(Bruce Weber’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/16; via Pam Green.)
Melvin Bernhardt, who directed two Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas and won a Tony himself for Hugh Leonard’s Tony-winning play “Da,” died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 84.
His husband, Jeff Woodman, said that Mr. Bernhardt had been in declining health and had stopped taking nourishment after breaking his arm in a recent fall.
Mr. Bernhardt, who was known for his astute casting and skillful work with actors, directed many leading stage performers on Broadway, including Ron Leibman and Linda Lavin in “Cop-Out” (1969), an early satirical one-act by John Guare involving a police officer, a femme fatale, a murdered cat, a vasectomy and a dead body in the aisle of the theater forcing exiting theatergoers to step over it; Julie Harris and Estelle Parsons as sisters living with the emotional wreckage left by a domineering mother in Paul Zindel’s “And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little” (1971); and Elizabeth Ashley in “Hide and Seek” (1980), a haunted-house thriller.
Continue reading the main story
Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http 2015:// www.stagevoices.com/ . If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com.