| BORN WITH TEETH A Memoir Kate Mulgrew New York: Little, Brown & Co., May 2015 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-316-33431-0 | ||||
| ISBN 0-316-33431-6 | 306pp. | HC/BWI | $28.00 | |
It is the duty of an actor to bring fantasies to vivid life on the stage or the screen. Their traditional reward for this is the adulation of the audience. How strange is it then that they crave immediate gratification in their private lives and take to heart the inevitable disappointments that flow from the conflict between their plans and real life?
This memoir displays Kate Mulgrew as a dedicated and talented actress, in a manner that seems to me more fair-minded than preening. It also shows her as a woman who might have handled her private life better. But I place no blame on her for having her unplanned daughter or putting the child up for adoption. And who among us can honestly say, looking back, that they handled their life about as well as it could have been handled?
To give a brief summary, Kate Mulgrew caught the acting bug during high school in Dubuque, Iowa. She was accepted at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in New York City, but left before completing its course of study to take the part of Emily Webb in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. While performing that role on stage in the evenings, she played Mary Ryan in Ryan's Hope days. It was an ambitious and arduous beginning of her career, and an auspicious one as well. She went on to act in some of the stellar stage plays of all time, among them Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hedda Gabbler and Tea at Five — the latter a monologue based on Katherine Hepburn's memoir. She is better known, however, for her seven seasons as Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager and the subsequent comedy-drama Orange is the New Black, currently in its final season.1
"It was curious to me then, as now, the power of the performer over an audience when, in fact, the gift itself springs from the writer's pen. Claire Labine had poured her heart and most of her own unique qualities into the character of Mary Ryan, and she had done so with lyricism and authenticity. In many ways, Claire was Mary Ryan, and Mary Ryan was, in many ways, me. This synthesis, rare enough under the best of creative circumstances, proved even rarer as our personal friendship deepened into a sympathy that would survive, and surmount, many trials. – Page 51 |
The memoir is episodic, annoyingly so at some points, but overall it is an entertaining read. Ms. Mulgrew gives details of her work but spends more time on the personal aspects of her life with family, friends, and lovers. I think it's fair to say that she greatly values social interactions, especially those with family. She comes across as a generally straightforward and well-rounded individual, and as someone it would be fun to know. I'll give this book full marks, although I don't consider it a keeper.
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