NEW YORK – The budding friendship between actor Alan Rickman and playwright Theresa Rebeck came to a screeching halt as soon as they started working together.
All pleasantries and tenderness were put aside when he was hired to star in her new play “Seminar,” which makes its world premiere on Broadway this month. Both strong-willed, neither Rickman nor Rebeck wanted to have to tiptoe around hurt feelings.
“You hope the friendship survives the process but, unfortunately, once you’re into the process of putting a play on — and a new play at that — I have to be as uncompromising as she is,” says Rickman. “The animal in me takes over. You’re as polite as possible, but it’s not always possible.”
The friendship, happily, did survive. Both sides say so. “It’s an extraordinary privilege to work with him. I have never for one second lost my awareness of that,” says Rebeck. “He’s just a superb artist and I feel like I’m in a tennis game with somebody who is just raising my game.”
The dark comedy, in which Rickman plays a berating novelist-turned-teacher, also stars Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater, Jerry O’Connell and Hettienne Park as his intimidated four writing students. During the course of
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