Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 155

015 By Blake Green STAFF WRITE Johns who reminisced in the Sondheim song in will bo looking back again in "A Coffin in opening Saturday EGEND HAS IT that actresses fret over such things as their best side And true to form the legendary actress Glynis Johns making sure the camera is focused on the left side of her face a vision she blithely explains and to prove got a sense of humor about these little vanities she bats her still saucer-sized blue eyes adding in that husky forever-England voice always unfortunate if a bigger star has the same best This time Johns have a thing to worry about Dolled up with ruddy cheeks bright red lipstick and a perky black bow set at the crown of her golden hair she was rehearsing recently for Coffin in Horton new play premiering next Saturday at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor Except for a couple of stray lines she has all the dialogue playing Myrtle a 90-year-old grand dame reminiscing about her life on and off a ranch on the Texas prairie well the script says about Myrtle will be playing her in a silver-white the actress reports Little Night if you please: Johns best known for the Tony-winning character who introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be in the maybe it was Johns asked the Texas-born Foote to record a short tape of himself reading some lines and using this as her coach The playwright -whose official residence is still the town where he was bom also so much he hardly has any accent and he thought it would make sense if mine were about the (Harrison the town mentioned in as near the ranch is the fictional name Foote uses for his Wharton birthplace For the record the Egypt in the title is a tiny Texas burg nowhere near the Nile River) This will be first appearance in a play by Foote whose oeuvre is filled with Btrong dignified female characters often played by the same group of actresses He had originally planned for Myrtle to be portrayed by Shirley Knight the star last year of his "The Young Man From on Broadway When she became unavailable he took his actress daughter suggestion and sent the script to her 74-year-old California neighbor always admired Glynis I saw her in he says "The play came in a very roundabout way but because I believe in timing that nothing is by chance I decided to risk doing it very very intricate not a straight story It goes backwards frontwards sidewards and upwards and there are a great deal of lines very emotional very dramatic and very This it turns out might also serve as the description for own life is the word preferred by this daughter of an actor and a concert pianist who trained to be a ballerina then segued into acting lived all around the world and has had four husbands The first is the father of her only child now an actor in England and the father of her grandson a budding thespian in France generations in the she says proudly In the 1949 movie die box playing a mermaid was quite an athlete my muscles were strong from dancing so the tail was just fine I swam like a In with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum she was nominated for a Best-Supporting Actress Oscar In recent years Johns has had small parts in a number of films and in a 1991 revival of Little Night in Los Angeles she played Madame Armfeldt the mother of Desiree the part she had created tell you the truth I hadn't liked that part originally Hermione and I sure if I could listen to someone else singing in the the song Stephen Sondheim wrote for She managed Life marches on always said that in the was the best gift I was ever given But always thought before I decide I want to do theater anymore like to have a vehicle that gave me the scope to do something beautiful Maybe this is in Stephen 1973 musical been seen in these parts for quite a while Not in fact since she costarred in on Broadway nine years ago with Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger competing best sides there for sure She played Lady Catherine Champion-Cheney wife ex-wife in the comedy by the late Somerset Maugham whom she'd known in Europe Maugham was just another of the interesting people whose paths have crossed hers in a show business career that began she says when her violinist-impresario grandmother carried her onstage as a baby while the performing company was touring South Africa (A local example of those intersections: Johns played the mother in the movie that introduced Julie Andrews who happens to be the real-life mother of Emma Walton Bay co-artistic director) A CBS camera crew was at the theater the other day filming a segment about the theater for (to be aired in August) and catching a make-believe rehearsal with Johns a bearded Leonard Foglia the director and a white-thatched Foote seated around a table The first preview performance this Wednesday was still comfortably far enough away for the banter to be playful bird-brain Johns said jauntily slipping in and out of the slight drawl affect for Myrtle A world-traveler Myrtle supposed to have a deep twangy Texas accent Johns explains although the prospect have been daunting: brought up in the theater in England to do explained earlier once' did a pilot for television thlat ras set in Texas Or Ml- Glynis Johns famed for warbling in the Clowns pursues her life in the theater with a new play at Sag Bay Street 1 It I I I I I 1 I I It i SUNDAY JUNE 14 1998 FanFmi.