But he was equally drawn to Beane’s portrait of the “the absolutely symbiotic marriage,” he tells me. Two weeks ago, when he won the Golden Globe, Lithgow addressed his wife by her full name in his speech: “Professor Mary Yeager of UCLA, my wife of 28 years, this one’s for you: I love you, baby.” Beaming at him from the audience, Yeager seemed like the rare civilian in a roomful of professional consorts. “She’s a tough woman,” he says admiringly. “She reacts to my fame by working harder! On the face of it, I am the big deal. In New York, people walk right past her to assault me. But the way we feel, her work is absolutely as important as my work.”

In L.A., Lithgow says, they primarily hang out with her academic colleagues. “Nobody even realizes I live out there, after 27 years,” he says. He’s writing a memoir—which may include some dish about that long-ago affair—and to publicize it, he’s opened a Twitter feed. “I’m a gossip whore like anyone else,” he laughs, and for all his ambivalence, he’s learned that there are ways to turn those dials. “You can add blind items about yourself,” he says with a smile. “And that way madness lies.”

Mr. and Mrs. Fitch
By Douglas Carter Beane.
Second Stage Theatre.
In Previews January 26.

Related:

• Archive: “Theater Features”
• Articles by Emily Nussbaum
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