The cover of the DVD for the TV Production

Bruce with Bud Cort in the Mark Tapper Forum Production

Forget-Me-Not Lane by Peter Nichols (author of Joe Egg),  a wonderful English play. We did it at the Mark Taper Forum for twelve weeks with a company that included John McMartin, Bud Cort, Charlotte Moore, Beulah Garrick, Betsy Slade and the magnificent Donald Moffatt. Those four months (counting rehearsals) were just about the happiest time I have ever had as an actor. A year later, Donald Moffatt, Betsy and myself were asked to repeat our roles for the PBS Theater in America series. We went to New York to rehearse (it was directed by Arvin Brown, as was the Taper production) and shot it in Connecticut. Bud's part was played by the new actor Tom Hulce, McMartin's part by Joseph Mahar (who I adored), Beaulah's part by the amazing Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Charlotte's part by the late Joyce Ebert. I saw it recently on tape (it's available from the Broadway Archive) and I still love the play.

Synopsis:

While packing for a family trip, Frank begins to reminisce about his life while growing up in England during World War II. From a young boy of 14 through his early manhood, he takes us through poignant periods of his past as both tour guide and observer.

With a salesman father, who's out of the home five days a week and a mother who settles for her life while knowing there were better choices that she didn't make, a young amorous girl (who he eventually marries) and a spunky friend, Frank relives events and feelings from joyous to horrid, from flippant to morose. Each one seeming to bring him to the verge of understanding and yet always just managing to avoid what appears to be a much needed resolution.

Personally stepping into each flashback, Frank gives us a look at not only what was but how it could have been, while letting us experience, first hand, how he came to be where he is now. Frank is nearly a carbon copy of the life that he feels short changed him. Ending up nearly a duplicate of his father, married to a mirror image of his mother and with a son who could be him except for the longer hair and hippie clothes, Frank's story might belong to any of us who realizes too late the old saying, "If I only knew then what I know now."

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