Second Look: Linda Lavin

         Linda Lavin in "Alice"                     Linda Lavin in "The Lyons"

Linda Lavin has been nominated for a Tony award for Best Actress again, this time for her portrayal as the classic overpowering silver matriarch of a dysfunctional family in The Lyons. We’ll find out tonight if she beats out Stockard Channing as the mother of yet another dysfunctional family on Broadway, Cynthia Nixon as a terminal cancer patient, Tracie Bennett as a late-in-life Judy Garland or Nina Arianda as a seductive and power-playing ingénue.


We were fortunate enough to have seen most of the nominated plays and performances. In a Second Life there's time for art and culture that can consciously or subconsciously energize our own creative endeavors. And it’s heartening to know that there are more substantive roles for experienced actresses to assume (even though the newbie is currently favored to win). Ms. Lavin’s Rita Lyon actually announces the beginning of her new life at the end of the play against the protests of the remaining family members.

Of course, Ms Lavin already has a Tony for Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound along with several Obies, Golden Globes and Emmys for her most famous role in the TV sitcom Alice. While she is still acting and singing (her mother was an opera star before moving and raising her family in Portland, Maine), her life has taken a turn away from the East and West coasts to the south. Linda and her husband, Steve Bakunas, have settled in Wilmington, NC, where they are actively and generously involved in the community there. Part of that involvement includes creating the Red Barn Studio theater…no surprise. Linda describes her life this way: "It gets better, it gets worse, it gets different, it gets real." Sounds familiar, yes?