Robin is Captain Hook

By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: November 19, 2009

IT was nearly midnight in an upscale Atlanta hotel room, and Robin Williams was decompressing after a show at the nearby Fox Theater. Reclining in his dimly lighted suite, he was weary but in good spirits; the mechanical key hidden in his back was winding down, and the flow of free associations and zany voices that relentlessly emanates from him was slowing to a trickle.
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Mr. Williams, 58, had been picking apart the 90-minute stand-up set he had finished, but his thoughts drifted back to a subsequent meet-and-greet with V.I.P. audience members. There, among the fans who had paid extra to shake his hand, get his autograph and tell him they were glad to see he was still alive, one woman had said his comedy had helped her beat cancer.

Asked why he still commanded such devotion from his audience after a three-year period in which he has contended with alcohol dependency, divorce and heart surgery, Mr. Williams sat up and let loose a loud, joyous cackle.

“I know what you’re saying,” he said. “What’s my credibility? Why are they looking to me for advice? Isn’t there someone more qualified?”

Amid a spate of suffering that could fill a second Book of Job, Mr. Williams has resumed his first comedy tour since 2002, the one that he had already named “Weapons of Self Destruction” before he halted it to undergo an aortic valve replacement procedure in March. Assuming he makes it through to its conclusion, his itinerary will end with a nine-night stand in New York and Atlantic City, followed by the premiere of an HBO special on Dec. 6.

Needless to say, the Robin Williams who will take the stage on Monday at Town Hall in Manhattan is not the same man who hit the road in September 2008, and not only because he now has a bovine valve in his heart. He has become more introspective and more grateful for what he has. (“You appreciate little things,” he said, “like walks on the beach with a defibrillator.”)

Only now that the hyper-verbal Mr. Williams finds himself in a confessional mood, he isn’t sure he knows when to stop. “How much more can you give?” he asked rhetorically. “Other than, literally, open-heart surgery onstage? Not much. But the only cure you have right now is the honesty of going, this is who you are. I know who I am.”

In a career that spans more than 30 years Mr. Williams has earned a reputation as the manic motormouth of numerous stand-up shows and films like “Good Morning, Vietnam” and “Aladdin.” The frenetic brute force of his performance can be awe inspiring, even as it has kept his audience at arm’s length.

“I’ve always felt that Robin’s blinding speed and flash of wit was an effort at concealment, rather than revealing,” said Eric Idle, a longtime friend. “He would be talking about something personal or sexual, but it was always in general, not about him.”

Seated on a private plane headed for Jacksonville, Fla., the morning after his Atlanta show, the compact, famously hirsute Mr. Williams came across as quiet and mild mannered. He spoke softly but enthusiastically about favorite video games, Japanese manga and anime, punctuating his speech with the occasional one-liner or stray impression of Liberace or an old Jewish woman.

As talk turned to his personal life, Mr. Willams made it clear he was not ashamed of discussing the subject, whether in private or onstage in front of thousands.

“It would be insane not to talk about it,” he said. “‘Oh, what happened?’ ‘Nothing.’ It’s what’s happened, and everyone knows.”

The image of Mr. Williams as a genial joke teller — an image cultivated by a string of shticky, sentimental movie roles — came unraveled in 2006 when he checked himself into a rehabilitation center for alcohol abuse. If the development took fans by surprise, his family members say it was the culmination of a months-long cycle of binges and confrontations.

“There were times when many of us were asking questions, saying, “Hey, what the hell is going on?’ ” said Zak Williams, 26, the comedian’s son by his first wife, Valerie Velardi. (Mr. Williams also has a daughter, Zelda, and a son, Cody, from a second marriage to Marsha Garces). Zak did not go into detail on the discussions that led to his father’s rehab stint, but said only, “There was an ultimatum attached to it.” He added, “I’m pretty confident that if he continued drinking, he would not be alive today.”

Mr. Williams, who kicked a cocaine habit around the time that Zak was born, said he had not fully addressed the issues underlying that addiction. “There was still, in the background, this voice, like, ‘Psst,’ ” he said, beckoning with his finger. “So when I relapsed, I went back hard. The one thing I hadn’t dealt with was, how honest do you want to live?”