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While both Cronyns have enjoyed success in the movies and television -- they even had their own TV series, The Marriage, in the '50s -- the theater is their first and last love. "The theater is Mother!" says Cronyn. "Thank God!" But Mother has changed since they were young, and they are not altogether pleased with how she looks today. "Very often people are not used to going to the theater," says Tandy, "and they don't understand that it's not the same as watching television shows. Much more concentration is required of them. You can't just turn and tell your friend what's going on, something that happens a lot at matinees."
"Our theater apes film and television," adds Cronyn. "You'll see it in scripts. Audiences now have far less tolerance for long passages of dialogue than they used to. And you can't talk to me or to anybody my age in which you don't hear a sort of old fart's moan about the fact that it's much more difficult now for kids to learn the craft of acting. They don't have the opportunity. They don't get it in TV or films. I think it's important that actors do films, but I think they're way ahead of the game if they've got a theatrical background. Actors like ourselves should be able to reproduce the same effect again and again and again and again. But actors who haven't had a theater discipline can't do that."
Aside from unemployment, the actor's worst enemy is typecasting. The Cronyns have resisted it throughout their careers, but now, in their advancing years, they are unhappily discovering that even they are not immune. These days most of the plays they are offered are set in nursing homes, dramas so depressing they are instantly filed in the wastebasket. Nursing homes? For these two dynamos? They have done enough of those parts and are not eager for more. Tandy longs for a role in just about anything by Athol Fugard, and Cronyn would like to play Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. He is too old, he reluctantly admits, to take on another Shakespearean favorite, Richard III.
When you are in love with acting, however, as these two actors are, you will take any challenging role, even if it is set in a nursing home. "Something comes through the air between an actor and the audience," says Cronyn. "I think the right word is empathy. You can tell immediately if you're not being heard, or if a lady is rattling a paper bag over in the sixth row, stage right, or if somebody has a bad cough. But the most magical moment in the theater is a silence so complete that you can't even hear people breathe. It means that you've got them!"