lamos.
“I read the same sides,” she said, referring to portions of the script used for
auditions, “and then we just talked about the play and the kind of girl Lottie
was.”
Director Mark Lamos. Photo by Bruce Plotkin Photography
Soon after she got a call that she
was “on hold’ for the part, which meant negotiations were underway. “That
lasted about two weeks and those were the most painful two weeks of my life. I
just wanted to know if the deal was signed, and then, finally, the two weeks
were up and I got a call that contracts were coming in.” She started rehearsals
on Aug. 7.
Over the time of the rehearsals and
the previews, Molnar has developed and deepened Lottie’s character. “During
rehearsals I felt I had lost what was funny in certain places. I really needed
an audience. With previews I kind of gained that back, of what landed where and
how the audience reacted to when I said this or that. And then, Lottie and I
are so related; if she was a real person I think we would be very good
friends.”
Molnar said that in each
performance she’s doing different things, trying to keep Lottie fresh. She
wants to see what else she can discover about the character, but she feels that
right now she is very comfortable with whom Lottie is.
Comfortable she has to be, for
there is a pivotal, emotionally-charged scene in the second act that requires
Lottie to have a phone conversation with the man who is, she believes, her real
father. The audience hears only one side of the conversation, but Molnar has
to, through both dialogue delivery and body language, convey a sense of what
this man is saying to her. Of this extended moment one critic has written: "Her yearning phone call to her putative father is a
highlight."
“At first, it was very difficult,”
Molnar said, “but it felt so great the first time I did it completely off
book,” meaning without script. She and an assistant director ran through the
lines again and again and then she went back to her apartment and went through
the lines, once again, to judge where were the best moments to insert beats –
pauses – to heighten the emotion. She also envisioned the man she was speaking
to. In fact, she wrote down lines for what he was saying to her that would
evoke her spoken responses. Surprisingly, Beguelin had done the same thing, and
it turned out that the lines were similar.
Rehearsals are done in dim, echoing
theaters, but a play comes to true life only when there are bodies in the seats
beyond the footlights responding to what is going on up on the stage. There’s
the needed electricity. “The first preview audience we had was absolutely
fantastic,” Molnar said. “They were laughing at things that we had no idea were
funny. I think we rediscovered a lot of things we might have already known but
forgot during the process.”
As opening night approached, Molnar
decided to “Google” her fellow cast members. It was probably not the smartest
thing to do. “I was so nervous,” Molnar said. “Everyone was such a big deal. I
had to fight against getting really, really scared, but everybody has been so
sweet and so nice, and what I like about them is that they don’t treat me as if
I’m 17, they treat me like an adult and I love that. I couldn’t have asked for
a better relationship with the cast. I love them all.”
Alexis Molnar and Kate Nowlin. Photo by T. Charles Erickson
During the “process,” as Molnar
terms it, one of the hardest things to work on was her character’s relationship
with Donna, her mother, played by Nowlin. Donna, as written, is a skewed force
of nature, one of the walking wounded of the chemical wars, a woman who often
flies off the handle, embarrassing her daughter. Molnar had to work on how to
respond to the infantile rants and sulks of the “adult” in the family. “One
thing I struggled with was my attitude towards Donna.” Molnar said. “I would
normally use a lot of anger and Mark would always reassure me, you’re not angry
with her, you’re just frustrated and you’ve had enough, but don’t play anger.
Give her some of her own medicine back. That took a little bit for me to get
because I would always come at her with such a force.”
Paul
Anthony Stewart. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
Then there was the matter of how to
deal with the final scenes of the play. Without providing a “spoiler,” suffice
it to say that relationships change radically in the latter part of the play
and Lottie finally finds the “harbor” for which she has been so desperately
searching.
“The original way we had the last
scene – everybody was crying. I was hysterical, Donna was hysterical. The first
few times we did it everybody was crying. Mark finally said, ‘We need to
lighten this up. There’s too much going on.’”
Bobby Steggert in “Harbor.” Photo by T. Charles Erickson
Acting in “Harbor” has changed
Molnar. As she puts it, she has “matured greatly.” The opportunity to work with
her seasoned cast members in a venue that has, over the years, showcased just
about every acting luminary in American theater is, she acknowledged, a chance of
a lifetime. “This will be one of my greatest memories,” she said, “and I feel
so confident in myself that I was able to accomplish this.”
And then…there is another reality.
Once “Harbor” closes, it’s back to high school…and re-taking the SATs…and
filling out all of those college applications, stuff that most 17-year-olds are
dealing with. “I have to go back to being 17,” Molnar said, accented with a
sigh. Then she perked up. “The auditions are just going to keep on coming in
and we’ll see what hits.”
Given her work in “Harbor,” one can
only imagine that there will be a lot of “hits,” for the young lady who
couldn’t find a fit in tennis, soccer or track has found a harbor in acting.
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