PORT ST. LUCIE PEOPLE
The PLAYWRIGHT
Howard Brown, known professionally as H.G.
Brown, wrote his first one-act play at Proviso East
High School in Illinois. His drama teacher liked
The Plateau so much, the school produced it. One
of the performers, Mark Lamos, went on to be a Tony Award
nominee for excellence on Broadway.
At Indiana University, Brown founded an off-campus theater
group, the VestPocket Players, with future star and Academy-
Award winner Kevin Kline, which led to a scholarship for
Stanford University’s master’s program. Clearly, Brown was a
man who caught the drama bug harder than most.
As so often happens, however, theater seemed destined
for “hobby” status. In California, Brown got married; the
couple had two children. When the marriage didn’t work out,
he came back east to work at a printing company his father
owned. But he never stopped writing.
Brown’s play The Gargoyle won the Norman Corwin Prize
and was later adapted for Corwin’s television series as Crown
of Rags, starring David McCallum. Years later, when Brown
saw McCallum after a Broadway show, the actor quoted one
of his lines, remembering the story fondly. McCallum’s IMDb
(Internet Movie Database) listing online has the story information
incorrectly listed as Crown of Rages by Howard “Browne.”
In 1987, a story ran in the Baltimore Sun about a bloodied
yacht found abandoned on the Chesapeake Bay with nobody
on board. Brown wrote a play based on what might have
happened, not really expecting it to go anywhere. “And then
I got a call — someone wanted to produce Daysailer.”
Over the years, the play was rewritten, reworked and
retitled. He gathered actors together for readings, getting
feedback on what worked and what didn’t. Over the decades,
what started out as a four-act play became two acts titled The
Lady Swims Today. “Three desperate men at a marina plan a
heist at sea, but the women in their lives create challenges,”
says Brown. “It’s a drama in the tradition of Key Largo — film
noir shadows and flashes of comedy,”
Live theater often results in different interpretations of
plays. Productions of The Lady Swims Today in Texas, New
York, and Florida productions have each been unique. Robert
Funaro of The Sopranos made an excellent bad guy on stage in
New York, for instance, and the Texas cast sounded more like
they were from Galveston than “Bal’mer.”
40 Port St. Lucie Magazine
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BY ELLEN GILLETTE
ELLEN GILLETTE PHOTOS
Howard Brown’s faithful companion, Stella, a double yellow Amazon parrot, enjoys laughing at visitors and serenading them with her version of “Moon
River.” Stella’s name, of course, is reminiscent of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.