Premiered on October 23rd, 1983 at The Ensemble Studio Theatre
Directed by Pamela Berlin
David (David Rasche) points out the meteor showers to his daughter's friend, Cindy (Noelle Parker).
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David is a widower, living in a beach house on Nantucket Island, where two years ago, his wife Gillian died in a boating accident. The insurance settlement allows him to stay year-round on the island, hanging out with the neighbor's vivacious 16-year-old daughter Cindy (Noelle Parker). But his unchecked grieving withdraws him from everyone else, including his own daughter Rachel. His wife's surviving sister, and her husband, have a plan to bring him back into the land of the living. They'll pay him a visit, bringing along one of his former students, who's recently "back on the market" for a man. Unfortunately, they forgot that this weekend is the anniversary of the day David lost Gil, who even in memory alone is the perfect companion. |
 David (Played originally by James Rebhorn, a character actor in many big movies; e.g., he played the weasily Secretary of Defense to William Pullman in "Independence Day". Later, he was replaced by David Rasche, seen in the stills on this page. Rasche also starred in the series "Sledgehammer") David is an introverted 37 year old college professor, temporarily retired to Nantucket Island, where he spends his time monitoring the weather in the daytime, and scanning in the skies at night. He's not a scientist, but a symbolist, and like a figure out of a Herman Melville story, looks for larger significance in the details of the natural world. His closest companion is Cindy, a neighbor girl who's now the lone student for his new scattershot curriculum. In the mornings they jog together, and at night, hang out by the telescope trading barbs: Cindy: You are heavy into daytime television. David: Guilty. Cindy: Well, watch it. Too much of that stuff can make you sterile. And you wouldn't want that. This relationship is all he can handle in the real world. When he's overwhelmed, he turns to the memory of Gillian, a woman who was more than just his love, she was his intellectual soulmate. Her outgoing personality could run circles around him in life, and the memory of her is so strong it can be summoned as an independent force, finishing his sentences for him and gleefully poking holes in his arguments when his thoughts turn to her: Gillian: You want Sister Theresa of the Little Flowers, or a real woman with real passions? David: I think Sister Theresa might be quite relaxing. This makes his recollections of her an important element in his approach to the present. It also keeps him removed from others, with one foot always in the next world. But what's wrong with that, when the one who dwells there is so much better than what the real world has to offer? |
 (Above: Rachel with Gillian) Rachel (Played by Sarah Jessica Parker--no relation to Noelle. Eighteen years old at this time, she had appeared on the series "Square Pegs" the year before.) 16-year-old Rachel attends school on the mainland, but visits her father, David, during the summer. She finds herself increasingly on the outs with him. Last year, he attempted suicide; this year, he copes by hanging out with her best friend Cindy and talking to himself, addressing her late mother. Cindy may be helping her father chart the heavens, but Rachel's the one who actually keeps her father on course--at the expense of her own emotional life. She tries to fill him in on her latest boyfriend and he starts muttering about academic tangents. Out of frustration, she asks her aunt and uncle to find somebody, anybody, who can pull her father back into the real world. Of course, he's not the only one who's lost a loved one; Rachel lost a mother. But what keeps father and daughter apart, despite their common grief, is their perception of Gillian. In fact, she was not a perfect mother. What her father so admired, Rachel only found distancing. Her most tender childhood memories all involve David, who actually handled most of her upbringing. In his preoccupation, he forgets this. It turns out, Gillian's birthday is also the day of Rachel's conception. In front of Cindy and Rachel, David calls it an accident, but we learn later on how he wanted a child most of all. |
 Cindy (Played by Noelle Parker--Noelle had just turned 14 at this time, though she was playing a flirtatious 16 year old. Ironic that she's playing an older character here, since nearly ten years later, she would play another precocious 16-year-old in love with an older man: Amy Fisher. Her character has a larger role here in the play than it would in the film, eclipsing the Claire Danes character of Rachel. In its first incarnation, there was no Gillian at all, just Cindy. Bet you never imagined "To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday" might have ended up a major motion picture starring Noelle Parker! It still might--they could easily, and more credibly, remake it with her when she turns 37!) Teenage Cindy is described by David as "The Indispensable Companion and best friend. A bit like the maid in a French farce." He's being facetious, but his choice of words is revealing. The indispensable companion is actually Gillian, whom Cindy is her real world surrogate. The best friend, as we will learn, is in fact his brother-in-law, Paul, whom he's grown distant from. And the French maid in a farce can also be a sexually liberated character, the one you can always kid around with, then duck behind the curtains with afterwards. David's unaware of his own intentions, and Gillian tries to warn him: Gillian: And watch your step with young Cynthia. David: What? Gillian: The sap she's a-running in those veins. Cindy has come to regard David as more than an interesting neighbor, but as her possible soulmate. She's the object of all his creative energy, sharing his knowledge of the universe with her. In return, she keeps him in shape, physically and mentally. Though she's a slacker as a student, she can teach him a few things. She informs him that the collection of waves rolling in as he stares at the horizon are known as a "roost", and the largest is a "fetch". She gives him a name for his object of meditation, and it acts as a hook in his mind, sublty tugging at the course of his thoughts. David becomes genuinely grateful to her for this: a professor of Melville knows a good sea symbol when he hears one. When he rejoins the real world, Cindy will feel left out, but David prevents that, keeping her a part of his life without making her play the roles that should really belong to others. |
  Kevin (Played originally by Heather Lupton, right. Coincidentally, Heather would later play the wife of David Rasche's character in "Sledgehammer". Replaced by Frances Conroy, left, who would go on to play the mother in the HBO series "Six Feet Under".) Kevin is a 28-year-old divorcee and mother of a 4-year-old daughter. She's a co-worker of Paul's, and when the call came from Rachel for a blind date for dad, they immediately thought of her. She's a natural choice because she's a former student of David's. She took quite a few of his literature courses and came to admire him. They got together frequently in an academic way, even to the point of becoming his early morning jogging partner. Naturally Cindy is alarmed to hear she has a well-qualified rival in the flesh coming to spend the weekend. David is just barely cordial to Kevin, though. Nothing personal, but she represents the latest attempt by his sister-in-law to intervene in his life. Yet as tempers flare over the weekend, Kevin maintains her composure. She seems to have some empathy for what David's going through. She was also married to a larger-than-life figure, but he left deliberately, not by accident. She had to overcome a different kind of grief, involving rejection. Her solution was to gather enough courage to take the risky jump into a new life. She manages to befriend Cindy by sharing a bottle of wine--"Liebfraumilch". Cindy says her brother calls it "Jumping woman milk" ("Lieb" is pronounced like "Leep" but in fact means "Love"). Cindy shares this symbolicallly-named drink with Kevin, who explains her unusual name: Kevin: Oh, my parents wanted a boy, and they didn't get one. Cindy: Yeah, parents are just like that. Judging from this, it sounds like Cindy may feel pushed out of her own home, where her brother may enjoy greater favor than she does. Kevin offers to show her around the city when she gets to the mainland, and Cindy is overjoyed to have the attention of a big sister type. David starts to realize there's more than meets the eye with Kevin, so he asks her straight out what she wants. After the big disappointing romance that took her life off track, she now just wants someone who can be kind. David realizes, in spite of all his worshipping of Gillian, that's just what he was missing as well. |
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Paul (Played by Richmond Hoxie) Paul is a year older than David, married to Gillian's sister, Esther. Along with Kevin he organizes grants and tuitions for the University David taught at. He's used to sizing up people's potential and matching them with the appropriate resources to complete their education, and perhaps that's the kind of thinking he put into arranging a get-together with David and Kevin. He also has a spot picked out on the faculty list in case David feels like coming back. He's extremely glib, but perceptive, nonetheless. Spotting Cindy, he immediately picks up on her attraction to the adult world, and mocks her with some fairly subtle digs, all of which she picks up on: Paul: Heavy surf, young one. Cindy: A minor squall, old one. Paul: Not so old. Cindy: Not so young [CINDY sticks out her tongue. PAUL replies the same] Still, he avoids any real kind of face-off unless it's in the form of a tasteless joke. He carries around newspaper clippings of gruesome tales of accidental deaths which he likes to read out loud. He's always threatening to finish some crude joke he begins, and those he does finish also involve bloody death. Each time, David is around, so maybe this is his way of confronting him, telling him to get over himself. He doesn't have to do so more directly, because his wife handles that. It isn't until the end, after a weekend of stand-offs, that Paul realizes more is required of him. We learn his friendship with David predates his marriage to Gillian. They're much closer than what we've seen until now, but they've never discussed their emotions. As David points out to Cindy at the beginning: "Watch out for all this feeling business. You and me and what are you feeling, and I'm feeling and blah, blah, blah. Look to that which endures. The sea, the sky, the stars, memory and the human heart. These are the eternals..." Paul tells him he would feel the same way if Esther had died suddenly, so he knows he can't appeal to his reason, only to his friendship. He asks David back as a personal favor to him, if no other reason will do. |
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Esther (Played by Jean De Baer) Esther, Gillian's sister, is a year older than her husband, and as the oldest family member, looks after the others. She's a psychologist, and although she never had children like her sister, she's more attuned to domestic concerns. She and Paul made a choice not to have kids, so they know their limits and what they expect from life. Esther's concern is for others, and when she lost her sister she became watchful over her brother-in-law, whom she didn't use to care for, but came to love and admire in time. Still, she's incredibly frustated over his intractability. He brushes off her every attempt to help, making her even more determined to intrude. She's as perceptive as Paul, only, given her profession, David can spot her attempts more easily and fend them off. She's especially worried about the effect he's having on Rachel, who's at a critical time in her life. When Rachel talks about meeting a boy on the beach, Esther tells her she's available for any questions she has about dating, psychological or physical, knowing David will provide no direction at all. As her plan to fix him up gets stuck in the rocky shoals, she gets a bit desperate, suggesting she and Paul take custody of his daughter. Tempers flare and David becomes cruel, telling Esther she knows nothing of what it's like to be a mother. He thinks she's vulgar in comparison to Gillian, nothing but a meddler. Like Rachel, though, Esther sees a different side of her sister, and knows David is romanticizing his memories. She thinks he's vulgar, for projecting his resentment of his late wife onto her. He's just as blind to her as he is to Gillian's past. David begins to see the truth of this, and agrees it might be a good idea to let her help with Rachel. In the end, he doesn't really want to drive her away, or crush her attempts to help. He acknowledges: David: You can't fall apart. You're our rock. Esther: Yeah, I'm one hell of a rock. How did we ever let it get like this? David: I have this theory. Esther: You would. David: We always talked to each other through her, saw each other through her. She was our buffer. Now there's just us. |
 David and Gillian Gillian (Played by Cheryl McFadden, also known as Gates McFadden, best known as Dr. Beverly Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation") Gillian died on her 35th birthday, while her family, including Esther and Paul, went sailing. She playfully climbed up the sailing mast and fell to the deck when the boat's hull knocked something under water. She was a respected anthropologist, travelling the world to study primates in their natural habitat, or in places like the San Diego Zoo, on the other side of the country. As a result, she was away a lot, and missed out a great deal on Rachel's childhood. Though we see a lot of her in the play, we're only seeing David's re-imagining of her. The rest we have to glean from her daughter and sister, until David's mind can become dislodged from its moorings, yielding to us a clearer picture. Until then, she seems real enough, so it's easy to think of her as an actual ghost: Gillian: Sex is a normal, may I repeat, n-o-r-m-a-l function of the adult primate, any primate. She [Kevin] seems quite nice. David: So you think . . . Gillian: I just said what I think. Quite nice. You don't really question the reliability of a character who talks like that. You might even think there's something therapeutic going on in his conversations with her, which there may be, but not as directly as it seems. Rachel mentions how she once travelled with her mother to Kenya, and felt like she was in the way the entire time. Her mother saw her as a friend and companion instead of a daughter. We might assume at first that Gillian was the emotional bond that held them all together, but it becomes clear it's not in the way we would expect. Esther gets David to agree to visit Gillian's grave and pay his last respects. As they all gather, they raise a toast and reminisce. Gillian appears among them, completing their sentences while they speak, jumping from person to person, and we get a sense of how her charismatic personality could have been overwhelming in life. Perhaps it was best she travelled frequently, because a little of her went a long way. It looks as if she was always the "alpha ape", and now it's difficult for others to step into her place. David bids his symbolic stars farewell, and Gillian appears in one last great romantic incarnation: David: Regulus. Arcturus. Denebola . . . and Vega, where planets are coming to life, even as we speak. Gillian: The man who can call down the stars from the heavens, that man will I have, that man shall I make my own, to have and to cherish . . . David: till . . . Gillian: . . . death . . . But she interrupts his reverie with her real life mocking personality (cruder, more like Paul's), restaging her reckless death. He remembers now the anger towards her that he buried out of respect. Gillian reminds him of another anniversary, not two years ago, but sixteen, when she was pregnant with Rachel. She had just received a grant to study primates. She was a successful author, and wasn't going to throw that away to raise a child. Herman Melville won't pay the rent, so either he brings up Rachel while she pursues her dream, or she gets an abortion. In the final scene, Rachel presents her father with Gillian's cap, which he came to treat as a holy relic, an untouchable symbol of her divinity, which is why her daughter kept it hidden for the weekend. He thanks her and casually puts it on his head to prevent sunburn. He's finally ready to take the position in life he had ceded to her. |
 Michael Brady Michael Brady won the Oppenheimer Award as Best New Playwright for "Gillian" in 1984. He had written a number of plays before this, highly structured works involving dark serious topics like rape and the Holocaust. None succeeded, so he decided it was time to try a lighter subject. He began to write an entertaining free-flowing story about a middle-aged man's romance with a teenage girl living on an island (that'll sell tickets!). He started to add supporting characters, finally coming up with the man's late wife, which had the effect of turning a comedy into a story about coming to terms with grief. The play was submitted to the Ensemble Theatre's workshop process to be fine-tuned by the writer, director and actors, and he expected the gimmicky character of Gillian would be discarded early on. Instead, David's character slowly became more wistful, less of a curmudgeon, and Gillian became less of an idealistic fantasy and more of a complex and charismatic figure. Brady himself was 34 years old when it premiered. He was not a widower, and although to a certain extent the events are based on a friend of his losing a spouse in an automobile accident, he also drew from the more universal experience of losing track of those who once played a meaningful role in one's past. |
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Ten years later, in 1996, writer David E. Kelley was looking to make his feature film debut after creating successful shows like "Picket Fences". "Gillian"'s west coast director Michael Pressman had worked with Kelley over the years, and the play seemed like a natural project for both of them, as well as a great vehicle for wife Michelle Pfeiffer. Kelley adapted the screenplay from Brady's play, Pressman would direct, Pfeffer would star, and Kathy Baker of "Picket Fences" would play Esther. As you can certainly imagine, by turning the play into a vehicle for all kinds of stars it resulted in twisting the original story out of shape in some rather ironic and amusing ways. The most critical change was the nature of Gillian and David's relationship. It was reinvented as a deathless love story, like "Ghost". Yes, David will have to leave her behind in the end, but it will be a tragic parting, a selfless sacrifice for the good of his daughter. Reading the play, I pictured someone like Kevin Kline as David, but here he's played by Peter Gallagher, who seems quite a sociable guy. He has karaoke parties, beach parties, racing contests. Apparently his only problem is he isn't dating, and spreading the joy. The play was set at a beachhouse, with the set darkened, because it's not the beach that's center stage, but the stars in the nighttime sky. Here, director Pressman reverses that, giving us crowded beach scenes, sand castle contests, and plenty of "Miller-time" moments, like fly-fishing in the glades, that are supposed to conjure up picturesque sorrow, but sorrow's the last thing you'd feel if you actually lived there. Did I mention there are beach babes?  There is no deeper friendship between Paul and David, because he's asked to play a different role. Since Gillian really is a noble figure here, and not just David's self-delusion, the people who try to wean him away from her have to be re-thought. Esther is no longer a respected psychologist, but some busybody who took a psychology course. She announces David is crazy, and he has 48 hours to prove otherwise, or she'll go to court to gain custody of Rachel (she mentioned a court challenge in the play, but it was more of a vague, desperate gesture, quickly dismissed by David as unnecessary). Her final speech to David is actually taken from an earlier disagreeable moment in the play. Her confrontations with David are more in keeping with the courtroom antics of "Picket Fences": Esther: Does Gillian appear to you out there on the beach? David: Yes--she does. Esther: You swim with her? David: Yes. Paul: Is she naked? David's unfair accusation that Esther is jealous because she has no children of her own is now picked up by the screenwriter, who goes even farther. Esther and Paul have no children because they have no passion worth celebrating. Again, the polar opposite of the play, where they have no children to spend more time on their careers and each other. Their conversations are ready-for-Ally-McBeal glibness: Paul: Honey! Sugar! Esther: Stop calling me food! Paul gives the impression he's a randy goat on the make, but Cindy decides to call his bluff. While everyone's out for the moment, she confronts Paul. In a long, drawn-out scene, she takes him up on his flirty suggestions, describing what she wants to do with him, while wearing a provocative mini-skirt. The actress is effective, but it's hard to believe a 16-year-old kid would have the gumption to pull it off the way she does (certainly the original Cindy wouldn't--she was too vulnerable to reveal her feelings like that). The point she's trying to make is that men like Paul don't do anything; they just sit on porches. Paul is duly chastened, and runs back to his wife with his tail between his legs. Cindy's character is used to deliver that point explicitly, but it's an example of the screenplay's awkwardness. A reasonable person might have assumed Paul's flirting with Cindy was just for fun. What choice did he really have? Was there any chance he would commit statutory rape with an indiscrete 16 year old? Afterwards, we hear Paul talking to his wife in general terms about the road not taken, like he actually gave it serious thought. What Kelley has done is to take David's inappropriate feelings towards Cindy and transfer them to Paul, combining them with his brother-in-law's tasteless sense of humor. Keep in mind they're going for the "Ghost" crowd, not "American Beauty"'s, so they want David as sympathetic as possible. Cindy's immature infatuation is suped up into a full-fledged vamp walk, giving the story some eye candy. There's even a "Blame it on Rio" moment, when Paul and David ogle Cindy and Rachel's thong-exposed butts on the beach, before the girls turn around and reveal who they are. Kevin plays a smaller role in the movie. She's a computer programmer who once took a class of David's but there's no other history between them. David is presented as the last true romantic, and the weekend results in him winning the argument. They all agree to leave him where he is, and feeling a bit envious as a result. David surprises them at the last minute with a magnanimous gesture: pledging to take the next boat out for Rachel's sake. He has one last meeting with Gillian, who reappears as radiant as an angel, and just as loving, generous, and wise ("Alpha ape" Michelle Pfeiffer is certainly being idealized here by husband/writer/producer David E. Kelley--and at the expense of the others!). No further mention is made of Kevin, who could never be worthy of such devotion. Besides, a steady girlfriend might cramp his style on the mainland. That David gives one hell of a party! One can easily imagine the thinking that went into this approach. The movie audience, it's thought, wants to be easily satisfied, watching good guys versus bad guys, winners and losers. And they want their money's worth: that means big production values, not some gloomy set. However, I thought the "gloomy" original was actually more life-affirming. There's real value to what David learns that the audience can take to heart. I'm not sure the audience can really identify much with the big-screen David, who's passion is more like that of the medieval knights of chivalry, unless the viewers can kid themselves they're just like him. The movie takes the same approach as David does in his grief: deny reality, project your own delusions onto others, and you can go on kidding yourself forever, and maybe even look heroic doing it. It might even make you a star! |
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Stills taken from "To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday", 1984, Nelson Doubleday Inc. Photographer:Carol Rosegg. Author's photograph: Patricia Jacobsen
