Taking wing

WILLIAMSTOWN -- Allison Janney is leafing through images of her past as a young actress. Relaxing in a lounge at the Williamstown Theatre Festival's performing arts complex, Janney is perusing old festival production photos from the mid-'80s when she was still learning the ropes alongside such stage and screen stars as Richard Thomas, Blythe Danner, and James Naughton.

It's been more than 20 years since Janney, 47, last came to Williamstown, and while she may be feeling a touch of nostalgia, she's relieved that the difficult times are behind her. After all, Janney toiled for years in off-Broadway plays, on a soap opera ("The Guiding Light"), and even scooping ice cream. Yet she remained undaunted, even after a casting agent told the 6-foot-tall actress that the only roles she could play were "lesbians and aliens."

Today, Janney's a four-time Emmy winner best known for her turn as White House press secretary C.J. Cregg on "The West Wing," as well as an array of quirky character roles on the big screen.

Still, Janney says she's thrilled to be re turning to Williamstown -- the place where her career began to take shape -- for a rare revival of Lillian Hellman's 1951 drama "The Autumn Garden." It begins Wednesday and plays through Aug. 26 on the Williamstown Main Stage.

"It's a great atmosphere up here and a wonderful environment that is a part of my history. I love being able to get back into theater without the pressure of being on the New York stage -- to get to play around and just enjoy myself," says Janney, whose last major stage role was "The Taming of the Shrew" in Central Park eight years ago.

In "Autumn Garden," Janney plays Constance Tuckerman, the owner of a 1940s Gulf Coast guest house who's experiencing something of a midlife crisis. Like her character, Janney reveals that she, too, has come to a major crossroads. Last year, her seven-year stint on Aaron Sorkin's acclaimed TV drama "The West Wing" came to a close when NBC pulled the plug on the long-running series. During the heyday of the show, Janney went from Broadway leading lady and respected character actress to household name and face. The loss of a steady TV gig, she admits, has not been easy.

"It's scary. For a while there, I was like, 'Um, what do I do now?' When you're not working, you feel like you don't know who you are anymore or what you want," she says. "And you feel like you're not validated unless you're working another job. So I like to take those times and actually enjoy myself and do things that fulfill me in other ways. But it did take me a while. It was a huge transition -- financially, emotionally, and in every other way. But now I'm starting to come out of it and feel excited about the future. And I'm looking at all the opportunities that are coming my way, and wanting to do more theater, because I've missed it all these years."

Director David Jones calls "The Autumn Garden" Hellman's least melodramatic play, and Hellman herself believed it to be her best work. The story brings together a group of foundering and floundering characters at Constance's ramshackle resort to face their failures, regrets, and illusions. The characters are all at turning points in their lives and have found ways to cope with life's bitter disappointments.

When portrait-painting bohemian Nick Denery, who Constance has been pining over for the better part of two decades, waltzes back into town with Brahmin bride in tow, Constance is forced to confront the choices of her past. Nick, a cad who never met a skirt he didn't want to chase, had proposed to her when they were in their early 20s, but things never worked out. Instead, she's been forlornly keeping company with a steady but uninspiring banker while secretly yearning for her lost love.

Janney says that she was drawn to the part because she could identify with the truths that her character must grapple with. "When you reach a certain age, you realize that life isn't at all what you thought it was about," she says. "So everything that you've built your life upon turns out not to be a good foundation. But then you have to move on from there -- and you can do that gracefully or by turning to alcohol or whatever. . . . I was really struck by the play because these are things that I feel like I'm going through in my life right now."

Jones says he thought Janney would make a wonderful Constance in part because it countered the popular image of her "West Wing" character, the steely, quick-witted taskmasker who kept the boys in line and the ship running on time.

"When you think of [C.J.], you think of this lady who is made of asbestos -- nothing is going to throw her. She's so powerful, and you don't mess with her. But here she's playing a lady who's managing to handle life, but it's very, very tough for her. In the end, I'm getting the biggest kick out of the vulnerability Allison is bringing to the role."

"Autumn Garden" also marks a real-life reunion between longtime friends Janney and John Benjamin Hickey, who plays Nick.

"In some ways, Allison is a throwback to those great stars of the '30 and '40s -- one of the gals who was one of the guys -- like Rosalind Russell and certainly Kate Hepburn," says Hickey. "And as much as any actress I've ever worked with, she is just so completely alive in the moment and open to all possibilities."

Growing up in Dayton, Ohio, Janney longed to be a figure skater. In college, she thought about following in the footsteps of her mother, a working actress who had roomed with Rue McClanahan and Eileen Brennan before marrying Janney's father.

When Janney was a freshman at Kenyon College in Ohio, alum Paul Newman directed her in a play to christen the new theater on campus. Newman and wife, Joanne Woodward, befriended the actress and later suggested that she come to New York City and try out for the Neighborhood Playhouse, where Woodward worked as a director.

"She's been one of my idols and mentors throughout my life," says Janney of Woodward. "Both of them have always been part of my life and always been so supportive of me."

After years of hustling in off-Broadway plays, she won a part in Nicky Silver's "Fat Men in Skirts" with Stanley Tucci, which led Tucci to cast her in his film "Big Night." Her Broadway debut came in Noel Coward's "Present Laughter" in 1996, for which she earned rave reviews. A year later she was back on Broadway, earning a Tony nomination in Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge."

As her stage career flourished, she began landing small but memorable character roles like the key-party hostess in "The Ice Storm." She was hilariously tacky as a trailer park tramp in "Drop Dead Gorgeous," priceless as a stumbling, star-struck teacher in "Primary Colors," and heartbreaking as a despairing, nearly catatonic housewife in "American Beauty." "I certainly love to do crazy women who are slightly off center," says Janney. "They're a lot of fun. But you have to love them, no matter what kind of characters they are or what they may do."

While many actors want to avoid being identified with one role, Janney says she could have kept playing C.J. on "The West Wing" forever. "I could have just gotten old with her," she says. "She always had the witty thing to say in every situation and was smarter than everyone else in the room. It was great to get to play a smart, funny, sexy woman on TV. There aren't too many of those parts, unfortunately."

Although she misses the character, Janney has been keeping busy post-"West Wing." She can currently be seen in the hit movie musical "Hairspray" as the puritanical Prudy Pingleton. And she just wrapped a series of workshops for "9 to 5," a new Dolly Parton-penned stage musical based on the hit 1980 film. Janney played the role made famous by Lily Tomlin, and she may continue with the show if it ends up on Broadway.

Right now, though, she's focused on Constance and "Autumn Garden," but also on having fun. "I'm trying to approach everything in a different way now that I'm older -- not making everything so life and death, and not worrying about whether you get good reviews or not. I just want to have a good time. I mean, I refuse to not have a good time," she says with a laugh. "I refuse."