Mercedes Ruehl is returning to Broadway after a seven-year absence, starring in Manhattan Theatre Club's revival of Richard Greenberg's The American Plan, a 1990 play set in a 1960s Catskills resort. Ruehl plays Eva Adler, a highly intelligent German woman who's obsessively involved with her emotionally unstable daughter (Lily Rabe). Eva isn't easy to play, and that's why Ruehl likes her. The character is a far cry from Stevie, the stunned, enraged, belittled wife in Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, Ruehl's last show on Broadway. She's even further removed from the sweet, mentally limited Bella in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers, for which Ruehl won a Tony Award. In playing Eva, Ruehl finds herself influenced by Irene Worth, who portrayed Bella's mother -- a figure not unlike Eva. "There are certain inflections, and the way I hold my mouth," she says in describing the similarities.
- 1/22/2009
- by Simi Horwitz
- backstage.com
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