RETURN OF THE NATIVES

Twenty years ago, William Petersen and Laurie Metcalf acted all over town, kicking off careers that have taken them to Hollywood, Broadway, and beyond. This month, both prove that there's no place like home -- Petersen appears in Flyovers at Victory Gardens and Metcalf performs in Pot Mom at Steppenwolf, Reed Johnson reports.

It's partly the memory of their wild and woolly former lives that keeps L.A. transplants William Petersen and Laurie Metcalf coming back to Chicago. Ah, those post-rehearsal pub crawls through Highland Park! Those take-no-prisoners softball games down on Montrose! Those "bohemian" Rogers Park basement flats, in the days when there was a certain cachet to not having a functional shower.

And, of course, there was the behind-the-scenes erotic frisson, as integral to 1970s Off-Loop theater culture as the latest Mamet or Shepard play. "Both our companies were a little known for Peyton Place networking," Metcalf remembers of those lean, lusty years at Steppenwolf and Remains.

"It was like a whole universe. It was a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week lifestyle that involved all of our best friends, all of our lovers, all of our dreams," says Petersen, reminiscing with Metcalf recently at his Spanish-style home in Los Angeles' fashionable Hancock Park district.

But it's not just remembrance of flings past that's fueling Petersen's return to Victory Gardens this spring to star in Jeffrey Sweet's Flyovers, or Metcalf's upcoming reunion with Steppenwolf chums Rondi Reed and Tom Irwin in Justin Tanner's Pot Mom (Metcalf's 15-year-old daughter, Zoe, makes her stage debut in the show).

Like many Chicago actors who've traded minus-30 degree windchills and creaky El trains for palm trees and the Hollywood Freeway, Petersen and Metcalf moved to L.A. to pursue careers. But they revisit Chicago to polish their craft. "I go back a lot, because I have my family there and my girlfriend's there. I spend at least four months a year there," says Petersen, an Evanston native who first leapt from stage to screen in 1984 when director William Friedkin cast him in To Live and Die in L.A.

As Petersen's living-room etching of Michael Jordan attests, you can take the actor out of Chicago, but the reverse is much trickier. Although lately he hasn't had as much Off-Loop work as he'd like, Petersen seldom misses an opportunity to reconnect with is Chicago stage roots.

Flyovers pairs him with co-star Mark Vann in a dark comedy about two former teenage antagonists whose past resurfaces with a vengeance at their 25th high school reunion. Vann plays a celebrity movie critic who has returned to his blue-collar Ohio hometown flush with success. Petersen plays his ex-classmate, an inveterate bully who used to pick on Vann's character for being Jewish but is now stuck in a dead-end existence.

Petersen and Victory Gardens artistic directory Dennis Zacek had been looking for a project for some time. It was Zacek, after all, who gave Petersen his Equity card, unleashing two decades of highly acclaimed performances at Victory Gardens, the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Remains, and later on Broadway and in Hollywood.

But returning old favors and reliving an old esprit de corps aren't the main reasons Petersen relishes these homecomings. "You're in charge of something, in the theater. You're not in charge of anything anywhere else," he explains. Petersen admits he feels more pressure acting in Chicago now than he once did. "The audience has expectations they didn't used to have. It's a bigger audience because of the movies, TV, and everything."

But as an artistic associate with Victory Gardens, he'll help a new generation of Chicago actors launch the journey he began two decades ago. "I think I'm doing it so that it juices me back, wanting to direct plays and work with people who are in that position where it's all so new to them."

Like Petersen, Metcalf wishes she could act in Chicago more often. She last blew into the Windy City in 1994 to perform in Steppenwolf's Libra, between taping the long-running TV series "Roseanne" (Metcalf's Jackie was a sardonic fan favorite) and various movie projects (most recently Scream 2).

First performed at the Cast Theater in Hollywood, over which playwright Tanner presides, Pot Mom is darkly funny exploration of addition, American-style. Rondi Reed stars in the title role as a long-unemployed California dope fiend/Earth Mother who's reluctantly about to re-enter the work force. Her layabout, college-age children are doing their best to emulate Mom's drop-out, turn-on example, while Mom's best friend (Metcalf) winds up overstepping her boundaries in her eagerness to abet the family's wayward lifestyle.

Metcalf is looking forward to her summer sojourn at Steppenwolf. "I don't feel like I can act anymore, unless I go back to the stage and get a does of it," she says. "It's like a shot in the arm -- you know, a booster. This whole summer is designed to be a fun kind of a family time, bringing this strange little funny play to Chicago."

Like most members of Hollywood's bustling Chicago expatriate colony, Metcalf and Petersen never expected to wind up in front of a camera. Twenty years ago, no one in Off-Loop theater circles thought much beyond next week's opening or next month's rent. Most were too busy creating companies, building sets, and inventing the smash-and-grab, rub-dirt-in-your-hands, throw-yourself-in-headfirst Chicago acting style. In those days, if you didn't emerge from a show bloodied and exhausted, you hadn't done your job.

Petersen still proudly bears the scar on his neck he got doing Fool for Love. Metcalf earned several red badges of courage thrashing around in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Initially, neither Metcalf nor Petersen planned to permanently exchange their 312 area codes for 213. But both had young children to raise and bills to pay. "When they paid me for To Live and Die and L.A. I thought, 'Well, this is a bonus. This'll keep me going,'" says Petersen. "I never thought I was going to do many more movies. Then it becomes one of these things where you're doing movies and TV, and you're going back to do theater like a hobby."

At this point, money isn't a big an issue, thank you. Petersen, who recently returned from shooting a movie in the Philippines, has a fashionable adobe and can afford to take his 23-year-old daughter on European vacations. Metcalf used part of her "Roseanne" paycheck three years ago to buy an 80-acre Idaho ranch.