Tyne Daly Plays Albee's New Loopy Mom for Laughs at Princeton

By Jeremy Gerard

Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Several busloads of students from the University of Delaware seemed to be collectively scratching their heads Wednesday night, wondering what to make of Edward Albee's new play, ``Me, Myself and I.'' The comedy is having its world premiere at Princeton University's McCarter Theatre complex.

Tyne Daly has done some head-scratching too, which may seem odd since she's one of the stars. When I tell her, during a post-performance talk in the Roger S. Berlind Theatre's green room, that many of the kids around me didn't quite seem to know what to make of Albee's absurdist style, Daly just nodded in agreement, or perhaps sympathy.

``Well, neither do I,'' she said, punctuating with a slightly uneasy laugh. ``This is a confounding piece.''

Best known for her starring roles on television's ``Cagney & Lacey'' and ``Judging Amy,'' Daly plays the mother of adult identical-twin brothers, both named Otto, whom even she can't tell apart.

There's OTTO, who's gone malicious, and otto, who is sweet. As the play opens, OTTO enters the bedroom his mom has shared with her doctor for 28 years and announces that he is leaving to become Chinese. Moreover, he has decided that otto no longer exists, despite significant evidence (including a devoted girlfriend OTTO seduces) to the contrary.

Orange Hair

The Mother (she isn't given a name, though Daly claims to know it), wishing to keep the peace, goes along with her son. Whichever son he is. Daly's hair is dyed a shade of orange that would not appear to exist in nature and looks slightly fright- wiggish. She lounges in bed or traipses across the stage in a couple of stunningly banal shmattes.

Mother, Daly says, is the opposite of Momma Rose, the psycho stage mom she played in a 1989 Broadway revival of ``Gypsy,'' winning a Tony award for her effort.

Here, her performance is full of comic physical grace notes and crazy-logic elocution that put across unreasonable ideas as if they made sense. It's at least as surprising as the play itself. Daly says she took her acting cues from her co-star, the veteran actor Brian Murray, a master of both the brainy and the physical sides of modernist comedy.

``He has a kind of knack that saves our lives every night,'' Daly says.

Until recently, her stage work has been in proven material. Two years ago, however, she appeared in the Broadway premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire's ``Rabbit Hole,'' winning another Tony nomination. Now this.

`Responsibility'

``They only let me free to do theater every couple of decades,'' she jokes. ``I have the Tyne Daly Theater Fund. Who are they? The Vicissitudes of Responsibility, that's who they are.''

The V of R must be lightening up on the purse strings: As soon as the Albee play closes on Feb. 17 she returns to Manhattan, where she mostly lives (there's also a place in L.A., of course) to begin rehearsing a tribute to lyricist Fred Ebb at the 92nd St Y.

``I think it's too late to turn myself into a classical actress, for god's sake. I bought the farm a couple of times doing Chekhov and that stuff,'' she says. ``Because they hate you for trying.''

Instead, she'll continue ignoring the V of R, chancing new plays and hanging out in Manhattan. Well, most of the time.

``When I finished `Judging Amy,' I said, `Folks, I'm going to New York City.' I like it there,'' she said.

``And now I'm working in Jersey. See what happens?''

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)