NYS Writers Institute Director Paul Grondahl attended a one-night-only stage adaptation of William Kennedy's Pulitzer-winning novel Ironweed, starring with four-time Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo and Jessica Hecht, before a sold-out audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater.
Below is the story he wrote for the Albany Times Union, published May 22, 2024, and reprinted with permission.
A stage adaptation of William Kennedy's "Ironweed" received a warm reception from a sold-out audience of 874 in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater on May 17. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)
Mark Ruffalo brings 'Ironweed' to life for one night in BrooklynMark Ruffalo was talking about a “fetid crotch.”
By Paul Grondahl
BROOKLYN -- four-time Oscar nominee portrayed Francis Phelan in a stage adaptation of William Kennedy’s novel “Ironweed” before a sold-out audience May 17 in Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 874-seat Harvey Theater.
In a panel discussion after a staged reading of three scenes, moderator Vinson Cunningham, a New Yorker staff writer and theater critic, zeroed in on Ruffalo’s acting process. He asked about a scene at turns hilarious and heartbreaking, in which Phelan and his homeless paramour Helen (played by Jessica Hecht) tried to avoid sleeping outside on a cold October night by flopping at the apartment of acquaintances Clara (Kristine Nielsen) and Jack (Norbert Leo Butz).
Francis is the doomed protagonist of Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a broken former professional baseball player and downtrodden alcoholic who has been on the lam for 13 years after he dropped and killed his infant son in his north Albany home. In the staged scene, haunted by the ghosts of his past, Francis washed up in Clara’s bathroom sink and thoroughly scrubbed his “fetid crotch.”
“I sort of stumble, fumble and bumble into a character. But a fetid crotch? That I just know,” Ruffalo said with a grin, as the audience roared with laughter. “Who writes like that? Thank you, Bill.”
Kennedy, 96, had performed the role of narrator, seated on stage in a black double-breasted pinstripe suit, and hit each of his cues like a seasoned pro. This starry night featured acclaimed stage actors in the drama about Depression-era Albany. It established a high-water mark in a nearly decade-long quest to bring “Ironweed” to Broadway.
This new stage iteration was conceived by director Jodie Markell and producer Brad Gilbert, and was workshopped in the summer of 2017 at Vassar College’s Powerhouse Theater. There was a staged reading in 2018 at the Off-Broadway Atlantic Theater in New York – also starring Ruffalo and Hecht. The coronavirus pandemic shut down live theater and derailed the project.
Gilbert and Markell pivoted to an audio drama format and expanded the creative team to include sound designer Skip Lievsay (“Gravity,” “Roma”) and composer Tamar-kali (“Mudbound”). Fleeting samples of their work could be heard in the appetizer-sized program on the Brooklyn stage last Friday night: a lush, atmospheric orchestral score, the haunting sound of a clattering train, the ethereal vocal effects of ghosts that terrorized Francis.
I saw the 2018 staged reading of the entire play at the Atlantic Theater. It was quite good, but the selected scenes at Brooklyn Academy of Music packed a more powerful emotional punch with the added layers of sound and lighting designed by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (“Kimberly Akimbo” on Broadway). Markell noted the Friday performance was a work-in-progress as actors read from printed scripts and moved through blocking the director gave them during two days of rehearsals.
Also new was Kennedy’s “Ironweed” origin story, the author’s monologue that offered fresh insights. He talked about a memory from when he was 8 years old, in 1936, when a stranger knocked on the back door of the family's North Albany home and young Bill answered it. “Can you give me something to eat? I haven’t had anything to eat in two days,” said the man in a ragged suit jacket and battered fedora.
Kennedy’s grandmother fixed the man a meal of bread and butter, a piece of chicken, cup of coffee and three Oreo cookies. She fetched two dimes and a nickel and had her grandson deliver it to the stranger with the admonition: “Tell him not to spend it all in one place.”
The man said, “You’re a lucky boy. Your grandma’s an angel.”
Kennedy also never forgot a moment from a few years earlier when his father drove him to see a “Hooverville,” where dozens of tar paper shanties sprouted up in an encampment of the unemployed along the Hudson River near their house. “They lost their jobs and lost their homes. This is all they’ve got,” said the father, himself laid off from a factory job. He landed a Democratic patronage position as a deputy sheriff.
Kennedy recalled teaming up with photographer Bernie Kolenberg for a four-part series of articles that ran in the Times Union in 1964 that examined life on Albany’s “skid row.” Kennedy conducted an extended interview with a homeless alcoholic couple, Buddy and Helen, who inspired the characters in “Ironweed.”
In an introduction to the Brooklyn show, titled “Ironweed: An Evening of Art and Humanity,” Markell wrote that she read the novel as a student at Northwestern University and it stuck with her. “He speaks the language of the soul with the humor and heartbreak of the street,” she wrote.
She drew a connection between the novel’s Depression-era Hoovervilles, when an estimated 2 million Americans were without homes and migratory, and more than 500,000 homeless people across the nation today, a number that continues to rise.
In the panel discussion, Shakeema North, executive director of Covenant House New York, said her most pressing needs include finding shelter beds for scores of homeless teens and affordable apartments for a wave of migrants. “They’re just looking to survive the next 20 minutes,” which echoed a line in a scene with Helen and Francis outside the City Rescue Mission.
Ruffalo said members of his family have struggled with mental illness and he sees staggering numbers of mentally ill homeless people in tent encampments akin to modern-day Hoovervilles that clog the streets and sidewalks of Los Angeles. The scene reminds him that “none of us has far to fall to become one of those lost souls.”
He added: “The extent of homelessness in L.A. is mind-boggling and you’re surrounded by the wealth of Hollywood. It’s such a failure of our society.”Both actors praised Kennedy’s writing for imbuing his characters with humanity and the possibility of redemption. “Bill’s language is extraordinary. I consider the play as complex as ‘Hamlet,’ ” Hecht said.
Kennedy’s clan who traveled to Brooklyn included his three grown children, two grandchildren and two in-laws, as well as an Albany contingent. Albany Distilling Co. co-owner John Curtin and director of marketing Harith Saam brought bottles of Ironweed whiskey that bartenders poured at the after-party.
Markell, Gilbert and Kennedy celebrated the success of the event. The notoriously fickle New York audience offered a warm, sustained ovation. They hoped “Ironweed” might now find a path to Broadway.
“Let’s do the play right here,” Ruffalo said, gesturing at the gloriously decomposing interior of the 1904 former vaudeville theater with an “Ironweed” vibe. It was turned into a movie theater in 1942 before it was abandoned in 1968 and left to decay.“This is the perfect place. It’s the only ruins in America,” Ruffalo said.
Paul Grondahl is the Opalka Endowed Director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com
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