Train Wrecks Again

{It's never him. He's fine. Whatever he does, from screaming at a woman in public to punching through a wall, is understandable, acceptable, and normal and anyone who objects is a crazy person who needs to be under a doctor's care. Welcome to AlecWorld}


April 26, 2006 -- EXCLUSIVE

AN ACCLAIMED New York theater actress has quit the Off-Broadway play "Entertaining Mr. Sloane," charging that the volatile behavior of the show's star - Alec Baldwin - has "created an unhealthy and oppressive situation" on stage and off.

Jan Maxwell, who won rave reviews for her performance in Joe Orton's black comedy, wrote in an e-mail to a friend that Baldwin's frequent temper tantrums - including putting his fist through a wall because the air conditioning wasn't high enough - also caused her to fear for her "physical safety, mental health and artistic integrity."


In an interview with The Post yesterday, Maxwell said that while Baldwin can be "very compelling, funny and enjoyable, when something clicks in him, I don't want to be around."
Baldwin, responding to Maxwell's charges, said the actress "has been unhappy" in the play from the beginning for reasons that "only Jan's doctor knows."

He said she never bothered to learn her lines correctly, complained about her role and was "indifferent at best" to the needs of the rest of the cast. In the play, Baldwin and Maxwell played a brother and sister who each fall in love with a young man renting a room in their house.

"For her to pin all that on me is unfair," Baldwin said. "You'd think she was on the payroll of my ex-wife's divorce lawyer, pushing every button you could find," he added, referring to his ugly divorce from actress Kim Basinger.

Maxwell says she began to fear for her safety a few weeks ago.

In the e-mail to her friend - cable talk-show host Stephen Holt - she wrote that Baldwin was "throwing things around with all of us cowering. I locked my dressing room, not knowing why he was going crazy. The reason? The air conditioning wasn't high enough."

Baldwin admits he punched the wall because of the air conditioning, but says, "I had told people I wanted the temperature of the theater set to my comfort level, because I was sweating profusely onstage. I had asked them several times, but they didn't do it. Maybe I should not have gotten that angry, but all that I ask for is what I need to do my job. This is not about getting M&Ms in my dressing room."

Baldwin says he apologized to Maxwell about the incident and, after she gave her notice, asked her not to leave.

But the tension between Maxwell and Baldwin reached a head onstage at last Sunday's performance. Baldwin, Maxwell claims, would not let her exit the stage the way she was directed.

She was supposed to slam the door, but Baldwin held the door so tight, she couldn't close it.

"He made a drastic change in the blocking," she said. "He was showing me the door, metaphorically. The stage management apologized to me about it later."

Baldwin said, "If, in one show out of the scores of shows we have done, I changed the blocking in some modest way that wasn't to Jan's liking, I sincerely apologize. But Jan never said the lines in the play as Orton wrote them, and it wasn't my inclination to tell The Post."

Maxwell insists she knew all her lines: "Did I ever make goofs onstage? Yes. Did Alec? Yes. That's just live theater."

Maxwell has been replaced by Barbara Sims.

michael.riedel@nypost.com