Role:           Lou
Where:        New Mercury Theater
Playwright:  John Olive

Photo Postcard Program

Killers by John Olive was very successful for us. That was a play that I'd seen it done in Chicago by the Steppenwolf company.  (clip) We'd even talked several of them into sharing their sound design with us, which was a jazz score that was just incredible.  It was all solo saxophone, between tenor sax, baritone sax, all sorts of sax - there were different levels of dissonance building that was just incredible. It was a play about a pulp fiction writer in the 50's and this was a look into his life, what it must have been like, because apparently he lived the stories that he wrote.  He wrote about tenement slums, people killing each other and I play a kid who used to carry a baseball bat in his hand all the time who would knock on people's doors and break the doors down.   But yeah, it was like pulp fiction - it was like pulp fiction for stage.   And we probably didn't have the subtlety that Steppenwolf had but I have to say our cast was really good. 

My wife directed and that was a big hit for us too. I have to say we sold really well. (clip)  We did plays at New Mercury ultimately that the other bigger houses would like to do but because they were forced into a more conservative play choice, they couldn't.  They were forced to do Antigone again because their boards would force them to do that instead of doing Killers by John Olive.  And so I would meet the other artistic directors at parties and they would be like, "You LUCKY...you son of...God! How did you talk your board into.." and I'd go, "I don't have a board. I can do whatever I want."  Oh, we were lucky.  I wouldn't want to be young again out there.     JM.com 2007

***
"As if that ain't enough, there's a schizo nutcase (James Marsters) who keeps bothering the writer with his addled dreams, and a booze-soaked World War II vet (Robert Sindelar) who goes ballistic at the tapping of a manual Olivetti."  Misha Berson  · Seattle Times · March 31, 1994

"James Marsters is the mercurial simpleton who in the space of a minute sobs, laughs, sniffs underwear to see if people have had sex, says "I love you" and threatens to kill with a baseball bat. He has a line we can all feel: "Death to all fat fuckers who drive big white cars and fire me from the world's shittiest jobs!"   N.W. Barcus  · The Stranger ·  April 1994