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Personal Loyalty. Political Whispers. And Edie Falco.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Even some hardcore political nerds are taxed when it comes to placing the names of Erastus Corning 2nd and Dorothea Noonan, known as Polly.

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Personal Loyalty. Political Whispers. And Edie Falco.
By
Jesse McKinley
, New York Times

ALBANY, N.Y. — Even some hardcore political nerds are taxed when it comes to placing the names of Erastus Corning 2nd and Dorothea Noonan, known as Polly.

For those of you not in the know — and you are myriad — Corning was the longtime Democratic mayor of Albany, ruling New York’s capital city for a whopping 41 years before his death in 1983. Noonan was his closest adviser, a tough-as-nails, profane-as-church-graffiti operative who advised him on his career and other political machinations before dying in 2003, still batting away speculation that her relationship with the mayor had been more than professional.

They might well have been forgotten except for a curious course of events in 2009, when Noonan’s granddaughter — Kirsten E. Gillibrand, then a little-known congresswoman from the Capital District — was selected to fill the U.S. Senate seat held by Hillary Clinton, who had been named secretary of state.

The sudden ascension of Gillibrand brought fresh attention to Corning and Noonan’s strange personal and political relationship.

Among those taking note was Sharr White, whose new play, “The True” examines — and hypothesizes about — the affections shared between Noonan and Corning. Edie Falco and Michael McKean star in the New Group production, which opens Sept. 20 at the Pershing Square Signature Center. (Previews have begun.)

The play’s existence has already led to some hand-wringing in old-time Albany political circles. A late August preview in The Times Union said that “interest and suspense is building in Albany as word spreads about the play,” noting that it “dares to tread upon the deeply embedded mythology” around Corning and Noonan, both of whom were married to other people during their long stints as Democratic power brokers.

White’s take has the pair repeatedly denying any physical relationship beyond a stolen kiss in Pittsburgh, an event which the playwright says he made up. But White says that choice was not made out of deference to real people or their famous progeny, but rather because of the tale he wanted to tell — about the “ultimate party loyalist who is also the ultimate personal loyalist.”

“I didn’t want to tell a salacious story,” White, 48, said during a recent rehearsal break. “I thought it was more interesting to tell a story about a certain kind of honor that I think these people had toward each other.”

That said, the playwright does not totally discount suggestions that the two politicos may have had more in common that a passion for politics. Indeed, White noted that Corning often stayed the night at the Noonan household and took her children to school. After his death, it was revealed that the mayor had left the Noonan family his lucrative insurance business, while his own family — and children — were largely shut out of his inheritance.

“Those are facts, too,” White said. “So within those facts, you tell the story.”

White began “The True” a few years after his breakthrough in 2011 with another drama featuring a fierce, if fragile, heroine: “The Other Place,” which earned a Tony nomination for Laurie Metcalf.

Since then he had a second, less successful Broadway production (“The Snow Geese”) and, lately, has been a writer and producer on Showtime’s “The Affair.”

As in that series, “The True” does not shy away from complicated relationships. But the play’s frame is even more obscure than the characters themselves: “The True” is set during the backroom drama surrounding the 1977 Democratic primary for the Albany mayorship. For those of you who do not remember this contest — again, you are not alone — that showdown involved Corning, his political power seemingly on the wane, against Howard C. Nolan Jr., a little-known state senator from the Hudson Valley.

All of this is factual, though the central dramatic conflict in the play is fiction: a falling-out between Noonan and Corning, instigated by another Democratic Brahmin, who finds Noonan’s demeanor off-putting and overly aggressive.

Enter Falco, whose turns in “The Sopranos” and “Nurse Jackie” solidified her reputation as a leading interpreter of intelligent, no-nonsense women.

Falco, herself a political junkie, said she had never heard of Corning and Noonan before reading the script, but the character of Polly grabbed her immediately. “She reminds me a lot of the smart, driven women I grew up knowing,” Falco said.

Yet she has steadfastly avoided doing any research on the actual Polly.

“It makes me a little bit uncomfortable,” she said, “because rather than going entirely on my imagination, which is kind of what I do anyway, there’s this idea that someone out there may be saying, ‘She would never do that,’ or ‘That’s not the way that was.'”

Ditto for McKean, who comes to “The True” after a well-received Broadway turn in Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes.”

“I bought a big thick book about Corning and I’m still looking at it,” McKean said. “It’s got a great cover.” Peter Scolari, who plays Peter Noonan, Polly’s accepting but not stupid husband, also said he “gleefully” avoided researching his character’s story. Little is known about Noonan, who died in 1987, though it is clear that he was determined to avoid the nastiness that suffused his wife’s world. “He was not into politics,” Scolari said.

Same for the director, Scott Elliott, who likened studying a biography of a real-life character to studying an inanimate object.

“You can’t play a mustache,” he said. “You have to play who you are in the character.”

For Polly that will involve not a little cursing and quipping, often in the same breath.

“I’m not here to be a mourner,” she says after the death of the famed Democratic boss Daniel O’Connell. “There’s going to be a fight for control of this party, and I’m not going to let Erastus wipe a tear if it means he can’t see a left hook coming.” Bam!

Unlike his leading actors, White plunged into research about Corning and his political machine, which at one point had the power to tip elections statewide and even nationally. (The Kennedy family is said to have thanked O’Connell personally for helping New York go Democratic in the 1960 presidential election.) “People would say ‘What’s your new play about?’ and I would say, ‘1977 Albany machine politics’ and their eyes would cross,” he said.

Among the useful texts: a biography of Corning by the Times Union writer Paul Grondahl, as well the writings of William Kennedy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Albany-area legend. As such the play is stocked with juicy historical tidbits on how the political machine worked, including $5 bills stuffed in residents’ mailboxes on Election Day; tax increases on Republicans; and strong-arm district leaders who leaned verrrrry close to voters as they cast their ballots.

Capturing Polly was more difficult, in large part because she never held elective office, and worked assiduously to stay behind the scenes.

“Nobody was ever clear just how she operated within her power,” White said. “So ‘the how of Polly Noonan’ has to be personality, it has to be will.”

White leaned on an interview she had done with Grondahl, as well as a public television documentary that provided the only video clip he could find of her. From that, he built the rip-roaring, sometimes heartbroken character whom Falco inhabits — disappointed by the men around her, who both lack loyalty and misunderstand what she does.

Indeed, one of the most resonant lines in the script is drawn almost verbatim from an actual Noonan quote: “There’s no machine,” she once said, mentioning O’Connell and Corning. “A machine doesn’t have heart — our organization did.”

As a political play in hyperpartisan times, White believes that “The True” may have extra resonance. In 1977, Democrats were at a turning point, much as they are today, he believes. “It’s about Sanders versus Hillary,” said White, who is a Democrat himself. “It’s about the Democratic Party challenging itself to decide where it’s gone wrong, if it’s gone wrong.” Such questioning is going on in New York state politics, of course, as its centrist governor, Andrew Cuomo, faces an insurgent challenger, actress Cynthia Nixon, attacking from the left. (During an interview Falco and McKean both gave a plug for Nixon, a friend of both.)

“Cuomo’s part of the machine just like Gillibrand is in a way,” White said. “They’re all inheritors of it.”

As for New York’s junior senator, White said he would love for her to come and see his depiction of her grandmother, though that seems unlikely: Gillibrand’s office declined to comment on “The True.”

The playwright said he understood the trepidation, but thought it was misplaced considering his largely affectionate take on Polly Noonan.

“This play is not about Kirsten Gillibrand in any way,” he said. “However, what this play is about regarding Kirsten Gillibrand is that if she was tutored by her grandmother, then you underestimate her at your peril.”

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