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Langella espouses a realistic view of acting, recognizing that the moments of inspirations-fleeting and often inexplicable-are the result of plain, hard work ]

swandive into straight-jacketed lunacy in a forgotten Strindberg play, The Father. His unraveling of a rigid Army officer, Captain Adolph, was a tour-de-force that won him Best Actor nods from both the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle. And the prizes continue-last month: the Joe A. Callaway Award, from the Actors' Equity Foundation for the best male performance in a professional production of a classic play (written prior to 1900). Next stop: Showtime plans to preserve the performance on film, so he could well have an Ace Award up his sleeve.

Although The Father appears to be the more dangerous and difficult piece of work, Langella insists it's a snap compared to the demonic demands of Present Laughter: "First of all, [Present Laughter's] about an hour and ten minutes longer. It's three acts instead of two. The requirements-just in terms of the physical-are much greater. Although Adolph was on every second, he slowly built toward his climactic scene. Garry is out of a cannon from the moment he comes on until the show is over. Comedy requires about double the energy that tragedy does. When you're playing a part that calls for the kind of depth of emotion that Adolph did, all the internal rhythms are going very strongly, but you don't necessarily have to constantly keep your ear out for the comic timing of a particular line. A laugh line must appear, always, as if you're just thinking it up and throwing it away. That means your ears have to be sharp. Your footwork, the way you turn your head, when you light a cigarette, when you put down a drink, how you physically deal with another actor-it's so much more precise in comedy. Anybody will tell you comedy is much harder."

When you watch Lagella lording majestically over the galloping madness that fills the stage of the Walter Kerr, you don't see strings. You see a stylist at work, fencing with his admirers, even matching a dachshund lick for lick.

And work, stresses Langella, is the operative word. "When I was a kid actor sitting in a classroom at Syracuse University, I remember a student raising his hand and saying, 'Well professor, what about Moments of Greatness? What about Inspiration?' my teacher said, 'You don't have that. You don't strive for that. What you do is work hard, like a bricklayer. Your get up on the stage every night and you work work work. You don't go out there looking to be inspired. Go out and work, and every once in a while-on a rainy Wednesday afternoon with half a house out there-you'll go off with these extraordinary flights of inspiration when the magic of your voice and your character and the audience and the lights and the other actors come together. You're going to give one of these great performances, and you're not going to know why.'

"The reason people stay in this profession is to have those moments every once in a while," says Langella, "but 90 percent of the time you go do work. At 7:30 I'll go to the theatre, and I will want to go out there in order to do my job-and if, on a particular night, it takes off in some magical way where we're all holding on-as indeed it does often in this play-it's great. There are other nights you don't feel that so-called magic. That's when you earn your salary."

[[image - photograph, by Carol Roseegg]]
[[caption]] Langella and Lisa Emery in Present Laughter [[/caption]]

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