Estelle Parsons perfectly fit for demanding theater role

NEW YORK — Estelle Parsons tears up the staircase in the haunted dollhouse of a set in the Broadway production of "August: Osage County" with the nimbleness of an Olympian. For the next several months, this 80-year-old Oscar-winning actress will inhabit the physically demanding role of Violet Weston, the drug-ravaged matriarch of "August," Tracy Letts' Tony Award-winning play.

Her stamina may be a tribute to a lifetime of simple physical fitness for Parsons, who will turn 81 in November while finishing her six-month contract. She lifts weights and swims, she said, and has hiked the backwoods of her native New England for most of her life. She hasn't smoked in many years and rarely drinks. She rarely eats red meat, save for the occasional lamb chop. She started practicing yoga about 30 years ago. She is the antithesis of Violet, whose self-destructive rampage gives "August: Osage County" its squirming core.

"Here I am, Miss Healthy, fit Swedish flicka playing this drug addict," she said last week, wearing workout clothes in her apartment on the Upper West Side. "But this play is very physical. It's closer to Restoration comedy or French farce, so you have to go out and really deliver the goods at every performance."

As Violet, a mother who tosses back painkillers as if they were Flintstones vitamins, Parsons spends 90 minutes of the 3-hour-and-20-minute play onstage and goes up or down the three-story set for a total of 352 steps during each performance. At a time that most actresses her age would be happy to spend 15 minutes on Broadway in a couple of wheel-Grandma-out-for-a-song numbers, Parsons is tackling one of the most shrewish, complex mothers to terrorize a Broadway stage in decades — part Mary Tyrone, part Momma Rose.

"She is certainly giving a performance to remember," Charles Isherwood recently wrote in The New York Times, "one that may prove to be a crowning moment in an illustrious career."

Taking on this role would be a challenge at any age, considering that the 68-year-old Deanna Dunagan, who won a Tony Award in June for originating the role, cited exhaustion in her decision to leave the production. Parsons must navigate two sets of stairs (the stage depicts the Weston family's sprawling Oklahoma house), smoke cigarettes, argue with pretty much everyone onstage, dance to an Eric Clapton song and verbally eviscerate 10 other characters in a family dinner scene.

"I think it's had an effect on my psyche because every one of those scenes is one that I don't want to have in my own life," Parsons said. "Violet doesn't want to sit down and be interrogated. Every scene is something she really doesn't want to have, except when she's drugged out, and then she seems to be comfortable."

For Parsons, being comfortable means being active. In addition to her weightlifting and swimming (she swims for 30 minutes twice a week), she goes on 30-minute bike rides on two other days. She takes a break from exercise on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when she has two performances. At her summer home upstate, she also rides her bike or hikes or swims on Mondays, her day off. She played tennis for years and still cross-country skis. And she does yoga in her dressing room and at home whenever she gets a few minutes.

"I've always been a fit person," Parsons said. "I've been acting all my life, and I've always felt you should be in shape. I'm used to devoting my whole life to the work and what it requires."

That lifelong devotion to performing has rubbed off on her co-star Amy Morton, who plays Barbara, the daughter who takes on Violet. "Estelle has so much stamina and so much energy, and she has stayed working and never retired," Morton said. "She's quite the opposite of Violet, but let's hope everyone is the opposite of that character."

She doesn't want to dwell on the physical demands of the role, however, and shrugs off the notion that it is a feat for an octogenarian.

"I don't like to feel like a freak," she said. "I don't want people coming to the show just to see what an 80-year-old looks like onstage. Isn't that what actresses do? They just keep on working."