Brian Geraghty and Martin Sheen in The Subject Was Roses at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
By Victoria Looseleaf
If there’s a nicer, more fabulous movie/TV/theater star than Martin Sheen, I’d like to meet him. Sheen, who returns to the legitimate stage after a nearly 20-year absence, is tackling the role of the bullying, boozing Irishman John Cleary, in Frank D. Gilroy’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play, The Subject Was Roses. The cool thing is that Sheen played the son in the original 1964 Broadway production—effectively launching his career—and garnered a Tony nomination in the process.
The circle, as they say, remains unbroken. And so does Sheen’s huge talent and theatrical joie de vivre. Joining the former star of NBC’s The West Wing in the three-character drama are Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) and The Hurt Locker’s Brian Geraghty. Have a listen to my interview with the Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning actor Ramon Gerard Antonio Estevez, then get thee to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles to catch Roses, running through March 21. Ain’t life grand!