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Thursday, April 25, 2002

By Rob Owen, Post-Gazette TV Editor

Celebrity sightings in Pittsburgh often provoke head scratching. People might think they see a star, but it's unexpected and seemingly out of place, so some actors get by without much recognition.

	Juliet Landau portrays Hennie and Robert Trebor is Uncle Morty in "Awake and Sing!" at the O'Reilly Theater. (Lake Fong, Post-Gazette)

Juliet Landau has been in town for just a few weeks, but she's already been approached by fans of TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel." Landau has a recurring role on the shows as Drusilla, a crazy vampire with a cockney accent.

Landau is in Pittsburgh affecting another accent, playing the daughter in a Jewish Bronx family in the Pittsburgh Public Theater's revival of "Awake and Sing!," which opens tonight for previews.

Though she worked on a Brooklyn Italian accent for a previous role, the Jewish Bronx accent is new.

"I actually met with two friends that are Jewish women from the Bronx and tape-recorded them and worked off their sound," Landau said. "[The actors in the play] are a family so we've been marrying our sounds."

Though she hasn't had much time to explore the city due to a busy rehearsal schedule, Landau already has a Giant Eagle advantage card on her key chain. What she has seen of Pittsburgh, particularly in the Cultural District, has made a favorable impression.

"It's really inspiring to see how people come and support the theater," she said. "And when I went to the gym the other day, everybody there seemed to know each other, so there's this nice mix of big city and familiarity."

So far, nothing here rivals one of her first fan encounters at a Los Angeles gym.

"This girl started running away from me, and she was completely freaked out," Landau said. "I was like, 'I'm an actress, I'm not a vampire.' It was just funny."

Landau, the daughter of actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, said she accepted a role in "Awake" because it was her first opportunity to perform in a full staging of a Clifford Odets play.

In "Awake," set during the Great Depression, Landau plays Hennie, a young pregnant woman whose mother (Marilyn Fox) sets her up in an arranged marriage with a man (Lawrence Arancio) who is not the father of her unborn child.

	'Awake and Sing!' WHERE: Pittsburgh Public Theater at O'Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Downtown. WHEN: Through May 26 - 8 p.m. Tuesday through Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays; some exceptions. TICKETS: $10-42 (Students $10); 412-316-1600.

"It's got a lot of strong life in it," Landau said. "The stakes are really high in terms of the climate in America. Everybody struggles to live through this time and everybody in this family has a different journey. There's so much texture to all of the relationships."

Filled with family strife, marriage, birth, death and love, Odets' 1935 social drama and the role of Hennie appealed to Landau.

"For me, it's so much about the role and the people I'm going to be working with," she said. "The first thing that gets my passion is the role and the material. It's such a beautiful play and has such a way of accumulating. It builds, but 'accumulates' is really the word in terms of the impact of the play."

Landau, who just turned 30, was a professional ballerina for five years before turning to acting. She's had roles in the films "Ed Wood," "Theodore Rex" and the upcoming Henry Jaglom film "Shopping." Next she plans to do a play with her mother in Los Angeles.

But it's her role as Dru on "Buffy" that's become her calling card.

"The popularity of the character has taken off in amazing ways," she said. "They just made a doll of me. It's sort of a surreal experience."

She described the process, which required undergoing something similar to a medical exam so sculptors can get details just right.

"They did this whole head and body scan," she said. "[The scanner] goes all around your head, and body and you can't blink."

Even more bizarre, she's not the only one in her family to be immortalized in plastic. As her sister noted, their parents were re-created as action figures for their roles in the British-made '70s sci-fi series "Space: 1999."

"How many people have that in their family?" Landau asked.

Landau appeared in two dozen episodes during the second season of "Buffy" and reprised her role in almost a dozen episodes between "Buffy" and its spin-off, "Angel," last season. Producers have talked to her about returning to one of the shows in the future, though there are no definite plans.

"It's been wonderful to do the show and still be available to do other stuff," she said. "I've had such a blast. They really let me play."

Landau said when she first met "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon, he described Dru and her vamp beau Spike (James Marsters) as the "Sid and Nancy" of the vampire set. They discussed whether the characters should be American or British (Landau voted for British, which won out ultimately), and Whedon incorporated several of the actors' performance choices into the characters, including Landau's Drusilla cry.

"The thing that's so neat about the show is it has a really wide demographic [it appeals to]," Landau said. "You'll get kids and then literally 85-year-old people. The writing is so smart and the people who come and talk to me are really nice and they're smart people."

Though her "Awake" character is no bloodsucker, Landau described Hennie as feisty.

"She has a lot of emotional stuff to deal with," she said. "She's definitely a fighter."

But if Dru met Hennie?

"Dru would probably eat her," Landau said, laughing at the absurdity of such an encounter. "And she'd eat her baby, too."