The Actor Musters His Forces at Shakespeare

Andrew Long Makes Quick Study of Roles As Mark Antony

Andrew Long's run-up to taking on a major character by the world's greatest playwright normally entails a painstaking quest for comprehension. Long before rehearsals begin, he's got the Oxford English Dictionary out, as well as books by scholars with relevant things to say about Shakespeare.

"You have to become familiar enough with the phrasing," he says. "You have to look up every word that you have questions about the interpretation of. I look up meanings, I copy punctuation into the script, I read notes from different versions."

The usual way of casting by a troupe such as the Shakespeare Theatre Company allows for this admirably arduous boning-up.

But this was not the usual way.

No, Long on this occasion was propelled headlong into rehearsals for not one, but two crucial parts: the roles of Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Roman tragedies, "Julius Caesar" and "Antony and Cleopatra." The actor originally hired to perform this double duty, Patrick Page, had to bow out because of a scheduling conflict. Page had been pivotal to Artistic Director Michael Kahn's plans to present the two plays in repertory -- the first Shakespeares to be produced in the new Sidney Harman Hall -- and as a result, the search for his replacement had been wide-ranging and nerve-rackingly drawn out.

Which is why Long, a company stalwart, was not offered the parts until just before the start of rehearsals Feb. 26. And why, he says, for weeks after, "I felt I was trying to catch up to Day One."

The answers to a third "why" should be self-evident. He took on the hand-me-down assignment because the challenge was simply too delicious to pass up. And because he's proved to be the sort of actor with the resources to make such a heavy lift appear quite effortless.

"The thing about Andrew is that he's a very quick study," says David Muse, who directed Long in the Studio Theatre production of "Frozen," in which he played a serial child killer, and directs him again in "Julius Caesar," which opens this week in tandem with Kahn's "Antony and Cleopatra." "He's going to come in, and he's not going to let you watch him learning the part. He just wants to stand up and try it. Which is cool."

"Cool" is an apt term, too, for the demeanor of this actor in his early 40s, a onetime Navy brat who over the past decade has made Washington his major theatrical port of call. Intense of countenance on a stage -- let's just say he was more than convincing as a brutal, painfully tormented serial killer -- he continues to hold something in reserve when you sit down with him. As if an actor's gift for seeming to harbor secrets comes naturally to him.

That illusion has served Long well in his impressive run on the city's stages. Since his 1999 debut in a Kahn production of "King John," the actor, who honed his classical technique in a variety of roles at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Guthrie Theater and Alabama Shakespeare Festival, has cemented a position as one of the most dynamic Shakespeare interpreters in town.

You might recall him as the Shakespeare Theatre's feral Hotspur in "Henry IV, Part 1" or in the title role of "Coriolanus" or even as a sniveling de Guiche in a lively adaptation of Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac." Still, it was his 2006 turn at the more intimate Studio as scary-pitiful Ralph in "Frozen," Bryony Lavery's examination of derangement and despair in the aftermath of murder, that alerted audiences to Long's broader range.

"I had seen him play great big classical parts, but I wasn't sure of his ability to work in a small house and do nuanced things," Muse says. "I knew there was a trap in that role -- to make him a creepy bad guy -- which Andrew plays all the time. So I did have a moment of, 'Is this Andrew's cup of tea, or was it pushing the role in a direction that the play won't work?' "