PBS高端访谈:约翰·利斯高将睡前故事搬上百老汇（在线收听）

Judy Woodruff: Next, a master class in the art of storytelling. Jeffrey Brown recently traveled to New York for a talk with actor John Lithgow.

John Lithgow: I recognized all those things that we thought were so damn funny all those years ago.

Jeffrey Brown: The power of storytelling, the magic of theater- on display in John Lithgow's solo Broadway show "Stories By Heart."

John Lithgow: How a good storyteller can make you laugh, make you cry, keep you on the edge of your seats. One of the first lines in my evening is, all theater is stories, and all actors are storytellers. We're part of the process. We're putting on a fiction, which hopefully reaches out and touches an audience, gives them emotional exercise, attempts to create a brief suspension of disbelief. That's what I do. You will hear a lot more about that in a little while.

Jeffrey Brown: Lithgow has been presenting versions of "Stories By Heart" around the country since 2008. Now on Broadway in a production directed by Daniel Sullivan, he tells part of his own story of a young boy whose father introduced him to a world of storytelling and theater.

John Lithgow: We would pick the stories, and he would read them out loud, performing all the parts full-out. When I hold it in my hands now, my father comes back. I try to recreate the sort of period of discovery that I went through as a boy with my siblings, just listening to my father read great stories. It was probably the closest we ever felt to my father, was bedtime stories with this big, fat book.

Jeffrey Brown: Are you worried that it's lost, that art of storytelling?

John Lithgow: Yes, I am worried about that. I mean, there's a certain missionary zeal to what I'm doing here. You see, the concern he'd been working for sold canned goods.

Jeffrey Brown: In the show, Lithgow performs two of the stories he heard as a child, playing all the roles, including a small-town barber with a whopper of a tale in Ring Lardner's story "Haircut."

John Lithgow: It was a Saturday, and the shop was full. And Jim got up out of that chair and said, gentlemen, I got an important announcement to make. I been fired from my job. The evening is a meditation on, why do all of us need stories, want, need and love stories? And there's no question we all do.

Jeffrey Brown: Now 72, Lithgow has had a varied, enduring, and much honored career.

John Lithgow: I have got to see. Oh, my God, I'm gorgeous!

Jeffrey Brown: His best-known role, for which he won three Emmy Awards, may be from the hit TV comedy series "3rd Rock From the Sun," in which he played the commander of an alien expedition come to Earth. Just last year, he won another Emmy for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the Netflix drama "The Crown."

Actress: It is said you can be difficult.

John Lithgow: I can be a monster. Did they say that?

Actress: Yes, sir.

John Lithgow: It's true. But you need to be a monster to defeat Hitler.

Jeffrey Brown: He received an Oscar nomination for the 1982 film "The World According to Garp," where he played a transgender woman.

John Lithgow: You like football?

Robin Wlliams: Oh, yes, I used to watch it quite a bit.

John Lithgow: Well, you might have seen me. I was a tight end with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Jeffrey Brown: And has appeared in more than 50 other movies, including last year's "Beatriz at Dinner."

Actress: When I first came to the United States a long time ago...

John Lithgow: Did you come legally?

Actress: Yes.

Actress: Oh, this tenderloin was amazing.

Jeffrey Brown: But theater has been there from the start, the very start, in fact. In this 1947 photo, 2-year-old John Lithgow is seen making his on-stage debut in "The Emperor's New Clothes" at a theater in Ohio. And that man holding his hand, that's his father, Arthur Lithgow, an actor and producer of Shakespeare festivals and much else at regional theaters around the country.

John Lithgow: My father produced a lot of these plays multiple times, directing several of them, and acting in several with a kind of exuberant flamboyance that you might have recognized from someone else in the room.

John Lithgow: This is my unusually nice Broadway dressing room.

Jeffrey Brown: This is as good as it gets?

John Lithgow: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: Arthur Lithgow read to his children from a book called "Tellers of Tales". Many years later, the book serves as John Lithgow's one prop.

John Lithgow: Yes, this is "Tellers of Tales," which this is the actual book, which is why it looks so old and ratty.

Jeffrey Brown: One of the stories here, Ring Lardner's "Haircut."

John Lithgow: Chatting, chatting, just chatting. He can't stop. He's a chatty barber. And I mime absolutely every detail of an old-time shave and a haircut.

Jeffrey Brown: And so too is the other story Lithgow performs in "Stories By Heart," a hilarious rollick by P.G. Wodehouse called "Uncle Fred Flits By," in which Lithgow plays 11 different characters.

John Lithgow: A letter from a young man. I found to my horror that a young man of whom I knew nothing was arranging to marry my daughter. I sent for him immediately, and found him to be quite impossible. He jellies eels!

Jeffrey Brown: And there is more to this story. When Arthur Lithgow was ill and grew depressed late in life, John spent a month caring for him and his mother, Sarah, and turned the storytelling tables.

John Lithgow: I surprised them with the book when I got this idea. They were all in bed — and told them to pick a story. And nobody can make you laugh with just simple prose more than P.G. Wodehouse. And they picked P.G. Wodehouse. And, by God, I made my father laugh. He hadn't been laughing at all. And this was a man who laughed all his life.

Jeffrey Brown: It sounds like, at the end, at different times, he felt like he had not succeeded.

John Lithgow: I don't think any actor or director, anybody who creates theater, feels they have succeeded at the end of their lives. What we do is — it's not indispensable. We entertain people. We create little moments that are then gone. Never let them see the real Elizabeth Windsor.

Jeffrey Brown: But Lithgow says, in his case, growing older has its perks.

John Lithgow: I'm an old actor, no question about it. Turns out being an old actor is tremendous.

John Lithgow: I think all my competition has fallen away.

John Lithgow: I'm very aware of how lucky I am to be this viable at this age. And I'm just grabbing for all the gusto I can get. I have been selling canned goods, and now I'm canned goods myself.

Jeffrey Brown: Arthur Lithgow died in 2004. His son John performs "Stories By Heart" on Broadway through early March. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jeffrey Brown from New York.

朱迪·伍德瑞夫：接下来，大师为您带来讲故事的艺术。最近，杰弗里·布朗亲访纽约，对话演员约翰·利斯高。

约翰·利斯高：我意识到多年前我们想的那些事情实在太滑稽了。

杰弗里·布朗：故事的魅力，舞台的魔力，全都尽在约翰·利斯高的百老汇独角戏“Stories By Heart”。

约翰·利斯高：故事讲得好，能让你笑，能让你哭，让你聚精会神，让你翘首以盼。今晚我首先要说，剧场里只有故事，所有演员都是讲述者。我们完全融入了表演。我们将一部小说表演出来，希望它能触及观众，打动观众，让观众动情，我们试着制造某种悬念。我就是我所做的。一会儿你会听到。

杰弗里·布朗：

2008年起，利斯高一直努力为全国观众呈现各种不同版本的《Stories By Heart》。现在利斯高把它搬上百老汇舞台，该版本由丹尼尔·沙利文导演。剧中，他讲述了自己的故事，那是一个年轻的男孩，是父亲把他带入了一个故事与戏剧的世界。

约翰·利斯高：我们会选择那些故事，他会大声把它们读出来，并将它们全部表演出来。当我现在手里握着它的时候，我感到我爸爸回来了。我试着重现童年时代和兄弟姐妹们一起亲历的那种发现感，听父亲读一些很棒的故事。这可能是我们对父亲最亲近的感觉，在睡前听他讲这本又大又厚的故事书。

杰弗里·布朗：你是不是担心人们丧失了这种讲故事的艺术？

约翰·利斯高：是的，我很担心。我的意思是，对我这件事，有一种传教士般的热情。你看，他一直在为出售罐头而担心。

杰弗里·布朗：在剧中，利斯高表演了他儿时听过的两个故事，一人扮演多角，这其中也包括饰演林·拉德纳小说《理发》中一个谎话连篇的小镇理发师。

约翰·利斯高：那是一个星期六，理发店里挤满了人。吉姆从椅子上站起来说，先生们，我有一个重要的消息要宣布。我失业了。那个夜晚大家都陷入了沉思，为什么我们所有人都需要、渴望、热爱故事？毫无疑问，我们人人如此。

杰弗里·布朗：利斯高现年已72岁，拥有一个与众不同，历久弥新，而又无上光荣的事业。

约翰·利斯高：我得看看。哦，天哪，我是多么帅气英俊！

杰弗里·布朗：他最著名的角色作品可能要数热播电视连续剧《歪星撞地球》，该角色让他三次成为艾美奖得主。剧中他扮演了一位地球远征队外星人指挥官。就在去年，他因在Netflix剧集《王冠》中饰演温斯顿·邱吉尔，再获艾美奖。

女演员：他们说您很难相处。

杰弗里·布朗：我会是个怪物。他们是这样说的吧？

女演员：是的，先生。

约翰·利斯高：他们说得对。但你们需要一个能打败希特勒的怪物。

杰弗里·布朗：1982年，他凭借电影《盖普眼中的世界》获得奥斯卡提名，剧中他扮演了一位变性女人。

约翰·利斯高：你喜欢踢足球？

罗宾·威廉斯：哦，是的，我过去经常看球赛。

约翰·利斯高：那你可能见过我的身影，我在费城老鹰队踢边锋。

杰弗里·布朗：此外，他还饰演了另外50多部电影，包括去年的《晚宴上的比特丽兹》。

女演员：多年以前，我第一次来到美国时...

约翰·利斯高：你是合法来的么？

女演员：是呀。

女演员：哦，这肉真不错。

杰弗里·布朗：而事实上，他的演艺之路早早就开始了。在这张拍摄于1947年的照片中，年仅两岁的约翰·利斯高在俄亥俄剧院“皇帝的新衣”中，首次亮相舞台。握着他手的那个人，就是他的父亲，亚瑟罗根·利斯高。他父亲在莎士比亚戏剧节中担当演员和制片人，并在全国各地的影院中亮相。

约翰·利斯高：我父亲创作了很多戏剧，多次创作，也导演了一些，表演时更是火焰一般全情投入，这样的感觉状态，你可能也能从这房间中其他人身上找到。

约翰·利斯高：这便是我超棒的百老汇化妆间。

杰弗里·布朗：真是棒极了！

约翰·利斯高：是的。

杰弗里·布朗：亚瑟罗根·利斯高为他的孩子们讲的第一本故事书名叫《Tellers of Tales》。许多年后，这本书已成为约翰·利斯高的一个道具。

约翰·利斯高：是的，这就是《Tellers of Tales》，原本，所以看起来有旧又破。

杰弗里·布朗：林·拉德纳的《理发》就在里面。

约翰·利斯高：聊天，聊天，就是聊天。他停不下来。他是个健谈的理发师。我完全模仿了旧时刮胡子和理发的每一个细节。

杰弗里·布朗：《Uncle Fred Flits By》是P.G.·沃德豪斯在《Stories By Heart》中的一部欢闹喜剧。在其中，利斯高一人扮演了十一个不同的人物角色。

约翰·利斯高：一位年轻人给我来信。我惊恐地发现一个我一无所知的年轻人正准备迎娶我的女儿。我立刻派人去找他，令人不可思议。他做鳗鱼冻！

杰弗里·布朗：这个故事还有很多内容。垂暮之年，亚瑟罗根·利斯高病倒了，心情变得沮丧，约翰花了一个月，照顾他和母亲，莎拉，为他们讲故事。

约翰·利斯高：我拿着书说到这个想法时，他们很吃惊。他们都在床上，我让他们去选一个故事。由于P.G.·沃德豪斯非常擅长用简单的话语让人发笑。他们选择了P.G.·沃德豪斯的书。哦，天，我父亲笑了。此前他脸上没有一丝笑容。而这曾是一个笑了一辈子的人。

杰弗里·布朗：听起来像是，最终在不同时期里，他觉得自己没有成功。

约翰·利斯高：我认为演员或导演，或任何缔造舞台的人物，在生命行将结束之际，都不会认为自己成功了。我们所做的并非是什么不可或缺的东西。我们娱乐大众。我们创造的舞台瞬间，稍纵即逝。永远不要让人看到伊丽莎白·温莎的真容。

杰弗里·布朗：但是，利斯高说，对他而言，变老也有变老的好处。

约翰·利斯高：我是个老演员，这点毫无疑问。变成老演员很好。

约翰·利斯高：我想，所有的竞争都已经离我远去。

约翰·利斯高：我很清楚我在这个时代能幸存下来是多么幸运。我将投身我所有的热情。以前我一直在卖罐头，而现在我自己成罐头了。

杰弗里·布朗：2004年亚瑟罗根·利斯高病逝。他的儿子约翰3月初在百老汇演出《Stories By Heart》。PBS NewsHour，我是杰弗里·布朗，在纽约为您报道。