The New York Times
How Catherine Russell, of ‘Perfect Crime,’ Spends Her Sundays
Ms. Russell, who hasn’t missed a performance of her Off Broadway show in nearly 30 years, fills her day with pets, church, teaching and two shows.
For most of the last four decades, Catherine Russell has maybe — possibly — murdered someone eight times a week. She has played a wealthy psychiatrist in the Off Broadway murder-mystery thriller “Perfect Crime” for 37 years. Choose any comparison you like — the “Cal Ripken of Broadway,” the “Ironwoman of the Theater District” — but Ms. Russell, 69, has missed only four performances, early in the run, for her siblings’ weddings.
She is celebrating 15,000 performances of the show, which began in 1987 and is New York City’s longest-running play. She is powered by coffee and Snickers bars — “I have a terrible diet,” Ms. Russell says — but can also do 180 Marine push-ups without stopping. “I’m a Christian Scientist, so I don’t smoke or drink,” she said. “Maybe that helps.”
Ms. Russell is also the general manager of the Theater Center in Times Square, which hosts “Perfect Crime” and three other Off Broadway shows, and teaches college English and acting classes six days a week.
She has an adult stepdaughter and lives in a Hell’s Kitchen brownstone with three rescue dogs — Riley, Zoe and Jip — and three rescue cats, Winston, Zaza and Boots. Her late husband, Patrick Robustelli, died in 2019. They were together for 24 years. “He was the great love of my life,” Ms. Russell said.
PILE OF PETS My alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m. Three of my animals — two of the dogs and one of the cats — sleep on the bed, so if I don’t get up when the alarm goes off, they start poking me and licking my face. They all have to get fed separately so they don’t eat each other’s food.
COFFEE AND NEWS I use a Nespresso Vertuo coffee maker. It’s really easy — you just put in the pod thing and make coffee and steam the milk. I’m a caffeine person, always. I drink three or four cups of coffee a day.
I get The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal delivered, and I read them cover to cover. I love reading the obituaries because people’s lives are so fascinating.
GRADING AND GROOVING At the beginning of the semester, I always ask each student when they introduce themselves: “When I’m grading your papers, what music would you like me to listen to?” They think it’s kind of funny, but then if somebody says “Young Thug,” when I’m reading Diego’s paper, I’ll listen to Young Thug. They like that I’m asking about their music, and I have extensive knowledge now of people I never would’ve heard of otherwise.
LET’S MAKE A DEAL I block out an hour and a half to work on business pitches I’m making in the upcoming week. I’m raising $10 million to take a garage on West 49th Street and convert it into five Off Broadway theaters. We need more well-appointed, clean, accessible Off Broadway theaters.
BAGEL RUN I stop by Hudson Bagel and get a sesame bagel, toasted, with very little cream cheese. I walk in there and they already do it for me — I’m a very predictable person, I’m afraid.
HOLY HOUR I go to church at 11 a.m. at Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist at 43rd and Fifth. I’ve been going there for the last 10 years. My maternal grandfather bunked next to a Christian Scientist in World War I, so basically my whole family has been Christian Scientist ever since. Every Christian Science service is exactly the same, on every Sunday, in every church. There’s no sermon, there’s no minister — just a lesson. You expect good from people, so it’s been really helpful for me my entire life.
ACT AND SIP I teach a 90-minute class on Sundays at 12:30 p.m. on the stage before “Perfect Crime.” People introduce themselves, and then I pair them with someone they didn’t come with. I give them a scene from “Friends” or “Grey’s Anatomy” — like a page — and they practice it with their partner. These are people who are not actors. The class gives them feedback, and then they do it again. A lot of people are actually pretty good. It’s not like they’re going to go out and become a famous actor, but they’re like, “Wow, that’s a skill I didn’t know I had.” It’s fun to watch that.
BLISSED-OUT BLOWOUT I get my hair blow-dried for 25 minutes every week at City Star by my favorite stylist, Anwar. That’s my peaceful time — I shut my eyes, turn my phone off and read. For 25 minutes, no one can bother me. It’s the only time of the week that’s purely mine.
SECRET INGREDIENT You’re supposed to be at the theater half an hour before curtain, but on Sundays, no one says anything if I come in at 20 till 3. It takes me two minutes to get ready. In my dressing room, I have seven big bottles of very, very cheap vodka, which we use to spray all the costumes for the four shows that play here. It gets rid of the odor and disinfects them!
MURDER, ROUND 1 I have the first performance of “Perfect Crime” of the day at 3 p.m. I started playing Margaret Brent — a wealthy psychiatrist accused of murdering her husband — when I was 31. That was in 1987, so we’ve had a few updates. My character marries someone with a lot of money, and that started out as $10 million, and now it’s $900 million. We also added cellphones, because there were no cellphones in 1987 — I think it was a car phone.
It’s never the same performance from night to night. Some people think, “She’s going to be walking through it,” but part of being an actor is that whatever happened to you during the day, you incorporate it. If I had a fight with the guy at the deli half an hour before I got onstage, maybe I start out a little bitchier than usual.
STEP RIGHT UP From 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., I run the box office for “Friends! The Musical Parody.” I’m the general manager for that show, as well as for the three others playing in our two theaters. I try to run the box office at least once on Saturday or Sunday for half an hour so I can see who’s coming in and what questions people are asking, how sales are doing. I like being in the theater — I don’t mind mopping the floor, plunging the toilet or running the box office.
CHECKING IN I pop into Patzeria, the restaurant I manage on West 46th Street, around 6:15 p.m. to check in on the Sunday business and talk through any issues with the guys who run it for me. The guys who run it are really great — they all worked for my husband.
MURDER, ROUND 2 We have our second performance of “Perfect Crime” at 7:30 p.m. The audience is different on different nights of the week: On Saturday nights, you get lots of drunk people. But on Sunday nights, people don’t even laugh — they’re listening. They come for the mystery. That’s the cool thing about being in a small theater — it’s very interactive. I love when I’m onstage and I hear someone gasp.
A SLICE AND A STROLL After locking up the Theater Center at 10:15 p.m., I make one more stop back at Patzeria to grab a slice of pizza; the white slice is my favorite. Sometimes I get pasta, too. I’m back home by 11 p.m. It’s a 10-minute walk. I’ll watch CNN, if it’s not too depressing.
OUT LIKE A LIGHT My head hits the pillow around 1 a.m. I fall asleep immediately — no Sunday scaries here! My husband used to joke that if a fire engine came screaming by, I wouldn’t hear it. Work hard, sleep well!
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.