Mariska Hargitay has been spending a lot of time at the Hudson Theatre, where she will make her Broadway debut in the interactive play “Every Brilliant Thing.” When she's not performing on stage, she can often be found in her “inspiration space,” a small room filled with trinkets, souvenirs, and gifts from family and friends, as well as fans. The most notable of them: two autographed posters of Knicks captain Jalen Brunson.
“His leadership, his courage,” Hargitay said, pointing to his image during a backstage visit before a recent Saturday matinee, a few hours before the start of Game 5 of the NBA Finals. “We don't have words to describe it. Twenty-nine points less: boom, it's not a problem for him!”
The admiration goes both ways. On one of the signs, Brunson wrote: “To the real captain of New York!” He was referring to Captain Olivia Benson, the character Hargitay has been playing on “Law & Order: SVU.” (When the show began in 1999, Benson was a simple detective.)
But his decades-long acting experience on “SVU” meant little when it came to preparing for his current career. “I was really scared because I had never done this,” Hargitay, 62, said. “I didn't see myself as a Broadway person.”
“On my show, I know everything,” he continued. “I'm the boss. I've been there longer. I'm in charge. I know how to fix everything. I know how to make it work.”
Being on Broadway, especially with a one-man show like “Every Brilliant Thing,” was a shock to his system. “Everything was different,” Hargitay said. “Just learning the lines was a mountain for me. I thought, 'Why is it taking me so long?'”
“Also, I wasn't used to receiving so many notes,” she added. “By the way, I love the notes, but there were a lot of them and I didn't know what was normal in the theater.”
Hargitay credits her husband, actor Peter Hermann, for helping her execute lines and generally helping her build her confidence. (One of his gifts in the inspiration slot: a small bag containing a pair of steel balls.) The leadership skills he honed at SVU also came in handy.
“She's so mensch,” Jeremy Herrin, who directed the Broadway production with playwright Duncan Macmillan, said in a video interview. “She really wants to get better and recruits everyone in the room to make the show better.”
“She is absolutely responsible,” he continued, “and carries her burden in a very generous way.”
While Hargitay puts on makeup and costumes for the stage (jeans and a simple, unadorned blouse) in a separate room, she hangs out in the inspiration space, which seems to charge and center her. She pulled out another item: a composite photograph of her and her mother, Jayne Mansfield, in front of the movie theaters. Mansfield appeared in the Broadway comedy “Will Success Ruin Rock Hunter?” in 1955. Hargitay then proudly held a pointy blue statuette: the Broadway Rising Star Award that her mother received for her participation in that show.
It was a tangible connection for Hargitay, who made her directorial debut last year with the documentary “My Mom Jayne.” “The movie opened up a kind of space, it connected me with my mother,” he said. “I think it is no coincidence that this work came to me.”
“Every Brilliant Thing,” written by Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, is directed by a narrator who, as a child, begins compiling a numbered list of shiny things in an attempt to give a depressed mother reasons to live, and maintains it into adulthood. The script, equally funny and moving, does not specify the gender, race or age of the narrator, and a variety of actors from around the world have appeared on the show. Now Hargitay has taken over from Daniel Radcliffe, who was the first actor to star in the Broadway version of the show and received a Tony nomination for his performance.
A major reason for the enduring success of “Every Brilliant Thing” is the play's adaptability: the script can be modified slightly to suit the location and whoever plays the narrator. Hargitay's version, for example, is age-appropriate: Radcliffe's narrator started the list at age 7 in 1996; his begins at 7 in 1971. A dog that introduces the first segment was called Indiana Bones with Radcliffe, and now it's Groucho Barks (“because Groucho Marx was so nice to my mom,” Hargitay said).
This also allows the actors to subtly personalize the story in a way that resonates with them and creates more connections with the audience. But that relationship can be a bit strained in the case of someone like Hargitay, with whom many people have forged an intense parasocial bond. You can see why Brunson calling the actress a captain in her dedication can also be interpreted as a reference to her enormous presence in New York City, where her series is filmed, often on location, and where she has become a combination of mascot, defender and super friend.
In reality, her reach extends far beyond the five boroughs, with a large number of dedicated fans who have embraced Benson, and often identify with her, not only as an advocate for the weak, the hurt and the traumatized, but as someone who has been through difficult times herself, having survived heartbreaking emotional abuse and sexual assault.
A direct consequence of that passionate fandom is that Hargitay is less involved in the pre-show process than Radcliffe. “Every Brilliant Thing” relies on a high degree of participation from audience members, with numerous volunteers asked to read lines from numbered cue cards when asked by the narrator, and volunteers reading five more featured roles. Before each show, Radcliffe toured the Hudson Theater at a brisk pace, teaming up with The associate director and stage director write to find their co-stars. Hargitay appears on stage before the play begins, and attendees immediately approach her to take photos, give her a gift, or exchange a few words.
“Some of them want to share emotional stories with her,” said associate director Laura Dupper, who helps direct the casting of audience members. “Sometimes he gives out some cards, but it depends on the atmosphere of the people who come in and if it's already feeling very intense at the top, he has to protect himself.” That's why Hargitay often returns backstage to regroup for a few minutes before the play begins.
Once on stage as narrator, she directs the play with that mixture of toughness, compassion and good humor that characterizes her. At the performance I attended, she felt comfortable enough controlling the proceedings that she sped up the interaction a bit, jokingly interjecting that it was “for time reasons, there's a game tonight.” After a scene in which he had to run around the orchestra section, he returned to the stage out of breath, gasping: “That was a lot harder than I expected. I'm 62 years old!”
At the same time, she was always in character (the narrator is now a middle-aged American woman who might as well be a Knicks superfan) and didn't seem distracted by audience members shouting “Olivia!” and “I love you!” She understands where they come from.
“We're just people, we're just human beings, and we all have a story, and we all have something, we carry something, we go through something, and we fear something,” he said. “So the point is to be a [expletive] be human first and say: 'I am like you.' I'm a storyteller, that's what I want, because I can capture the heart of it. and keep it fun. You can be both. We can be vulnerable and strong as nails. And have balls.”
