THEATER: Elizabeth Ashley plays Ann Richards in ‘one-woman’ show at the Rep

When the Arkansas Repertory Theatre describes Ann Richards as brassy and blue, it raises the question of whether blue means politically Democratic or refers to coarseness of language.

"Both," says actress Elizabeth Ashley, who plays the late Texas governor in Ann by Holland Taylor, opening Friday and running through Feb. 23 at the Rep.

Like Richards, Ashley bars no holds. Simultaneously decrying and perhaps reveling in her age — she's 80, and unlike many performers certainly isn't shy or cagey about it — she insists on putting her feet up during the post-rehearsal interview that also included the director, Ashley's longtime collaborator and friend, Michael Wilson.

"I have a back that belongs in the Smithsonian," she growls by way of explanation.

Ashley says she and Richards have much in common. They both grew up Southern, they're politically liberal, and occasionally and unapologetically foul-mouthed.

Richards was a champion of civil rights, Ashley says. Her husband, David Richards, was a prominent west Texas civil rights lawyer, and the play covers considerable ground on the subject, including a line along the lines of: "Segregation was rooted, just an un-noted aspect of everyday life."

Richards' recollections in the play include encountering black people and Asians when she moved to San Diego at age 11 after her father was drafted into the Navy, post-Pearl Harbor: "My eyes popped open when I'd never even known they were shut."

Ashley, born six years after Richards, in 1939 in Ocala, Fla., says she, too, "truly grew up in Jim Crow South." Her family moved when she was a child to Baton Rouge, where she got to observe Louisiana politics firsthand.

Wilson says Ashley is the first actor of national stature and of Southern origin to play the part.

Though the play focuses pretty much entirely on Richards, it's not entirely a one-woman show. There are actually two actors, "one you don't see much of the time," Wilson says. The other character: "Her secretary, her good right arm; Nancy, her doorkeeper." He has praise for local actress Alaina Newton, who is filling the role.

The play is in two acts, and Wilson says it moves at a brisk pace. The frame is a commencement speech at a small liberal arts college in southwestern Texas, based on an actual address Richards gave at Mount Holyoke in 1995, much of which ends up in the script.

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Ashley's six-decade-plus career has ranged from stage to big screen to small screen.

She made her off-Broadway debut in 1959 in a show called Dirty Hands and debuted on Broadway in Dore Schary's The Highest Tree.

In the early '60s, the role of Mollie in Take Her, She's Mine earned her a supporting actress Tony Award and led to Neil Simon creating for her the lead role of Corie Bratter in 1963's Barefoot in the Park — opposite Robert Redford — for which she received a Tony nomination for best actress.

Her early film career included 1964's The Carpetbaggers and 1965's Ship of Fools. President John F. Kennedy appointed her to the first National Council of the Arts, mostly, she says, "because I was somebody under 30 who wasn't Sandra Dee."

The council, Ashley says, was seminal in the growth of regional theater, which she calls "ground zero for American theater outside New York City." Her dedication, she says, is in large part responsible for her agreeing to do the show in Little Rock.

"That's why I couldn't say no to Will," she says, referring to the Rep's executive artistic director, Will Trice, with whom she worked in the Tony-winning 2014 Broadway production of Kaufman & Hart's You Can't Take It With You.

"Both Ann Richards and Elizabeth Ashley are forces of nature," Trice says. "Their achievements are inspiring, but they are also both hysterical and so much fun to spend time with."

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Ashley says she gave up her career for six years while married to her Carpetbaggers co-star George Peppard (her first marriage, in 1962, to actor James Farantino also ended in divorce, after three years). She dwells oh-so-briefly on how, at the time, "levels of power and success" determined who had top billing in the relationship, and on what it was like to be "property, a commodity" in a marriage.

Also among Ashley's six decades of career memories: being a frequent, "go-to" guest of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in the '70s and '80s. She calls Carson a "stone genius" and says doing that show taught her a lot about acting.

"During the commercial breaks, the lights would go down, and Carson internalized," she says. "He was preserving energy, using smart discipline — he would only talk on camera."

She was originally part of a Life magazine cover as part of a "Broadway's Best" spread, but the date of the magazine release — Nov. 22, 1963 — was unfortunate; the magazine ditched the cover and the story for an extra following the assassination of President Kennedy.

Ashley does have a previous Arkansas connection, of a sort: She played Freida Evans, the acerbic aunt of Burt Reynolds' Wood Newtwon, on CBS' Evening Shade (1990-94).

Weekend on 01/30/2020