Source:  The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Feb 15, 2004 pE06.
                                                                              
    Title:  An interview that changes all.(SPECIAL SECTION / ENTERTAINMENT)
   Author:  John Petrick
                                                                              
   People:  Langella, Frank

Full Text COPYRIGHT 2004 North Jersey Media Group Inc.

Byline: JOHN PETRICK, STAFF WRITER

MATCH

Opening night: April 8

Frank Langella thought it was about time for him to play a 21st century man.

"I've been doing the classics. All my stage work in the last 10 years, I
realized, were people from other centuries. So I was very drawn to playing a
modern man," says Langella, who will star in "Match," a new play by Stephen
Belber directed by Nicholas Martin.

The play, which will also star Ray Liotta and Melora Walters, focuses on a
husband and wife who show up on the doorstep of a once-renowned dancer to
interview him about his past. What they all learn, by the night's end, will
change their lives forever.

"I think the play is very much about how human beings miss each other. It's
about how they become polarized for silly reasons and can miss out on deeper
and more profound relationships. The characters are all missing each other for
different reasons. That's the theme. How people tend to miss each other and
miss out on human connection."

A theater veteran originally from Bayonne, Langella last appeared on Broadway
in 2000 in "Fortune's Fool." He is one of the few actors who has managed to
keep a thriving theater and film career going at the same time. He notes that
he isn't "returning" to the theater, though.

"I don't ever really leave. I go away and make a movie and do a TV show. So it
isn't a question of coming back. New York is my home and has always been my
home since my first Broadway show. I have had the privilege of doing many of
the great modern playwrights, and most of the classic ones. Arthur Miller,
Edward Albee, Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare. I'm a very lucky guy."

The fact that "Match" is being produced on Broadway, right out of the gate, is
a testament to the strength of the material and to the courage of the
producers, he says.

"Doing a new play on Broadway is such a rare thing," he says. "We're opening a
new play, with three weeks of previews. Nobody does that anymore. They take it
on the road, or they try it out out of town at a regional theater or in London
and then bring it here."

That's the way it was always done when he was coming up in the Sixties and
Seventies, he says, but today's theater world is different. "Everything either
has to be 'Hairspray' or 'Lord of the Rings' or they don't consider it
worthy," he says. "There are very few halfways anymore."

Despite his long career in the theater, Langella says he still gets every bit
as excited about doing a play as he did starting out. "Excited isn't even the
right word," he says. "You're like a racehorse. You're thinking, 'I wonder how
this will go and how it will be received.' .. Meeting with the costume people
and the set designers, looking at sketches of the set the first day of
rehearsal, there's such a wonderful ritual about all of that."