Seven Time Emmy Winner Ed Asner Returns to Luna Stage in New Play by Nicky Glossman

Fans of seven time Emmy winner Ed Asner, best known for playing Lou Grant — the hardboiled news producer on the 1970's "Mary Tyler Moore Show"—are lining up to see Asner perform in the title role of "The Professional,"  a new hard-boiled drama by young playwriting phenomenon Nicky Glossman. More about the play, the May 20 and 21 performances and Montclair’s Nicky Glossman and his father, James Glossman, the play’s acclaimed director, in a minute.

Character Lou Grant, the title character of a 1977 television newsroom drama, may have been hard-boiled, but inside was a yolk of pure gold. Asner, who has played Santa Claus in four films and television shows, famously has one of the most giving hearts in Hollywood. The famed 81-year-old actor lives in Los Angeles, but travels nationwide on his own dime to support regional theaters. 

Asner, who was the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1981-1985, is a long time believer in the Luna Stage Theater Company. He first performed in a benefit reading of "The Lion in Winter" for Luna in 1996, also directed by long time friend, James Glossman. At the time, Luna was on Oak Place in Montclair.

Luna is just completing its first main stage season in the state-of-the-art theater complex in the West Orange/Orange Valley Arts District; other programs will run through the summer. Luna, a nonprofit, is  invigorating the neighborhood through performances, community outreach, classes and special projects, including its ongoing "Hearts for Haiti" healing theater workshops for school age Haitians in the area. 

"Ed will travel anywhere to support theaters that are developing an arts community and revitalizing a neighborhood," said James, who is a nationally recognized director. "He is also very supportive of new work and new playwrights."

"Ed is a real mensch," James said. 

The May 20 and May 21 workshop performances will be a fundraising benefit for Luna. Performances are at 8 p.m. each night, with a reception following each performance.

This brings us to the back story behind "The Professional," Luna Stage, the Glossmans and Asner.

James and Asner have been periodic colleagues and close friends for about 25 years, first working together before the 1990s births of James' two sons.

Both sons were backstage during the rehearsals for that 1996 benefit — in their strollers.

Nicky, then two, is now about to turn 17 and has about a half dozen plays to his credit. He sold out Luna with the "New Moon" reading this winter of his "What About Waldorf" and just won first prize in the Samuel French national playwriting competition for playwrights in secondary school. 

Ed has been a long time fan of both Glossmans. He’s been reading all of Nicky’s works and asking: "When is he going to write a part for me?" 

Now, with "The Professional," Nicky has.

"When I read the play," James said, "I heard Ed’s voice in the title role. Nicky had Ed in mind while writing."

Asner, on receiving the script, said some pretty magic words: "He not only called the play ‘brilliant,’ but offered his services for this upcoming workshop at Luna," James said.

"The play demands an actor of Ed’s stature who can be haunting, terrifying — and funny," James said. "The character has to loom over every scene, whether he is on stage or not." 

James describes the five character play as a hard edged crime drama with sharp humor laced throughout. Asner is joined in the cast by Jay O. Sanders, Paul Murphy, Prentiss Benjamin — the daughter of Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin — and Anthony Blaha. There are other Luna-Glossman family ties at play here: Paul Murphy, another Glossman family friend, was in the 1996 benefit and recently read in Nicky’s as did Anthony Blaha. 

James spoke more about the cast: "A key to directing is having the best actors; you make a suggestion and they run with it," he said. The closed rehearsals for the staged workshop will be this coming week.

Luna Stage was founded by Artistic Director Jane Mandel of Montclair. Its multilayered mission includes the nurturing of new playwrights, as evidenced not only with Nicky, but with its current, acclaimed main stage run of "The Tallest Building in the World" about the drama behind the building of the World Trade Center Towers. "Tallest" was in a one night only reading in 2009.