ANDY DRACHENBERG: What brought you to this production of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man?
DAKIN MATTHEWS: I grew up with Gore Vidal. I was a huge fan of his fiction. In fact, I was reading mostly everything he had written, especially his political novels so I knew this play. I love political plays. I loved the idea of doing a political play in an election year that is as brilliant as this play is. It’s really one of the great unsung American plays. It’s so popular that people don’t realize what a serious work of art it is. It’s as serious and entertaining and as deep as Death of a Salesman was across the street.
But the big draw, of course, was to work with this cast. I knew many of them beforehand. I knew Angela from Murder She Wrote. I did three episodes of that. I think I’m the only person who’s been both a victim and a killer on that show. I knew Jefferson Mays from San Diego, James Earl Jones is an icon, and I’ve always liked John Larroquette. Really, this was a perfect opportunity to get to work with all of them.
AD: With a career spanning film, television and theatre for 47 years, what keeps you drawn to the theatre?
DM: When I started out, at the age of 25, it was the only medium I knew. I was a stage actor for 20 years in the San Francisco area, specializing in Shakespeare and the classics. It wasn’t until I was 45 or 50 that I moved to LA and started doing television and film. At heart, I’m trained to be a stage actor, especially in literate plays. That’s a particular skill that you develop over a long period of time with a lot of help from a lot of people – teachers, trainers, other actors that you study with.
I have always tried to do at least two plays a year, no matter what I was doing in film and television. I’ve managed to do that so far and have been in about 250 plays. I’m winding down film and television, and going to go back to doing as much theatre as I possibly can. That’s where I feel like I’m doing my most intense work. I love doing television and I love doing films, but the kinds of roles I play in them are not particularly challenging. If you’ve trained to be a mile-runner and somebody asks you to walk across the street to buy a pack of cigarettes, you can walk as well as anybody but you don’t feel like you’re really exercising the muscles. Theatre is where I feel most comfortable and challenged, and where I do my best work. So the opportunity to do this kind of play with this kind of cast is something I could not turn down.
AD: Tell us about your character, Senator Carlin, in this production.
DM: Gore is very careful not to say whether these are Republicans or Democrats but they seem to be Democrats, and Senator Carlin would be a quintessential Blue Dog Southern democrat. He is more of a politician than an ideologue. If he sniffs that somebody is going to be a winner, that’s where he’ll go. He is either from the Southern part of the Midwest or the South. He’s been a long-term senator. I modeled him on a lot of the Southern Blue Dog Democrats that I grew up listening to in the Watergate hearings. I like the sound of them, their tambour.
AD: What is your favorite part of this production?
DM: I’m not a New York Broadway actor. As a repertory actor from California, we don’t always have this same idea of stargazing that they have here. What I really love about this production is that we have so many people who come to see the great stars, but by the third act – after all the entrance applause has finally subsided – the story has grabbed them. They begin to applaud and react to the plot points, ideas and turns in the stories. Even if the stars may bring them in, it is Gore’s story and the ability of the cast to sell that story that grabs them, so that they end more interested in what just happened than who was on stage. That I love.
AD: What kind of research did you do to prepare to live in the era of a 1960s political convention?
DM: We had lengthy discussions in rehearsals about the period in which this play takes place. We talked about the era of the 60s quite a bit, about the politics, ideals, prominent personalities – and what they all represented in the American political life.
I’m very familiar with this period, actually. I grew up in this period. I was 20 in the 60s. I watched all the conventions on television. My wife and I are both political junkies who are very aware of what’s going on politically. But the fact that I grew up politically educated in the 60s was the best preparation I could have possibly had.
AD: Does that political world still resonate with audiences today?
DM: That’s the astonishing thing about this. Gore is not only prescient about how politics operates, he understands how people think and feel. We were extremely fortunate that Rick Santorum was running. I mean, who would have ever in their wildest dreams thought that contraception would become a major political point again. These conflicts between fundamentalist Christianity and secular politics have yet to be resolved in our culture. There was a period of time when they were below the surface, but they’ve come back again with a vengeance. I don’t know that Gore would have predicted that exactly. He was writing honestly about what was happening in the 60s. The fact that it’s still happening in 2012 goes to show we haven’t made the necessary progress that would have hoped to have made by now. The more things change, apparently, the more they stay the same.
That’s been a treat, actually, quite an education. If you just tell the story truly about the 1960s, it’ll ring true in 2012. That’s been a great discovery for us. The way that Gore has been so astute about portraying how people think and feel makes it not a period piece any more than Shakespeare is a period piece.
AD: Would you have voted for Cantwell or Russell?
DM: Russell. Undoubtedly.
AD: Does Gore Vidal side with Russell in this piece?
DM: Absolutely. He sides with him in the sense that he would agree with him ideologically, but Gore is also a realist who knows that politics is a dirty business. Gore sees that Russell needs to be a bit more ruthless. He needs more of what we call realpolitik: to be realistic about what it takes to become a politician. He is too pure and idealistic to do the dirty work. It’s really the same argument that Brutus and Cassius have in Julius Caesar. Brutus maintains his idealism, but Cassius knows that somebody has got to raise the money. Politics is not only the art of compromise, but also a bit the art of ruthlessness.
AD: What kind of audience was Gore Vidal writing for when he created this piece?
DM: Gore is a great popularist. He can write great stories and make them appeal very much to the average reader or viewer. Though he’s an elitist himself, conversing in all the great classics in many languages and cultures, he does not consider it condescending to write very accessible plays and literature, so I recommend this play for anyone to come see. I love doing it. It’s a great play and it’s been a great experience. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in our extended run.
DAKIN MATTHEWS (Senator Clyde Carlin, u/s Ex-President Arthur Hockstader). Man For All Seasons, Henry IV(Broadway), Cherry Orchard, Winter’s Tale (BAM), Measure for Measure, All’s Well (Shakespeare/Park), Hostage, School for Scandal(Acting Company). Regional: over 250 plays. TV: over 250 shows. Film: True Grit, Lincoln, Nuts.