From roles in ‘Melrose Place’ and ‘Cry-Baby,’Amy Locane finds a new home at Hopewell’s Off-Broadstreet Theatre.
By: Anthony Stoeckert
Amy Locane has been acting since she was 12 years old and has seen quite a bit of success during her career. She had a regular role as a budding starlet on the hit TV show Melrose Place, acted opposite Johnny Depp in Cry-Baby and appeared in other films like School Ties and Secretary.
One thing missing from the Trenton native’s résumé, however, was stage work. Not once had Ms. Locane worked in theater, not even in a high school play.
That’s changed with her role as Barbara Smith in Off-Broadstreet Theatre’s production of Run For Your Wife, Ray Cooney’s British farce about John Smith, a taxi driver with two wives, and his desperate attempts to keep his life (lives) in tact. That’s not easy on this day when he’s made the newspapers for stopping a mugging and injured his head in the process.
"She’s sort of the flashier wife," Ms. Locane says of her character. "And she just kind of wants to go to bed with her husband. She’s taken the day off and she wants a romantic day. She wants a day where they can just stay in bed, eat French fries and sort of lounge around all day. But she’s being incredibly aggressive about how much she wants to relax that day with her husband."
Hopewell is a different world from Hollywood, but Ms. Locane says she’s exactly where she wants to be.
"I wasn’t really happy with the work that I was getting in L.A.," she says. "So I came back here, met my fiancé and got settled very, very quickly." The couple moved to Hopewell in January, just before the birth of their daughter, Paige.
Upon seeing Off-Broadstreet, the actress thought it might be a good place for her to work. She dropped off her picture and resume to theater owners Bob and Julie Thick while walking with Paige and the family dog.
That led to an audition on an errand-filled day with Paige resting in her car seat while her mother read for the part (Paige also sat peacefully among the theater’s tables during the interview for this story).
"I had all this stuff going on, and then I had to come in here and read," Ms. Locane says of her audition. "It was a cold reading, so I couldn’t see any of the material beforehand, which makes you a little nervous because you don’t know what it’s going to be like."
Moving back east stemmed from her desire to raise a family where she grew up, and because of her dissatisfaction with the roles she was getting in California. But she never lost her love for acting, and performing at Off-Broadstreet gives her a creative outlet, while also allowing her to focus on her family.
Not that there weren’t adjustments. Ms. Locane was confident of her acting skills, but differences between shooting a television show or a movie and performing live on stage couldn’t be ignored. Run For Your Wife’s script runs 142 pages. A movie script can consist of 150 pages, but an actor usually only has to memorize five pages on any individual shooting day. Early in rehearsal, while listening to direction from Mr. Thick, thoughts of those 143 pages would enter her mind.
"There was just this panic maybe that happened the first two weeks, where I was like, ‘When are we going to able to do this?’ and ‘This is so much information,’ and ‘Can I do this?’" she says. "But at the same time, that was also challenging to me. That’s why I keep pushing myself, and that’s why I like to be creatively challenged. At the end of the day it’s fun, and it makes me happy."
By opening night, her heart was pounding, and after the first act, she was backstage running around with excitement over the process.
Another challenge to theater is keeping every performance fresh. Ms. Locane credits the audience in helping her achieve that.
"Each audience is different, so I think even though it seems like I have to do the same thing every night, if you look at it from the perspective of the audience, (they’re) seeing it for the first time and they all react differently," she says.
She also experiments with making slight changes in line readings. "I would never change stage direction, or I would never change general things about the character, but sometimes I’ll change the reading of a line because that keeps it fresh for me."
Her work in television and movies have led to her being recognized around town, most often for her work on Melrose Place and School Ties. That 1992 film has become a DVD favorite. A member of the wait staff at Off-Broadstreet brought in her copy for the Thicks to watch, then asked if it would be OK to have Ms. Locane autograph it.
"Amy was very nice about it, and said, ‘Sure, I’ll sign it,’" Ms. Thick says.
Ms. Locane says people are sometimes surprised to see her walking around Hopewell, apparently believing life in Hollywood is more exciting than in central New Jersey. But she says she definitely prefers the Garden State. "I always knew I would come back home when I wanted to settle down and raise a family and raise children and have a normal life."
And besides, the West Coast can be particularly tough for an actress when she’s not getting the kind of roles she wants.
"You don’t lose your passion for acting, you don’t lose your passion for what you do but you lose your tolerance, I think, for what the business throws at you," she says. "And as a 35-year-old person, I was pretty well aware of the fact that the girls are getting younger and there’s a whole new generation popping up."
Off-Broadstreet is offering her everything she could want. The humor in Run For Your Wife reminds of her the Benny Hill reruns her English grandmother watched. It’s also a comic role where timing and rhythm are everything, providing her a chance to play a different kind of character. In many ways, Run For Your Wife is an old-fashioned farce, complete with slamming doors and a plot that is always building and getting more absurd as John Smith (played by Steve Lobis) and his friend Stanley (Gavin Lawrence) keep telling lie after lie.
Ms. Locane’s dialogue over the first 20 minutes comes while her character is talking on the phone, with a British accent no less. That not only involves imagining the other end of the conversation, but also performing "around" the other actors, who are on stage although their characters are in a completely different place from Ms. Locane’s.
"It was very hard to do because I’m looking out into an audience and I had never done stage (work) before," Ms. Locane says.
She also loves Off-Broadstreet, having fallen for its charms when she took in a performance of The Goodbye Girl in spring.
"It was a great production," she says. "(The theater is) just absolutely adorable, it’s what it should be. It’s small and it’s good."
Run For Your Wife continues at Off-Broadstreet Theatre, 5 S. Greenwood Ave, through July 21. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m. (dessert at 7 p.m.), Sun. 2:30 p.m. (dessert at 1:30 p.m.) Tickets cost $22.50-$27.25; $23.75 seniors (Sundays only); (609) 466-2766; www.off-broadstreet.com