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Video: The Cast of THE COTTAGE Is Getting Ready for Broadway
May 17, 2024
Broadway rehearsals are underway for the uproarious new American comedy The Cottage, written by Sandy Rustin and directed by Tony Award winner Jason Alexander (“Seinfeld”) making his Broadway directorial debut. Watch what the cast has to say about the new play in this video!
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Sandy Rustin's new comedy, The Cottage, is coming to Broadway. Under the direction of Jason Alexander, it welcomes back to Broadway, Eric McCormick and Laura Bell Bundy
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and I caught up with everyone in the company during a break in rehearsal
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Welcome home, my friend. How does it feel? Overwhelming. Overwhelming. It's one thing to come back as an actor and go, yeah, well, sure
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I've done that before. I've been directing for 30 years in my wildest imagination
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I never thought, well, I'll direct a Broadway show. And it's no different than directing anything else
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You just have more and better of everything. So you start to go, am I good enough for this
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This is like very good. I hope I'm okay. It's thrilling. And it's thrilling in general
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And it's particularly thrilling because of what play this is and how much a director gets to do with it
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and the people I get to play with. It's overwhelming and lovely
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You know, I was really, I love this genre of comedy. I loved it as an actor
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And I thought, as I started to write more and more plays, I thought what would happen if I took this genre
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and tried to write it through the female lens? Because so often these kinds of plays
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were written with a focus on the men. And so that was my exploration
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How do you describe the cottage in a few words Let see It is a play about fate and fidelity and feminism I give you three Fs Well first of all welcome home to Broadway How does it feel
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Well, it's weird. You say that. It does feel a little like home. I'm not a New Yorker. I'm a Canadian, but every, as it turns out, 11 years, I come back
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And when I'm here, this community feels so welcoming, you guys, other actors, you know, going to see shows, which I haven't done yet, but I can't wait
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I mean, it makes me so happy to be part of it. When you read this, what made you say, yes, I'm doing the cottage
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Well, two words. Jason, Alexander, are the two words. He and I have been friends for a number of years
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He directed me in a production of The Fantastics about 12 years ago, and we'd been talking about another project
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and then this came out of the blue. He said, it's last minute. We have to make a decision, would you want
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And within about an hour, I said, I'm in. So the idea of doing a new comedy on Broadway makes me really excited
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And the fact that he's directing is the icing on the cake. Well, I've been wanting to do a play for 15 years
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So someone finally took a chance to be like, yeah, she can do more than sing and dance
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So thank you, Jason Alexander. Yeah, I read the script, and it's so funny
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It has such a great message to it as well, underlying in all of the jokes
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And it an incredible part and she goes through a wonderful transformation And it checked all the boxes for me And very rarely you get that Hey here this great here a play right
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But also, here's all, it's a great story, it's funny, the character's great, it checked all the boxes
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Okay, well, funny little story. I initially had an audition for Deirdre in the cottage, and I read the play, and I said
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you know what? I don't think I'm a Deirdre. I think I'm a Marjorie. And I held out and I auditioned for Marjorie and I booked it because that's how connected I felt to this character
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And that's how much I loved to the play. I knew I had to be in it and I knew I had to play this part
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It's so funny on the page and so many things, you know, you read it and you go, oh, I can make this funny
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You don't actually have to make this funny. It's funny on the page. You could do this with six actors, any six actors in the world and it would still be funny
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The great thing is we've got like an amazing six actors. I'm including myself in that
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but there are really funny, funny people in this show. And I just, I love that it also has a great message about not just finding yourself
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but how awkward the process is in discovering who you want to be
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And, you know, young people sort of get that experience a lot. You've seen super bad
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You've seen all these movies where that kind of happens. This is a show where you get to see adults going through the awkward phase of discovering who they are
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And I really, I love it. I think it's really lovely. Being in the room with this group of actors
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what that's been like. Yeah. I mean I hate to use the word miserable but God Almighty A slog No it has been delightful I mean everybody in the cast is so strong and funny
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and everybody has great ideas that they bring to the table. Everybody's, like, prepared
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It's a room full of, I mean, it's a murderer's row, so it's been a gas
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So when you found out, you got it. Like, did you scream? Who did you tell? I actually, my agent's called and I said, are you serious
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I was like, really? Just because it was so different coming off of Beetlejuice also
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So I just thought this is like the perfect follow-up if I could have been like, what will we do
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We'll revive the farce for the summer. Maybe that will happen. And I'll get to play someone who's like 25, 26 as opposed to like 12
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That would be fun. But still be in comedy. So it just, it kind of all came together flawlessly
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And I found out about like eight weeks after we closed. So it was like a really great time
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I still had a vacation. What you're looking forward to to that first performance with a live audience at the theater
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So with a comedy, you're always kind of, you know, it's like putting your fingers in your ears
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and seeing if there's a landmine out there. You're trying to go, we think this is funny
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What do you think? You know, you're waiting for, do they get it
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Do they appreciate it? Do they love it? Does the audience elevate it
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Does the audience inspire the next level? And so that's what you're hoping for, is to
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It's like, you know, the car drove great on the racetrack, now put it in traffic, and let's see how it does
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And so we're waiting to get into the fast lane
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