My worst moment: Gary Cole remembers Chicago theater and the worst review of his career

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CHICAGO — Few actors shift as seamlessly between comedy and drama as Gary Cole, who is known for everything from “Office Space,” to “Veep” to “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” to “The West Wing” and “The Good Fight.”

Currently, he can be seen on the Showtime drama “Waco: The Aftermath,” which examines the fallout of the disastrous 1993 FBI standoff at the Branch Davidian compound. Cole plays Gordon Novel, a real person who worked as an investigator for the attorneys of the survivors of Waco.

“He’s a pretty murky character, and what I mean by that is, he’s kind of the Forrest Gump of large criminal investigations,” said Cole. “And the reason they hired him is, he’s that kind of guy who can find out things from governments and also the criminal world, and dig them up and deliver them as evidence for these attorneys.”

Cole’s career began onstage in Chicago, where he was a theater actor for many years. When asked about a worst moment, it was a theater review he received early on that came to mind.

“I could not recite to you any of my good reviews, or even mildly tolerable reviews. But I committed this to memory almost immediately. It remains — and there’s a little pun for you, which will become clear — the worst review of my career.”

My worst moment ...

“In 1979, myself, Billy Petersen and Amy Morton formed a group called the Remains Theatre. And we had a little theater on Clark Street about four doors north of Wrigley Field at Clark and Racine, a little pie-wedged building that was next to the Gingerman Tavern, which still remains there (and is now known as the Gman Tavern). I was probably 23 at the time.

“We wanted to make our mark and didn’t want to do established playwrights. We wanted to be really avant-garde and prove that we were not sellouts, so we wanted to find the most obscure, dark play we could find. And we came up with this play called ‘The Tower,’ which was this German expressionist thing and had characters that were supposed to represent the players in a circus but it’s somehow tied into politics.

“What was my role? I couldn’t tell you. That’s a question I can barely answer. I think my character was named Pablo — in a German play, so try to make sense of that. We didn’t know what we were doing about anything other than: Here are lines, here are the costumes, go out there and do it (laughs). I couldn’t tell you what the play was about or why we were doing it.

“We had 55 seats and we opened the play right before the holidays in December. And we had an invited audience of friends — a lot of them came over from next door at the Gingerman with beers still in their hands because the tickets were free — and unfortunately some critics came as well, including a guy from the Chicago Reader who went by the pseudonym of Bury St. Edmund, whose real name was Lenny Kleinfeld.

“OK, I’ve built this up enough that I should tell you what the quote is. I believe this is verbatim.

“It starts with: ‘Gary Cole has shown intelligence and skill in past Chicago performances, but here he does little more than strike an irritating series of macho poses.’

“And the final line is just three words: ‘Embarrassing to behold.’

“And I’ve never, ever forgotten it.”

Did anyone call to warn Cole about the review before he read it?

“No! I mean, did I even have a phone? It’s possible I didn’t. The only phone I might have used back then was at a phone booth because I was so broke at the time.

“I remember I read the review and I took a breath and I said: You know what? He’s right. Because it was a mess.

“We were trying to get the theater off the ground and we thought this was a good idea. But we realized after a full audience was sitting there puzzled and smirking and chuckling at things that were not supposed to be funny at all (laughs), we knew. I mean, I was not mystified. I was not like, oh my god, that was the performance of my life! I thought, you know what? He’s right.

“But those words were like punches and I could not get them out of my head. And I think even back then, at parties, I would repeat them, just as a joke when we would talk shop: ‘Oh, you think you got a bad review? Listen to this: Embarrassing to behold!’ That was the final thought of the review! Print!

“It might have hurt to read that because it was a failure, but I wasn’t hurt because I thought I had done something great that nobody appreciated. It was defeating only because of the obvious: This wasn’t working. Any skill we did have, we erased by choosing this play. I remember doing a show for just two people who were friends of ours and after the show we went to our director and said, ‘What are we doing? Let’s close this and regroup.’ And that’s what we did. And the next play was actually not a bad success. We got people in the door. We got real laughs. People were actually appreciative at the end. And we were kind of on our way.

“And you know what, I might be wrong about this — this might have been a Richard Christiansen review for the Tribune.”

(The Chicago Reader review was not available, but Tribune archives show those quotations do not appear in Christiansen’s review, which refers to Cole as a “potentially strong actor” and ends with: “There seems to be talent involved here, but it is pretty well submerged in this initial production.”)

How did Cole find the motivation to go back out onstage after reading the review?

“Well, I just think it’s the job description. Eight o’clock is showtime: Show up and do it. Is anybody out there? There’s two people out there? OK, whatever! The Gingerman was next door and the play was over in 90 minutes, so all we had to do was get through it and then at 9:30 we could go next door and laugh about how horrible it was. We were dying onstage. I think I actually did die in the play, but I died well before that — I was dying onstage before I died onstage (laughs).

“But I’m grateful for the review because I can always look back to it and say: Well, at least things got better than this. So if I think, boy, critics really didn’t like something, all I have to do is think back to this review.”

The takeaway …

“Next time will be better. It had to be (laughs) — there was only one way to go, and that was up.

“And maybe that was the best beginning we could have, where it was like: Well, let’s never do that again.

“It’s just a good show business lesson. You have to recognize when something ain’t working. You can’t drive something into the ground. If something doesn’t work, you cannot save it. Cut your losses and start over.

“And that review made me bulletproof because it doesn’t matter what anybody says to me now, because I’ve got that in my back pocket and I’ve memorized it!

“Nobody can say anything worse than ‘embarrassing to behold.’ What’s under that? ‘Embarrassing to behold … and then he died. And he stole my wallet. And good riddance.’ (Laughs)”