‘Joan' delves into Joan Rivers's career and complex mother/daughter bond

Boston Globe

7 days ago

Rivers, who died in 2014 at the age of 81, was a standup comedy pioneer who remained in the public eye across a 50 plus-year career, finding fame in the early days of TV on 'The Ed Sullivan Show, as a favorite of 'The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,' on QVC, and then with her daughter Melissa on the E! network's 'Fashion Police,' not to mention winning 'The Celebrity Apprentice' in 2009.
The triumphs and tragedies of Rivers' life, including her manager/husband's suicide and her short-lived reign as the first woman to host a late-night talk show, were chronicled in the 2010 documentary, 'Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,' and in her autobiography 'Still Talking.' Rivers also appeared as herself at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in a play set in her dressing room. And then there are the books written by her daughter Melissa, including 'The Book of Joan,' 'Lies My Mother Told Me,' and 'Joan Rivers Confidential: The Unseen Scrapbooks, Joke Cards, Personal Files, and Photos of a Very Funny Woman Who Kept Everything.'
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'Rather than a two-and-a-half hour biographical play – which is where I started — I realized Stephen Sondheim was right — as he was about everything — that it's about 'children and art,'' Goldstein says, in a reference to the musical 'Sunday in the Park with George.' 'Joan was always thinking about both, and the ways in which her daughter Melissa's life is irrevocably intertwined with her mom's is central to the story.'
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Although 'Joan' is being produced at either end of Massachusetts and not in Boston, Goldstein had a long relationship with the Huntington, where he received the first Calderwood Commission for a new musical, 'Unknown Soldier,' and
'But when David [Ivers] read it, he fell in love with it, and had a real affinity for it,' Goldstein says. 'That helped me focus on the storytelling.'
'Joan' now runs just 100 minutes, and although he admits he was sad to cut scenes that focused on Rivers' antics while selling products on QVC, and her insistence on playing 'Hey, Big Spender,' when Melissa walked down the aisle for her first wedding, Goldstein says the play became a more relatable story of a woman whose honesty, love for her family, and remarkable generosity helped her endure. The script evolved over a five-year period with input from Ivers, Melissa Rivers, and guidance from actress Tessa Auberjonois, who stars as Joan, and has been part of the production since the early readings.
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'Joan Rivers based her comedy on things that pissed her off, and loved the feeling of relating to her audience,' says Auberjonois. 'She'd say outrageous things and then when the audience laughed, she'd say, 'oh, you feel that way, too.' I think she felt she could be fully human with them.'
With that close connection audiences felt with Rivers, does Auberjonois worry about expectations?
'Yes!' she says with a nervous laugh. 'This is an impossible task. I have worked on her voice because I want it to be recognizable, but I'm hoping audiences won't compare me to Joan, [and instead] just go on this ride with me.'
Left to right: Andrew Borba, Elinor Gunn, and Tess Auberjonois in "Joan."
Scott Smeltzer
The play opens with Rivers performing a standup routine late in her life, before shifting back and forth in time with Auberjonois playing Joan's mother, and another actress (Elinor Gunn ) playing young Joan and later, her daughter Melissa. Andrew Borba plays Johnny Carson and Rivers' husband Edgar Rosenberg, while Zachary Prince plays all the other male characters.
Along the way, Goldstein mined Rivers' own jokes, wrote some of his own, and worked with Larry Amoroso, one of Rivers' joke writers.
'Sometimes I would find a joke and write a scene around it, other times I would call Larry and say, 'I need a joke about ---- and he would find something,' Goldstein says.
Even as he worked to make the humor land, Goldstein said he kept returning to the mother-daughter relationship, and to the advantage — and burden — of being Joan Rivers' daughter.
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'Joan and Melissa were incredibly close because they endured so much loss together,' he says. 'After our South Rep production closed, the Los Angeles fires happened, and Melissa lost her home. She describes it as the third time in her life when she woke up to the world as a completely different place.'
'Joan was an open book who didn't shy away from sharing her struggles with her audiences,' says Auberjonois. 'She'd say, 'everything that we all have to go through — all the terrible — every day?? Where would we be? Where the hell would we all be, without laughter? They're just jokes. What would we do if we couldn't laugh?''
JOAN
Play by Daniel Goldstein, a South Coast Repertory production, presented by Barrington Stage Company, at the Boyd-Quinson Stage, Pittsfield, July 31-Aug. 17. Tickets: $47-$95.
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