A cheerful, animated conversation with actress Sally Struthers wanders into all kinds of current affairs, including royal babies and a redo of her classic show.
Best known as the daughter Gloria in “All in the Family,” a ground-breaking 1970s sitcom that was the first to tackle meaty social issues, Struthers will be in Wilmington to act in a play at the Delaware Theatre Company.
She will star in “Middletown,” a comedic drama about two couples who are lifelong friends, because she wanted to work with Adrian Zmed, maybe best known for starring as Romano in “T.J. Hooker” and Johnny Nogerelli in “Grease 2.” They have been friends for 30 years starting when they traveled the country for three years in a production of “Grease.”
The new production, running from May 28 to June 2, operates like “Love Letters” with actors using scripts on stage. The Delaware show also will star Anson Williams, who played Potsie in “Happy Days,” and Didi Conn, who played Frenchy in the “Grease” movies.
On the phone, Struthers is lively and engaging, and her voice has a brightness instantly recognizable as that of the character she played in “All in the Family” from 1971-1979 and then in the spin-off “Gloria” from 1982-83.
She stays booked with stage productions and at first told Zmed, who’s done short runs of “Middletown” twice, that she didn’t think she could schedule it. Then Struthers discovered an opening that coincided with the Wilmington show and voila, here they come.
If the show is successful, producers hope to take it to New York, or take it on the road for a few months and then to New York, Zmed said in a different call.
“This is our trial to say it’s done, it’s finished,” Zmed said
“I thought to myself, ‘Sally, do you know any other Archies that were famous? Anybody in the sports world? There has to be one,” she said. “But being a woman of a certain age, I didn’t know of anyone else named Archie except the character who played my father.”
In that show, dad Archie Bunker was portrayed by actor Carroll O’Connor.
Struthers has now learned that Archie is a more common name in Britain than in the U.S.
“I think it’s just adorable,” she said. “It’s certainly not a royal sounding name, but it’s a fun name, and enough with this royal hoopla.”
On the live ‘All in the Family’
Struthers said she was stunned to hear about Wednesday’s live performance of an “All in the Family” script on ABC.
“Why? What is the point? It’s a classic,” she said. “‘All in the Family’ came at a moment in time that somehow turned out to be the perfect moment to put something that quote-unquote radical on TV, and it was the perfect cast. We had the perfect writers.”
You can’t turn around 40 years later and remake it, she said. She agrees there’s a lot of civil unrest that mirrors the stress and upset of the 1970s, when civil rights issues, the war on drugs, the counterculture and more were roiling society.
“Nobody is going to be Carroll O’Connor,” Struthers said. “Nobody but nobody is going to be another Jean Stapleton (who played Archie’s wife, Edith). And I honestly don’t see the point.”
Her nephew suggested the networks might be interested in seeing how well the live show of “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons” — with stars Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, Ellie Kemper, Anthony Anderson, Sean Hayes, Jamie Foxx, Wanda Sykes, Justina Machado, Will Ferrell and Kerry Washington — score before rebooting the two series.
“Norman Lear is in his 90s,” Struthers said. “I think he should just have fun and travel, and stop trying to make another mark on TV. He’s made enough marks.”
Acting with Adrian Zmed
Struthers played English teacher Miss Lynch, the only adult role in the stage show of “Grease,” during her years on the road with the show. Zmed played one of the lead roles, Danny Zuko.
“Believe me, after three years, you’re family,” Struthers said. “I missed everybody terribly when it was over.”
She’s also toured in “Hello, Dolly” as the lead character, as Miss Hannigan in “Annie” and as a superfan in “Always Patsy Cline.”
Struthers and Zmed had been hoping to find something to do together, but when Zmed called and asked her to be his wife in the Wilmington show, she was solidly booked for the year and thought she couldn’t do it. Then she found the opening.
She likes the twinkle in Zmed’s eyes. She likes his boyish enthusiasm. She likes the way he raised his sons, who she knows. She likes the way he multitasks. He’s such a sports nut that he kept a phone inside his costume and sometimes would check scores during performances, she said.
“I can’t do that,” she said. “I’d fall over myself or I’d forget to speak.”
This won’t be the first time that Zmed and Struthers have been in Wilmington, Zmed said. He’s sure they came through on the “Grease” tour and he’s been here at least two other times in shows, including “Falsettos” and “Chicago,” signing the infamous wall in the Playhouse on Rodney Square that sports hundreds of stars names.
Struthers says there are only three states she’s never been during one of her many theatrical tours. She was trained in the theater and likes to return to it as her “first love.”
“There’s no net,” she says. “You have to save yourself. There’s no cut. There’s no ‘let’s do another take.’ There’s no editors in the other room taking your several takes and choosing the best.”
Zmed is amused that he and Struthers have known each other for 30 years, and in “Middletown” they play a couple married for 33 years.
The play started in Las Vegas, where Zmed lives. It follows two couples who meet every Friday night for dinner during their 30-plus years of friendship.
“It’s one of those shows that grabs you and takes you on this road, and you don’t know where you’re going,” Zmed said. “It’s very emotional at the end. Even I as an actor have trouble finishing the show.”
The show is produced by the same group that produces “Menopause The Musical,” which will be running June 4 to June 16 at the Delaware Theatre Company. One of the creators asked Zmed to do a “Middletown” read-through in January and he’s helped shape it.
He’d never done a show in which the actors help their scripts and was pleasantly surprised to see how well the audiences reacted to the productions.
Struthers hopes audiences will be responsive. She gets cranky when there’s no audience feedback during a comedic performance, and sometimes the audiences just don’t respond.
“The actors cannot hear you when you’re smiling,” she said. “It’s a reciprocal event in the theater. If you’re doing ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,’ you need the quiet. But if you’re doing a comedy, you need the laughs back.”
