Philip Seymour Hoffman's Busy Year

It is barely April but already it has been a high-profile 2003 for Philip Seymour Hoffman — from directing "Our Lady of 121st Street," the season's most acclaimed off-Broadway play, to starring with Brian Dennehy and Vanessa Redgrave in the upcoming Broadway revival of "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

Wearing a blue stocking cap and bundled up in a bulky jacket, the beefy actor slides unnoticed into a booth in a nondescript coffee shop on lower Fifth Avenue and quickly orders a western omelet.

But then the 35-year-old Hoffman is a chameleon. On screen, he's never the same man twice. From the nerdy gofer mooning over a porn star in "Boogie Nights" to the rich young American who fatally gets in the way of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" to the gentle nurse in "Magnolia" to the flamboyant drag queen in "Flawless," he confounds typecasters.

Hoffman's theater career hasn't been as showy, despite a stint two summers ago in Central Park, playing Meryl Streep's son in a starry revival of "The Seagull," or earlier, a freewheeling Broadway revival of "True West" with John C. Reilly at Circle in the Square.

That's because much of his energy has been focused behind the scenes, specifically on the LAByrinth Theatre Company, an off-off-Broadway troupe with which he has been associated for eight years.

But don't ask Hoffman about returning to theater from film. He says he never left.

"People assume that films come first," he says. But now is a time when artists can do a lot more, including theater, he says.

Right now, LAByrinth could not be hotter, primarily because of the off-Broadway transfer of "Our Lady of 121st Street," which, on the strength of mostly rave reviews, has moved from the troupe's tiny, ramshackle space on West 22nd Street to the Union Square Theatre, where it opened last month.

The play by Stephen Adly Guirgis is an often outrageous comedy about former students and friends of a nun who have come back to Harlem for her funeral, only to discover that her body is missing. The language is often profane, the humor dark and the characters desperate.

"All the people in the play are trying to grapple with something," says the 38-year-old Guirgis.

"Some of them are reconciling who they are with what they thought they would be. But the common denominator for me is that they are all grappling with maturity and adulthood — and some of them are shunning it completely."

Hoffman came to LAByrinth through his friendship with founding member John Ortiz. The two met first as actors.

"I just wanted to get involved with a theater troupe in New York," says Hoffman, who, at the time, was tired of living in Los Angeles.

"I didn't know much about LAByrinth at all, but then I met them and thought they were a lot of fun — so I joined. They gave me an opportunity to act in plays that I wanted to do. And I didn't have to wait. I'm big about not having to wait. I want to create my own work."

That's when Hoffman also met Guirgis who, as an actor and playwright, already was a member.

"We bonded and discovered we had a similar sensibility," says Guirgis, who, since then, has had two other plays, "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Jesus Hopped the `A' Train," directed by Hoffman at LAByrinth.

"As a writer, the great thing about Phil as a director is that I know anything I write, no matter what it is, he's going to understand it in his head and in his heart," the playwright says. "And he's going to be able to communicate that to the actors and challenge them to really invest in the idea."

Some of the roles in "Our Lady of 121st Street" were written for specific actors in the troupe. That's been a help to the director, too.

"I also know the actors he's writing for," Hoffman says. "So I have an understanding of how to work with them. Creating a piece of work is always difficult, no matter how understanding you are of each other."

"Our Lady of 121st Street" started as a one-act, "a bunch of scenes," according to Hoffman, of the original off-off-Broadway production. "We were hoping Stephen would finish writing it while we were rehearsing it. And he eventually did — late in the game. But I had a lot of faith because what he had first written was so strong."

Guirgis says he admires the way Hoffman has taken charge of his play.

"He meets my definition of what I think a director is — it's somebody who takes full responsibility for the production, of all its elements," the playwright says.

Hoffman sees things a bit differently.

"The director and the actor have to understand what the character is doing at all times," Hoffman says. "You really define what that is — their path of action. Once you do that, it's all about how the actor wants to accomplish that goal."

Hoffman's next big choice is Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical "Long Day's Journey Into Night," opening on Broadway May 6. He plays James Tyrone Jr., the rakish, alcoholic older son, in what is considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, American play. Dennehy portrays his father, the aging actor James Tyrone, and Redgrave, his drug-addled mother, Mary.

"It's no one-act," Hoffman says with a laugh. "I think everything tests your chops and `Long Day's Journey Into Night' is going to be a very, very difficult test."