Actors At Work by Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan

If you've ever imagined having casual conversations with some of America's finest stage/screen performers, this spirited volume may at least partially satisfy your craving. 

Tichler and Kaplan take us into the worlds of 14 award-winning creative artists bearing names familiar to any devotee of great acting, including Seldes, Kline, Lithgow, Patinkin, Spacey, Streep, LuPone, and Merkerson. 

The wide-ranging Q&A sessions share the performers' first encounters with live theatre; their early training; how they choose their roles; how differently they approach film/television work in contrast to theatre; relationships with directors; other colleagues they admire; how they reconcile their personal worlds with life on the stage, and much more. 

Kaplan and Tichler deserve enormous credit for their incisive and seemingly spontaneous questions, along with their astute transcription of the stars' entertaining and enlightening responses. Happily, the subjects' unique personas continually shine through---not a cookie-cutter platitude anywhere in sight. Their generous "voices" resonate in your ears.

The interviewers also superbly "set the scene" by describing the locales of each conversation, the subjects' expressive qualities, and if they were greeted at the door by anything four-legged! 

Only one minuscule quibble: while thumbnail likenesses of the actors grace the book's cover, additional photographs in each chapter might provide some visual variety within the bounteous sea of admittedly engrossing text. 

I hope that Tichler and Kaplan will someday treat us to "Volume 2" of their efforts. Until then, I echo the words of Mike Nichols from his foreword: "Have a look. You will be richly rewarded." No doubt about it. 

Catherine Ritchie/Dallas (TX) Public Library