Theater

Tom Titus

South Coast Repertory’s newest director has tackled plays by Tennessee

Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill and Samuel Beckett. He’s been a

Fulbright scholar at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He’s

written two plays and just completed his first novel.

So why, inevitably, will cineastes eternally remember him as the guy who

made Clint Eastwood’s day, and quite possibly his career, nearly 30 years

ago?

Blame it on one terrific piece of acting. Andrew J. Robinson made his

screen debut as the psychotic, scary Scorpio killer in the first “Dirty

Harry” movie. If you’ve seen it, chances are you haven’t forgotten him

either.

For Robinson -- who staged “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” which opened on

SCR’s Second Stage this weekend -- it was a movie debut to be ranked

alongside Richard Widmark’s in “Kiss of Death” and Jack Palance’s

“Shane.”

Then billed as Andy Robinson, he turned cinematic villainy into an art

form. In one particularly memorable sequence, his character pays a street

thug to beat him senseless so he can publicly accuse Eastwood’s Lt. Harry

Callahan of police brutality.

“I had a great time on that picture,” he said. “Both Clint and (director)

Don Siegel encouraged me to be creative with the character. This was

really the first psychopathic, New Age heavy.”

That was the upside. The downside came in the scripts Robinson was

offered after “Dirty Harry” was released. “They were rip-offs, virtually

carbon copies of that character, some with even the same dialogue,” he

said ruefully.

Even more chilling were the telephoned death threats Robinson received

after the movie hit the screens.

“Some people thought I really was that guy,” he said.

For Robinson, now 58, theater was always a refuge. Born in New York and

raised in New England, he knew he wanted to be an actor from his first

performance -- at the age of 10 as a shepherd in a Christmas pageant. He

attended the University of New Hampshire, then earned his degree in

English at New York’s New School for Social Research before his year of

study in London.

As he was putting the finishing touches on “Beauty Queen” for SCR,

Robinson noted that the Irish import was a big success on Broadway, but

“it isn’t your typical Broadway play. It’s a tough look at family life --

a raw, hard play about a mother and her spinster daughter.

“It has a wonderful sense of language, a real lyrical quality that Irish

playwrights seem to be born with,” he added. “It also has a realistic

application to our own lives. It deals with people alienated from their

community.”

Despite the off-center characters he’s played over the last four decades,

Robinson is quite well-grounded in his own personal life. He and his

wife, Irene, celebrated their 30th anniversary Friday. Since their

daughter, Rachel, is grown (and pursuing her own acting career), Irene

travels with her husband from their Los Angeles home base and serves as

the director’s assistant.

The actor, director and playwright (“Last Chance Saloon,” “Springvoices”)

recently added another occupation to his resume novelist. His book, “A

Stitch in Time,” to be published in May, centers on the character of Elim

Garak, the Cardassian tailor he played on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

He’s also directed several episodes of the new “Star Trek” franchise,

“Voyager.”

A founding member of the Matrix Theater in Los Angeles, Robinson recently

staged Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” at that venue and also directed

Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” at the Pasadena Playhouse. He tickled the

ivories as Liberace in a TV biopic a few years ago.

With a pedigree like this, one might think a supporting role in a 1971

movie wouldn’t occupy so prominent a place in the conversation. But it

was a true throat-grabber, and Robinson is asked if he has any unusual

memories from that flick.

“We were filming on location in San Francisco, and the camera was hidden

in a van,” he recalled. “I had just come out of a strip club and walked

up an alley, with Clint following not too far behind. When I was out of

camera range, I started to relax, but then I noticed three seedy-looking

characters approaching me, probably thinking I was ripe for a mugging.

“Before they could start anything, however, Clint walked up to them and

asked, in his best Dirty Harry voice, ‘Is there a problem here?’ They

looked at him and didn’t know whether to s--- or go blind. Needless to

say, they split in a hurry.” That was the time that Clint Eastwood

made Andy Robinson’s day.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews appear

Thursdays and Saturdays.