Everyone can rhapsodize about at least one writer, whether that writer greatly impacted your youthful mind -- say, a Shel Silverstein or a Madeleine L'Engle -- or whether your favorite scribe led you into the profession of letters. (Paging Mr. W. Shakespeare.)
But when you're a lauded actor, with a storied career, there are a likely a host of storytellers and sentence makers and lyrical thinkers who've paved your way, letter by sound by image by thought. Christopher Plummer is one such thespian, and his love of some of the great poets and playwrights serves as the smart center of his one-man show "A Word or Two."
Set to run for 16 performances at The Ahmanson, "A Word or Two" will celebrate the lights of litdom, from the aforementioned William Shakespeare to the patron of Pooh, A.A. Milne.
The show opens on Wednesday, Jan. 22.
So if you're visualizing yourself sitting in row H, listening to Mr. Plummer life to the beautiful words of some of the best-loved writers of all time, you're in the right place.
Now are you hearing him, in your head, telling Julie Andrews that the first time he started loving her was when she sat on that "ridiculous pinecone" at the dinner table? How can you not? And yes, "Sound of Music" fans, that was a liberal paraphrasing of an iconic line. Who here knows all of Mr. Plummer's Captain Von Trapp dialog by heart? (Raising hand.)
A night at "A Word or Two" is time well spent with one of the deans of modern acting, but consider that it is a reminding refresher of how words change our lives. Many people lament the waning of literature and poetry, the powerful twin engines that should, in large part, drive our hearts and paths.
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But wane they do not. Christopher Plummer feels the heat a good story gives off, as do so many of us, and an evening spent hearing why, and how, is both intellectual and deeply emotional.
