Between the Lines … with Paul Gross and Martha Burns

The Canadian showbiz couple talk reuniting on stage in their new play, Domesticated.

“I think everyone in the world would like to have heard the first conversation after [the Monica Lewinsky affair] between Bill and Hillary [Clinton],” Canadian actor Paul Gross laughs as we chat in a back room at the Berkeley Street Theatre in downtown Toronto. “Just what did they say to each other? ‘A cigar?’ I can’t quite imagine that conversation.”

The former Due South star turns to his wife, actress Martha Burns, with whom he co-starred in the Canadian television comedy Slings and Arrows between 2003 and 2006. They exchange smiles about an hour before they have to head down the hallway to a stage about a hundred feet away to channel a Clintonesque world of political scandal in the Company Theatre production of Domesticated. Penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning American scribe Bruce Norris, the story centres around a politician caught in bed with a prostitute and the marital fallout that ensues.

The play is brash, blunt, devastating and often hilarious, but as the couple’s onstage marriage crumbles their off-stage union thrives.

In 1984, Gross performed alongside Burns at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal in a production of Successful Strategies. They married four years later, had two children and starred in the Canadian television comedy Slings and Arrows in the early 2000s, between leading separate, successful acting careers. They, however, never appeared in the theatre together again.

Now, Gross, 56, and Burns, 57, who met during a 1982 National Arts Centre production of Walsh, reunite on stage for the first time in 31 years for the Toronto production of Domesticated.

between Bill and Hillary [Clinton],” Canadian actor Paul Gross laughs as we chat in a back room at the Berkeley Street Theatre in downtown Toronto. “Just what did they say to each other? ‘A cigar?’ I can’t quite imagine that conversation.”

The former Due South star turns to his wife, actress Martha Burns, with whom he co-starred in the Canadian television comedy Slings and Arrows between 2003 and 2006. They exchange smiles about an hour before they have to head down the hallway to a stage about a hundred feet away to channel a Clintonesque world of political scandal in the Company Theatre production of Domesticated. Penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning American scribe Bruce Norris, the story centres around a politician caught in bed with a prostitute and the marital fallout that ensues.

The play is brash, blunt, devastating and often hilarious, but as the couple’s onstage marriage crumbles their off-stage union thrives.

In 1984, Gross performed alongside Burns at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal in a production of Successful Strategies. They married four years later, had two children and starred in the Canadian television comedy Slings and Arrows in the early 2000s, between leading separate, successful acting careers. They, however, never appeared in the theatre together again.

Now, Gross, 56, and Burns, 57, who met during a 1982 National Arts Centre production of Walsh, reunite on stage for the first time in 31 years for the Toronto production of Domesticated.

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MIKE CRISOLAGO: How did it come about that you are performing on stage together after 30-plus years?

PAUL GROSS: Phil Riccio, the director, had approached me about the part. When I read it I thought Martha should play my wife. Then he said, “Well Martha’s unbelievable but I hesitated to ask because I thought it would be too weird for a married couple to do it.” I said, no, I think it would be better because … we have a short-hand so you don’t have to go through that long period of getting to know someone you’re working with. And it’s been fantastic.

I think he thought we were going to stab each other in rehearsal or something. Or she’d punch me or set me on fire. I don’t know.

MB: But I think it’d be more likely that two people who didn’t know each other that well would have developed really antagonistic connections because all the clues in the play are all the things that have gone wrong recently, not so much about what went right.

MC: Did you attempt to channel real-life marital emotions while performing as a fictional married couple?

MB: Yeah … you’ve built up your layer of experience and you want to have something to draw on. Your imagination can take you into the fictional relationship. Or when you know someone well it’s easier to think of one thing that bugs you and just go for that.

PG: For me, if I’m angry in a scene I don’t think, “I remember that time I was angry at Martha.” But that’s all you have to use is your emotional life … and then that kind of finds its way through the words you’re given to say. You’re kind of always just using yourself, which is why many actors are so horrifying to be around. [Laughs]

MC: You’ve both noted that you’d love to be able to hear what couples are saying to each other as they leave the theatre after the play.

PG: Yeah, follow them out. One goes to a cab, one goes to the subway.

MC: What kind of food for thought do you think it offers?

MB: There’s a lot of intimate details that are revealed about their lives. So all the things that are just so hard to talk about even with people that you’ve known for a long time.

PG: I think what’s interesting about the big argument that we have – the climactic scene in a sense – is that it’s the conversation that they never had. After 30 years this is the first time they’re having it and it’s only possible after this complete eruption and probable disintegration of their marriage.

MB: And it’s just really interesting in that men and women talk about the same things but we come from very different places as we’re talking about them. We don’t really understand the places from which we come. I think he’s really interested in this great divide. Do we mean the same thing when we say “love?” Do we mean the same thing when we say “marriage?” What does fidelity really mean? And commitment?

PG: And what does sex mean when we talk about that? … All of that gets thrown into it because we’re at a time now when those definitions that certainly my generation grew up with, which is you’re a man, you’re a woman and then there are homosexuals and that was about it. The concept of what it’s become wasn’t really in place. So it really is such a short period of time where probably the largest social upheaval has happened in the history of human beings and it coincides with the technological revolution and the medical revolution. We’re in a completely different world than we’ve ever known. And I think [Norris] is also trying to push into that as well.

MB: And we don’t think of things that deeply, either … I don’t know if [Norris] really cares if we want to think about it or not. He’s thinking about it so there it is. [Laughs]

MC: And you’re going to think about it because it’s in the play.

PG: That’s right. You’re going to laugh and then you’re going to go home and fight! [Laughs]

Domesticated runs has been extended until Dec. 19. Click here for show and ticket information.