Chameleon on a Tartan

"I don't know anything about what is supposed to be 'the real me.' I guess that's why I'm an actress--a chameleon on a tartan." With that translucent self-appraisal, Rosemary Harris avoids direct comment on the fact that most theater people consider her the most talented actress on the U.S. stage today. Besides, she adds, "it's bad form to talk about one's art. I just like to pin mine to a wall and watch it bleed."

She is currently starring as a bedazzling Lady Teazle in Sheridan's The School for Scandal, put on by the Association of Producing Artists, now established as New York's most professional repertory theater. Before the season is out, she will be playing in APA productions of Pirandello, Ibsen, Shakespeare and a rerun of You Can't Take It With You. In addition to all that diversity on Broadway and in touring stints in Toronto, Ann Arbor and Los Angeles, she will be seen this week in NBC-TV's Hallmark Hall of Fame playing Elvira in Blithe Spirit.

Physical Plasticity. There aren't many chameleons around who, at 39, can boast that kind of versatility. But her age is unimportant. Katharine Cornell calls her "the best young actress I know," and Helen Hayes, who is trouping this season with APA, says that she is "the Joan of Arc of the old pros." Sir Laurence Olivier, who invited her to play Ophelia in the London premiere of the National Theater Company in 1963, and also directed her in Uncle Vanya, says that she played "the most beautiful scene I've ever seen in my life."

Part of her secret lies in the fact that she commands a physical plasticity beyond the magic of makeup men. She has conquered more than 130 roles, from the giddy 13-year-old Natasha in War and Peace, to the 61-year-old lioness in The Lion in Winter, to the steely title role in Giraudoux's Judith. Her voice is all champagne in the comedies, darkens to cognac in the heavier roles. She is a body actress, ruling the stage with grace and power and actually seeming to lean into her lines.

She will not take on a part until she has read deeply in the period and "comprehended it with my mind." She does not disown Stanislavsky, but refuses to study him because "I don't want to pluck out the heart of the mystery." While rehearsing The Lion in Winter, she found "Eleanor of Aquitaine's troubles becoming more important to me than my own. It was so painful, so masochistic, I asked why am I torturing myself? Should I play only buoyant, happy parts?"

Repertory Discipline. Like many of today's best performers, Rosemary Harris comes from Britain. She got into acting only after her father, an R.A.F. officer, acquired "a new and expensive wife," and announced that he could no longer afford to send her to nursing school. She got a job with a stock company in Sussex, later went on to the Royal Academy and the Old Vic. In 1952, Moss Hart brought her to the U.S. in The Climate of Eden. While working in a Wellesley, Mass., repertory company, she met Ellis Rabb, a Tennessean who had studied acting at Carnegie Tech. They got married, and a month later Rabb launched the APA and remains its strong guiding hand.

By her own definition, Rosemary Harris is not a star and has no desire to succumb to the demands of a star's life. She much prefers the repertory work of the APA or the discipline of the London theater. "Sir Laurence," she says, "told me when I see daylight, all I have to do is cable him 'Daylight, signed Rosie,' and there I'll be."

Wherever she plays, it is the play and the part that bring out the chameleon--and the satisfaction. "If a performance has gone well," she says, "that is the elation. That is what sends me singing up the stairs to my dressing room. Not the applause. I feel released and high and sent and fulfilled. If I've worked well and the tensions are gone--then I'd be perfectly happy if somebody called, 'Five minutes,' and we started all over. I'd be ready to go."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.