John Lahr has as much theater in his blood as anyone in the Barrymore or Redgrave clans. He just doesn’t act.
Lahr, son of stage and screen legend — the Cowardly Lion in “The Wizard of Oz” and Estragon in “Waiting for Godot” — made his own considerable reputation as a writer.
The longtime theater critic for The New Yorker magazine was in Denver on Tuesday, winding up appearances for his new collection of essays, “Joy Ride: Show People and Their Shows.”
Nattily dressed in a herringbone jacket and bearing a marked resemblance to his father, Lahr chatted over lunch at Stout Street Social about his life profiling theater figures, the challenge of penning biographies, and a certain timid feline.
So, he is asked, this latest book isn’t a swan song, is it?
“I’m afraid it is,” said Lahr, 74. “I see it as an au revoir. I had a 21-year-run as The New Yorker’s theater critic, which is the longest in the magazine’s history. I hoped to make it to 25 years, but they retired me in 2013.”
Lahr, who has lived in London since 1973, remains under contract to write two theater profiles a year for the magazine. The latest issue contains his piece on Julianne Moore.
While a profile takes him three to four months to research and write, it frees him to dote on his granddaughter, a somewhat late surprise from his son, Christopher.
“That was an unexpected joy and new role for me,” Lahr said.
His own role as a son was a difficult one. His father, by Lahr’s account a lovable man, was also a distant one. In his biography of his father, “Notes on a Cowardly Lion,” Lahr writes about his father announcing his not-so-paternal instincts about children: “Mildred, if you want ’em, you raise ’em.”
“Writing that book was pivotal to me,” Lahr said. “If I hadn’t written about Dad, I would never have known him. He was a lovely guy but unreachable. On stage, he was a spectacular presence. Off stage, he was a spectacular absence. Nice as he was, he was kind of an absent presence.
“The fact that he let me write his biography seems extraordinary to me now,” he said. “It’s a legacy of his joy and voice.”
The great actor, who had been ill while his son wrote the book, died the week it was finished. “It was a sort of closure, except it’s never closed,” said Lahr, who was born two years after “The Wizard of Oz” was released, and was 8 when he first saw it with his 6-year-old sister, Jane. (For the record, he swears that the flying monkeys did not willy him out.)
For all his own accomplishments — critics have lauded him as the finest writer about theater in the English language — Lahr accepts the fact that he will always be linked to his father. Sitting at a table with his face nestled in the palm of his hand, he has his own sad-eyed but leonine presence.
“As I get older, everything sags,eyelids and jowls,” he said. “I look more and more like my dad. So does my sister. Alas.”
Lahr has also written acclaimed biographies of playwrights and .
“There are different degrees of narrative challenge,” Lahr said. “I couldn’t have written the Williams biography (released in 2014) if I hadn’t written the other ones. So much of it is selection and intuition about the personality, and then synthesizing the information.
“It’s a military campaign. Just an enormous exercise.”
And this thought: “The other drama in a biography besides the drama of the subject’s life is the drama of the biographer imposing his order and interpretations on the subject’s life.”
While he still watches the occasional play, he doesn’t find theatergoing as compelling as when he was a critic.
“When you go as a critic, you pay extra attention to what’s happening on the stage,” he said. “There’s less urgency to what is going on. You don’t feel as engaged.”
As a consumer of theater and film, Lahr has his favorite players. Al Pacino is one of them.
“He’s an absolutely wonderful man, lovely and complex,” Lahr said. “He reminds me of my dad a lot, in the sense of his great intuitive genius and kind of anxiety about his education, which makes it kind of poignant.”
Helen Mirren is another actor he admires. Lahr, who was struck by her stage work in and “Orpheus Descending,” plus her lead turn in the BBC series “Prime Suspect,” profiled Mirren soon after she finished “The Queen,” which landed her the Best Actress Oscar in 2007.
“She is a remarkable woman, smart as can be,” said Lahr, who spent considerable time with Mirren and her husband, director Taylor Hackford, for the profile.
“It was interesting,” he recalled. “As fierce a presence as she is on screen, she’s almost housewife-y when she’s around him. She really sort of defers to him. It’s rather sweet.”
Mirren apparently liked the profile. When she read Lahr’s biography “Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh,” she issued an unrequested blurb, calling it a “masterpiece about a genius.”
“They used that to plug the book,” Lahr said with a grin. “Suits me.”
William Porter: 303-954-1877, wporter@denverpost.com or @williamporterdp
