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Source: The Philadelphia InquirerAug.新蒲崗迷你倉 15--NEW YORK -- Luxurious rehearsal was not in the cards for the cast of Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife two weeks before its Thursday opening at Bucks County Playhouse. As Manhattan studio time to prepare the densely comic play dwindled, the cast was spending long days feeling its way when the script's warped magic unexpectedly took hold."That's obnoxious and crazy! In a really good way," Boyd Gaines, who is making his directorial debut, said at that turning point.In the midst of it all was four-time Oscar nominee Marsha Mason, 71, who plays a Manhattan matron having a severe midlife crisis, highlighted by a figurine-smashing meltdown in a Disney store. Since Mason is no stranger to inner crisis, this is not the hard part."I have the potential for those big emotions," she readily admits during a rehearsal break. "When are you going to get a chance to bite into something this big?"She knows New Hope audiences may be expecting someone like the adorable Goodbye Girl she portrayed in the eponymous 1977 Neil Simon film and instead will see a woman shrieking at her mother and being drawn into a menage ... trois with a girlhood friend. But Mason has no regrets -- well, only that the Disney-store-trashing scene happens offstage."Feeling compelled to smash figurines of Disney characters and not know why she did it . . . is a very interesting thing to do," she says. And it's one of the few things she hasn't done.Since her marital and professional association with Simon wound down in the mid-1980s, Mason pursued other interests, including racing in the Sports Car Club of America (yes, as a driver, thanks to Paul Newman), and for the last 20 years has run a herb business on a 4,000-acre ranch north of Santa Fe, N.M."I just get really curious," she says of her various passions, "and sort of explode spontanenously. Or something."After gracefully moving out of starring film roles, she turned more frequently to TV movies and recurring supporting characters on Frasier and, currently, The Middle. Her stage activity also has increased, including Night of the Iguana on Broadway, All's Well That Ends Well at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, and now Allergist's Wife.The Bucks County production represents her second chance with that play: Years ago, she had to pull out of a Los Angeles radio production. This time, she's in a deftly chosen cast that includes Marilu Henner, who also played the girlhood friend on Broadway."Sometimes, the universe dribbles things in front of you," Mason saysHer own life has parallels with that of Marjorie, the allergist's wife. Both are questioning people who come from places they were born to leave. Mason grew up in middle-class St. Louis, where she emerged "always feeling like a second-stringer," arriving in New York about as worldly as a 13-year-old. Bronx-born Marjorie is obsessed with trying to improve both her mind and her image as a Manhattan sophisticate.But rather than marrying (an allergist) young and repressing her own nature until middle age, as Marjorie did, Mason sought answers in spirituality; she considered becoming a nun early on, and later studied mini storageastern philosophies, for a time as a student of Swami Muktananda.Actress and character share an affection for Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, though Mason has lived under the book's influence for rather longer and now -- polar opposite of Marjorie -- enjoys the fruits of Buddhism: comfort with who she is.When told that a 12-step meeting in New York City is named Chapter Two after the play Simon wrote about his disintegrating marriage to her, Mason is intrigued -- but not interested to attend and see what she wrought."Not when you like tequila!" she laughs.What put her on foreign territory in Busch's 2000 play was its lesbian-tinged seduction. However refreshing it is to have middle-aged characters being sexual, the mechanics were initially awkward, Mason confesses. Having performed the play on Broadway, Henner led the way in terms of how it would work."I don't actively feel the desire to pursue that world," she says. "But who knows? I think one should be open."Her life is full of seemingly impulsive beginnings -- she married the widowed Simon after a three-week courtship -- but her exits appear more thoughtful. As much as she loved mothering Simon's children from his first marriage, not to mention Simon himself ("Neil required a lot of attention"), Mason knew she was in trouble when she ceased knowing what she wanted.Same thing with post-divorce life in Los Angeles. "The business had changed. I'd gotten older. The parts weren't there. I was divorced. L.A. is not necesssarily great for a single woman."As such friends as Shirley MacLaine, Goldie Hawn, and others moved to New Mexico, she did too, though the adjustment was terrifying."You could hear the coyotes at night. The sky was pitch black. I put a shovel next to the bed," she laughingly admits. "There were panic attacks. What had I done?"No doubt others directed such questions at her when she entered the world of auto racing. It started when she found herself on the same flight with Newman, a professional driver and racing enthusiast. She followed him to racing events and slowly immersed herself, upgrading cars to a Mazda RX-7."Next thing I knew, I was driving in the National Valvoline Runoff," she says. "I could tell the guys were edgy, so I stayed out of their way. Finally, they started giving me pointers. When I started to pass them, they stopped giving me pointers."Seven years of that was enough. And now, after almost 20 years of herb farming and marketing a line of bath-and-body products known as Resting in the River, the New Mexico ranch is up for sale. One prospective buyer wants to set up a family crisis center."That would be a good legacy," she says.Mason may still keep a place in New Mexico. She may move to Connecticut. The pieces of her life are again being thrown up in the air. More classical theater is a possibility since, in recent years, she went back to basics with classes in Shakespearean rhetoric."Anybody who's serious would do that, don't you think?" she says. "I would love to have been an English actor."She may be one yet.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Philadelphia Inquirer Visit The Philadelphia Inquirer at .philly.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage