It’s No ‘Mystery’ What Daly Wants

You gotta believe.

In miracles. In the theater. In Tyne Daly.

After all, how can you not have faith in a woman who boldly took on “Gypsy’s” Mama Rose when no one thought she could sing a note, who showed that a woman’s place could be in the precinct as Mary Beth Lacey in “Cagney & Lacey,” who demonstrated that goodness can be rewarded on television as Miss Alice in “Christy”?

At 51, the five-time Emmy- and one-time Tony-winning actress looks ready for her next challenge: tackling the new one-woman play “Mystery School.”

But it’s not just the loneliness of the solo show that is daunting. It’s the touchy subject of the work: the hunger for a rich spiritual life, as seen through five vastly different women.

“It could be dangerous territory,” says Daly, who in person comes across as warm and strong--and edgy, an earth mother on shifting sands. “But there’s no intent of blasphemy. I think the intention of the piece is so beautiful--and I use that word advisedly. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but I’m more interested now in being part of celebration.”

Roles, in her words, of “angst and terror and grotesquerie,” while they have their place, don’t interest her at the moment. Her Daly requirement now is something more uplifting.

“I’ve done the old drunken seamstress from Vegas this year, with cigarettes and booze and all those bad words you get to say on cable TV. Done the murderous mothers. And the gray-haired villains. And last week I turned down a part about a woman who stalks herself. I thought, ‘Oh, no. No, thank you.’ ”

Now she’s keen on joy, delight and thought-provoking theater in a show developed in July at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute.

Daly’s show opens in New Haven, Conn., then the production will be presented in New York from Feb. 28 to April 19. An off-Broadway theater has yet to be named for the run.

“She’s an astonishing actress,” says “Mystery School” playwright Paul Selig, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. “She brings to each character a wonderful truth and a dignity to their beliefs, and the fervor in which they embrace them.”

Daly believes each of the five characters who make up the work “are honorable because they have the courage of their convictions. And their convictions are various and many. I felt that I had not met these broads before. I like them all, but I wouldn’t have all of them to dinner.”

The characters include an unwavering Christian fundamentalist eager for the end of the world.

And a woman struggling to make the next step at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And a harried host of a New Age cable-access call-in show.

And a repressed widow who offers an archeological slide show of significant symbols.

And finally, an idealistic and exuberant Dr. Edie, who gives an inspiring commencement speech.

“Paul has this thing that you think you may know these people when you first meet them,” says Daly, who gets up to pace. “And then once you pass your judgment, he slips a little stuff in there, and you get disoriented and . . . and . . . and . . . I cannot find a cigarette! And I must find a cigarette! We’re getting philosophical here first thing in the morning, and I need a cigarette.”

She prowls the room looking desperately for a cigarette and finds peace when she discovers one. For a moment, a kind of serenity returns.

Daly says it has been a long time since she’s created a new work, instead of reviving an older one.

“Reviving is very good work, too,” she says. “You breathe air into a wonderful piece, and that’s swell. But working on a new piece, which I’ve only done four or five times in my career--as we laughingly call it--is a whole other kind of work.”

Daly gives a little nervous laugh.

“Laurence Luckinbill said it would be better to call it a ‘careen.’ ”

And how does she like to shape her “careen”?

She laughs again at the notion that an actor has any control.

“When I was a kid, about 15, I said one time to my dad [actor James Daly], who was in commercials selling Camel cigarettes, ‘I understand, Dad, why you’re selling Camels: so you can pick and choose wonderful scripts when they come in so you won’t have to do the crappy ones.’ And he said, ‘You silly, patronizing piece of. . . . How many great scripts do you think are lying around the house?’ I got the riot act told to me, baby.

“You don’t have that much sway over your career. Maybe the top-echelon star who can get a movie made because they can raise the money. That’s a whole kind of actor I know nothing about. I’m a working actor. There are moments of good and moments of not so good.”

But Daly does have her limits.

“I remember once, shortly after the film ‘The Enforcer’ [with Clint Eastwood] came out, when I got a call from an agent to do this $20-million movie, which was a lot of money then, about people who ate dead human flesh. And I asked the agent if I could call [the producer] personally. And I called him, and I said, ‘I wouldn’t make a movie about people who eat dead human flesh if I was starving to death. You can make five good movies for 20 million bucks, and you all ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ And I hung up the phone.”

A flash of righteousness can be fulfilling, but she’s the first to confess to some hard realities of the business.

“If you have to put shoes on the children’s feet, you go and do ‘Conan the Librarian’ [for PBS], which I did because I needed the dough. And when I said that out loud, people at ‘Christy’ were upset. The trouble with me is that I haven’t learned what not to say. I’m not a cool woman. I remember working with Gena Rowlands, and I thought, ‘I’m never going to be this cool drink of water. She’s so great, so put together, so smart.’ ”

Does the exploration of “Mystery School” reflect on her own spiritual journey?

“I’m not as clear as any of these ladies are about what my philosophy is,” she says. “I wish I were.”

But she seems so down to earth, so direct, so centered.

“But I’m an actress, dear.”

She takes a long drag on a cigarette and roars with laughter.