“It’s about abandonment,” said Brian Hatcher, who’s playing the role of Sterling, a vicious international businessman and stamp collector. “It’s about survival. It’s a hard story.
“There are comic moments,” he added. “Some of them are comic ‘ha-ha,’ and some of them are comic ‘Wow, my skin is crawling.’ ”
The plot involves two half-sisters who’ve inherited a stamp collection that might contain stamps worth millions and three philatelists who want the stamps.
It’s a complex plot, and behind the scenes, the Harlequin production also has had its share of complexity.
Managing artistic director Scot Whitney took the helm of the show last week after director David Nail chose to leave the project.
“We were in agreement about what needed to happen but not in agreement about how to make it happen,” Whitney said. “It was perfectly amicable. He said, ‘It’s really going to be better if you would just take over.’ ”
Whitney was prepared to steer the show toward opening night, he said, comparing the process to the way a pilot, not the captain, steers a cruise ship into the harbor. He knew and loved the script.
“It’s just a really fascinating and dynamic script about the most inane subject,” he said.
Playwright Theresa Rebeck has often been compared to David Mamet (whose “Oleanna” was recently produced by Theater Artists Olympia).
“You can definitely feel that in the dialogue,” Whitney said. “It’s really gritty, hard, rapid, with broken sentences. All these character things are developed through the dialog.
“It’s like ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ with people that you could actually like despite their weirdness,” he added. “They’re all damaged in some crazy ways.”
Perhaps most damaged is Sterling, a wealthy, powerful – and dangerous – philatelist, Hatcher said.
“I have a background in social services and in counseling,” he said. He remembered a college professor saying that the chief executives of top corporations are more likely than the average person to be sociopaths.
“I took a look at this guy and said he is a sociopath. There’s no remorse. There’s no connection. He’ll just plow right through whoever is in front of him.”
Hatcher said he’s quite the opposite of the unemotional character. “As my husband says, I cry at commercials.”
Yet the actor found a way to relate to the role. “I thought about, when are those moments when I’ve had to shut it all off and move forward, not caring, because it’s survival mode?”
He invented a back story for Sterling, imagining him raised as a foster child with no real home and no family.
“He scares me,” the actor said. “He’s a man I would not want to meet. I also love him now because I’ve found so many little things about him.”
