The math may be slightly off, but I think—actually, I’m pretty sure—that we’ve interviewed actress Sally Struthers at Ogunquit Playhouse fourteen times for 207. No other actor comes close to that record.
“Every year when I find out that I get to be in another show here,” she told me, “I feel like the eight year old who’s been really good in school and did her homework and raked the yard in autumn and helped Mom mow the lawn. And come summer they say, you’ve been a good girl all year—you get to go to summer camp.” The Playhouse is, she says, “summer camp for adults.”
Through September 1st Struthers is appearing in the musical “Grumpy Old Men” with Hal Linden, best known as the star of the hit 1970s/80s sitcom “Barney Miller.” Like Struthers, he shot to fame on television, but he too learned his craft in the theatre. His take on life at Ogunquit is slightly different.
“You think we’re up here playing,” he says. “We’re not. We’re up here working.”
Linden, at age 87, clearly loves performing. “Actors are never more miserable than when they’re not working,” he says. “And the truth of the matter is every time a show closes you think, is this the last one? Have they discovered I’m a fraud?” And with that question hanging in the air, Linden and Struthers both burst into laughter. Life is good at summer camp for adults.