'Valparaiso' star Patton is flying high

By ALEXANDER STEVENS
CNC ARTS WRITER

Photo caption: "It's rare that I know right away if I want to do something," says Will Patton.

The last time Will Patton was in town, he was a broke teenager, kicking around Cambridge, staying at the YMCA, trying to find himself.

Things are different now.

A winner of two Obie Awards and a featured actor in, quite literally, the biggest movie of 1997, "Armageddon," he's back in the city to play the lead role in the world premiere of Don DeLillo's "Valparaiso," running through March 17 at the American Repertory Theatre.

Patton's life is very different these days, but in chatting with him before one of the show's final rehearsals, you get the sense that he's still searching. This time, he's hunting for the elusive handle on DeLillo's challenging new play.

"Everyone always talks about the media aspect of this play," says Patton. But he's more interested in its other, less tangible, themes. "Our lives may not be about what we think they are, and a slight shift could jeopardize [that perception]. And, in the end, that might be a good thing. It might bring us face to face with what's really going on."

Patton knows he's into nebulous territory here, that he's talking about something that he can't quite put his finger on, so after a short pause, he adds, "Does that make any sense?"

Well, not entirely. But that's the way it goes with "Valparaiso," DeLillo's hallucinogenic play about a man who gets on a plane to Valparaiso. The only problem is that it's not the Valparaiso he was aiming for, and the mishap somehow becomes a media moment. The media's fixation on him results in strange and disturbing consequences within his marriage.

DeLillo isn't too interested in naturalism in this play. It's highly symbolic - not literal or linear - and that's always a challenge for actors, who like to root their characters in some kind of a firm reality.

"That is hard," says Patton, who's faced similar challenges with other plays. "How do you make something personal that's completely philosophical? The characters [in 'Valparaiso'] don't respond to each other in any ordinary way. Sometimes they melt into each other, and sometimes they do things that seem contradictory [to their objectives]."

Things are much more straightforward when you're playing an oil driller turned astronaut-hero in "Armageddon" or the psycho government aide in "No Way Out," a movie in which he shared the screen with Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Sean Young - and somehow managed to get the best part.

"Yeah, I would rather have had my part than Kevin's part," says Patton, who also teamed with Costner in "The Postman." "I think Kevin would rather have had my part."

Fans of those films would certainly recognize Patton in a blink. His voice still carries a distinct trace of the South Carolina accent of his youth, and the black knit skull cap that he removes gives a bad case of "hat head" to his thinning, wispy blonde hair.

Although he's gracious and extraordinarily gentle in conversation, Patton's intensely circumspect about everything: hesitant about answering questions, hesitant about taking this role at the ART, hesitant about giving interviews - notoriously shy, he's consented to only two chat sessions to promote the play.

"Yeah, it's rare that I know right away if I want to do something," he admits.

But he says he'd jump at the chance to work again with film director Nicholas Roeg, who has a gift for visual imagery, and a quirky style of storytelling. His favorite theatrical experiences were working on Sam Shepard plays back in the days when they were considered raw and daring. (Patton won an Obie Award for Shepard's "Fool For Love" at the Circle Repertory Theatre in New York.)

"Those plays were so physically charged," says Patton. "Every night was like getting drunk without getting drunk."

Asked if he can draw any similarities between the characters he played in "No Way Out" and "Armageddon," Patton draws a blank. But then he's offered the observation that they're all a little off-balance.

"Yeah, that might be a similarity in all the roles," he smiles. "Sometimes I think a see a pattern, but it's more interesting to think about what makes them unique."

This is Patton's first job at the ART, and he decided to come - after much mulling, of course - because he loved the play.

"It was the first play that I'd read that excited me in years," he explains.

He also had a good feeling about the ART when he visited, but he isn't a fan of this repertory business: "Valparaiso" rehearsals moved onto the Loeb stage about one week before performances began, a move that he's found to be very unsettling at this late stage of rehearsal.

"The play had one tone [in the rehearsal building]," he says, "and now we're struggling to find another."

But, in the end, his attitude sounds like a perfect match with the ART. He's not too interested in playing it safe.

"I'd rather attempt something hard and have it come out weird," he says.

Patton's bio lists the odds jobs he's taken on this strange road to professional acting. Some of the more colorful ones include elevator operator, Christmas tree salesman, graveyard-shift clerk at an all-night New York market, laborer mopping oil out of the Mississippi River, coal shoveler, and demolition worker.

He could add teacher. He taught acting at Fordham University in New York for less than a semester, before an acting opportunity forced him out of the classroom. But in his short tenure as professor, he probably left his mark on students with his unconventional philosophy.

"I encouraged the students that if there was any way they could get out of [acting], then do it fast," he says. "I tried to put them off it, so that only those who really wanted it would stay with it."

And that philosophy pretty much explains why Patton's back in Cambridge.

"I knew [acting] was one of the only things I might stand a chance at," he says. "It was one of the few things that people took me seriously at."

The American Repertory Theatre's production of "Valparaiso" is at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, through March 17. Tickets are $23-$55. Call (617) 547-8300.