[As I affirmed in “More Vintage Reviews from the Archive” (19 April 2021), in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I reviewed theater for the New York Native, a biweekly gay newspaper published in New York City from 1980 to 1997.
[My assignments were mostly Off-Off-Broadway and occasionally Off-Broadway plays, and the notices were fairly short since two plays were usually reviewed in most columns. (For the reviews republished here, the companion play has usually been omitted—though it may have been published in another post on Rick On Theatre.)]
ADJOINING TRANCESby 45th Street Theatre3 April 1989
[The review below, in the column entitled “Winter Pleasures/Summer Doldrums” (with The Winter’s Tale, my notice for which is posted on Rick On Theater on 28 November 2019 as part of “‘Moron! Vermin! Curate! Cretin! Crritic!!’: John Simon (1925-2019) - Part 1),” appeared in the New York Native on 3 April 1989.]
No less than great acting would be required to invigorate Adjoining Trances, described as “a new play suggested by the friendship of Carson McCullers [1917-67] and Tennessee Williams [1911-83].” Playwright Randy Buck, until now an actor and director, imagines the conversations and thoughts of the two writers during the summer they spent at Williams’s Nantucket, Massachusetts, house in 1946, the year he produced Summer and Smoke and she, the stage version of her novel The Member of the Wedding.
Even with Williams’s train of lovers and McCullers’s marital troubles and her stroke—all of which we merely hear about—the play is 90 minutes (no intermission) of mostly talk, much of it soliloquies to the audience.
The characters, here named Bird (Robert Dorfman) and Sister (Melinda Mullins), as both writers were sometimes known, sit for the most part at a table center stage typing their scripts and reveal various events of their lives and private thoughts. Despite the reported closeness the two developed, Bird and Sister do not really seem to connect on stage. Long before the single act was over, I began to wonder if anything were going to happen. Nothing did.
The acting bond needed here is the Jessica Tandy-Hume Cronyn of Gin Game (Broadway, 1977) or Frances Sternhagen-Morgan Freeman of Driving Miss Daisy (Off-Broadway, 1988). Unfortunately, only one of this pair holds up her end of the partnership. Melinda Mullins’s Sister is, at least, a human being, with a pulse and respiration. When she speaks, it sounds, as hamburger maven Clara Peller might have said, like there’s somebody back there. When she needs Bird’s help to get around after her stroke, she really does seem to need it, both physically and emotionally.
She only gets the physical, however, from Robert Dorfman; the rest of him does not seem to be there. His portrayal is unconnected, plastic, and artificial, from an exaggerated and inconsistent accent to his stereotyped imitation of fey behavior. The smile he pastes on and the high-pitched giggle that comes from nowhere indicate that Dorfman is imitating an image of Williams, not creating a character. In addition, he has a curious habit of stumbling over lines, lots of them, that made me wonder if he is doing a bad job of acting a stutter, or if he simply cannot get his words out.
Director Edward Berkeley’s contribution seems principally to have been to move the actors around the set now and then, and to get one out of the way so the other can deliver one of the too-frequent, too-long inner monologues without distraction. Even Robert Jared’s lighting seems uncoordinated, suddenly fading out or in at the wrong moments, ill-serving the underutilized set, imaginatively designed by Don Jensen.
I am left with a single curiosity about Adjoining Trances—other than the meaning of the title: since Buck’s acting and directing has been in the decidedly non-realistic, highly theatrical vein—he lists as credits Charles Ludlam, Robert Wilson, and La Mama—why has he written his play so flatly and untheatrically?
[This Off-Off-Broadway production of Adjoining Trances was produced by Lily Turner and Alexander Racolin at the 45th Street Theatre (between 8th and 9th Avenues in the Theatre District). It seems to have been largely forgotten in the record, because the play’s première is documented as the 1997 Theatre Row revival at the Samuel Beckett Theatre. Many regional revivals have been staged since.
[Playwright Randall Buck, a native of Johnson City, Tennessee, died at 65 at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, New York, in 2017 after a long illness.
[Clara Peller (1902-87), a former manicurist, was a character actress who, at the age of 81, starred in the 1984 “Big Fluffy Bun” advertising campaign for the Wendy’s fast food restaurant chain. Peller played a crusty old lady who, upon examining a pathetically tiny burger in an absurdly large bun, slapped the counter of a neighborhood hamburger joint and loudly (and later famously) demanded, “Where’s the Beef!” and then punctuated the call with an exasperated look beyond the counter and grumbled, “I don’t think there’s anybody back there!”]
* * * *WORKING ONE ACTS ’89The Working TheaterHenry Street Settlement8 July 1989
[“Working For A Living” included two reviews, Working One Acts ’89, below, and Is This 24 Lily Pond Lane? which follows. The column appeared in the New York Native of 8 July 1989.]
The Working Theater is dedicated to “working people and the issues they confront,” but of four Working One Acts, only Daniel Therriault’s Floor Above the Roof actually deals with people who labor for a living.
Staged by different directors, each play in this collection, the fourth Working One Acts the company has presented, has a separate cast and a different set, designed by Anne C. Patterson, against a grey, cityscape silhouette, the production’s single unifying element.
The last two plays provide the most interest, starting with Jackie Reingold’s Freeze Tag, directed by Evan Handler. A comedy, it plays out the meeting of former high-school classmates Andrea (Julie Boyd) and Aldrich (Lyn Greene).
Aldrich is studying to be a “personal private investigator” and, having picked Andrea as her test subject, has learned things about Andrea’s life even Andrea doesn’t know, including her fiancé’s infidelity. Aldrich, once teen-aged Andy’s protector, urges mousy Andrea to take revenge. Aldrich just wants to be Andrea’s protector again, but Andrea has second thoughts and, despite Aldrich’s pleas, backs out of the plans.
The first half is outrageously, absurdly funny, and Boyd, whose character and appearance resemble Annie Potts of TV’s Designing Women (but not of Ghostbusters II), paints a vibrant portrait of an intimidated woman brought out briefly into the full glare of her pent-up anger. The concept of people with their own personal private investigators is a wacky take in a 1984 in which not only is Big Brother watching, but so is everyone else; it’s funny and scary simultaneously.
But the second half, when Aldrich—whom Greene performs with an artificial, nasally Bronx accent—reveals that instead of a post-modern self-starter she is merely a lonely, obsessive nut, turns to realism and becomes attenuated and over-long.
Sand Mountain Matchmaking, written and directed by Romulus Linney, has the most lyrical language of the collection, due as much to the milieu—Smoky Mountains backwoods—as to Linney’s talent. Unfortunately, the language, buoyed by nice characterizations, must carry this sedentary and undramatic play. Linney has made a habit of dramatizing a lot of his prose, and this story of a young widow seeking a new husband on a remote mountain is probably another example.
Rebecca Tull (Adrienne Thompson) is courted by the eligible men: Clink Williams (Earl Hagan, Jr.), a randy bachelor only interested in sex; Slate Foley (Paul O’Brien), a brute not above beating anyone, including his wife; and Radley Nollins (Robert Arcaro), a bible-quoting, self-righteous boor. On advice of Lottie Stiles (Mary Foskett), a hillbilly Yenta who calls with grandson Vester (John Karol), Rebecca uses a spell to get rid of the unwanted suitors and find the right man. Miraculously, this frightens the louts away but attracts stalwart Sam Bean (Scott Sowers).
Performances are on the button, and the mountain accents sound just right, but the whole play is performed seated, with Rebecca in her cabin as each suitor sits, interview style, next to her. It’s talking heads by way of American Gothic. Furthermore, despite the exotic locale, Linney says nothing that hasn’t been common knowledge at least since the advent of modern feminism.
The first two plays are less provocative, though Will Holtzman’s The Closer starts with some promise. Directed by R. J. Cutler, it seems at first to be a Beckettian tragicomedy about Howard (Murray Rubinstein) who enters his new condo to find a stranger, Al (Earl Hagan, Jr.), who won’t leave.
Presumably an indictment of our materialistic, Yuppie-dominated society—Howard is a deal-closer, a junior-level Ivan Boesky/Michael Milken—the play deteriorates into a struggle over possessions when Al simply turns out to be the apartment’s distressed previous inhabitant.
Floor Above the Roof is the only play strictly about working people—warehousemen Cantor, Jay, and Swifty (Mark Kenneth Smaltz, David Wolos-Fonteno, and Richard Fiske) and freight elevator operator Elroy (Randy Frazier). It is a blue-collar Grand Hotel: each man has a story and a problem, and Elroy is the catalyst-cum-father confessor. For a theater dedicated to workers, this play, directed by John Pynchon Holms, misses a lot in representing them.
Despite their looks, for instance, the cast is off. These actors are all too articulate and soft-spoken to be convincing as men who work with their backs. Even their obligatory lewd cat-calls contain a tacit apology. Then the dialogue is much too sophisticated for the types who inhabit Manhattan warehouses and loading docks.
It’s hard to imagine Cantor exclaiming, “I’ll caesarean myself with my fingernails,” to express frustration with his life; when Jay says of his daughter, “her face is precisely symmetric,” is this the language of a laborer?
In a realistic play, even artistic license requires a certain accuracy, both in language and appearance. In Floor Above, the workers’ clothes are neat, clean, and dry, even after a hot, sweaty day in a steamy warehouse. Has Patterson, who also designed the costumes, never heard of “distressing”?
The three-hour evening has other contributing problems. With four plays, designer Patterson might have considered less substantial, more easily removable scenery. Long breaks are necessary to lug off heavy, cumbersome pieces and stack them by the entrances since the Henry Street Settlement’s Recital Hall has no real backstage or wings. Lack of air-conditioning or ventilation in the basement-level space made the long program seem longer, even on an unseasonably cool evening.
[Founded in 1984, the Working Theatre began producing Working One Acts in ’86. Closed at present because of the COVID pandemic, the company is still holding forth. This bill of one acts was presented at the Henry Street Settlement Arts for Living Center (466 Grand Street in Lower Manhattan) in June 1989.]
* * * *IS THIS 24 LILY POND LANE?by Toby ArmourTheater for the New City8 July 1989
[With Working One Acts ’89, above, this review was part of “Working For A Living,” New York Native, 8 July 1989.]
Toby Armour’s social consciousness in Is This 24 Lily Pond Lane? is more obvious and more honest than those of the Working Theatre’s one-acts (see above). A comedy-mystery about disabled actors, the cast includes several handicapped performers.
While this fact and its social and dramatic significance are not the play’s focus, the audience is clearly intended to recognize that these people can, in their own ways, do for themselves what able-bodied people can, and often a good bit more. If that sounds like TV movie-of-the-week stuff, unfortunately it plays like it, too.
Part of the problem is the script Armour wrote for people she worked with at the National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped [Lower Manhattan-based repertory theater company and school providing training and performing space for writers and performers with disabilities, 1977-2008]. The amateur actors are staying at their director’s East Hampton, Long Island, house, and the contrivances pile up.
On a stormy night, blind Lucia disappears and an escaped murderer is on the loose somewhere nearby. Except for the disabilities, that’s essentially the plot of Emlyn Williams’s Night Must Fall. Armour’s only innovation is a masked choral duet who punctuate the hour-and-a-half single act with portentous speeches under red lighting.
Factual oversights also subvert the plot. For one, a gun with blanks is fired point-blank at two characters, causing no serious injury. Even blanks kill if fired that close: remember actor Jon-Erik Hexum’s 1984 death?
For another, the group’s high spirits at the end—because of their cleverness in capturing the murderer and escaping his attempts on their lives (though some of the escapes are never adequately explained)—ignore that the man did, in fact, kill someone outside. This tends to dampen the whimsy of the moment.
The other problem is the acting. The mix of experienced and inexperienced actors directed by Armour give uneven performances. Some lines are delivered with conviction, others with empty-sounding inflections and flat intonations; some movements are made with intent, others without motivation.
One casting decision seems ill-advised: Michael Lengel must pass himself off as a thrice-married psychiatrist—he’s actually the escaped schizophrenic—though the oldest he looks is 23 [Lengel was actually 35 at the time]. Both the characters and the audience are supposed to be fooled, but even Lengel’s relative talent can’t pull off this subterfuge credibly.
The good intentions and commitment of both writer and cast are certainly laudable, but aren’t enough to make good theater. Perhaps with careful rewriting and recasting, Is This 24 Lily Pond Lane? might make successful television.
[The première of Is This 24 Lily Pond Lane? was staged at Theater for the new City in New York City East Village in June and July 1989. It was later also presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.]
[Jon-Erik Hexum (1957-84) was an actor in the TV series Voyagers! (1982-83) and Cover Up (1984-85), and the 1984 “Bear” Bryant biopic, The Bear. He died by an accidental self-inflicted blank-cartridge gunshot to the head on the set of Cover Up.]
* * * *SWIM VISITby Wesley MoorePrimary Stages2 July 1990
[My review of Wesley Moore’s Swim Visit was the sole play covered in “Off the Shallow End,” New York Native, 2 July 1990.]
Primary Stages Theatre Company ends its fifth season with the New York première of Wesley Moore’s Swim Visit. Directed by William Partlan, the play recounts the confrontation of Ted (Pirie MacDonald), manufacturer of a rapidly obsolescing fiberglass tray, by Clay (Mark Metcalf), a young worker at Ted’s factory.
Clay has invited himself, the factory workers’ self-appointed spokesman, to Ted’s suburban home on a Sunday afternoon when Ted, his wife Izz (Caroline Lagerfelt), and Izz’s friend Beth (Alice Haining) are sunbathing on the pool deck (simply designed by Robert Klingelhoefer). According to Clay, the workers fear Ted is destroying the plant by producing merchandise no one is buying.
This conflict, which surfaces well into act two, is the old chestnut of the young and ambitious versus the old and stagnant. Clay and Ted, standing in for these two forces, even fight with a pair of hedge clippers to make sure we know this.
The characters behave schizophrenically, shifting purpose and personality to propel Moore’s plot along. When Beth learns that Clay is expected, she makes it clear she is not interested in socializing with a strange man. She pulls on a pair of tights over her bikini and wraps her blouse around her as Clay makes his entrance. In a wink, off comes the blouse.
Clay, presented as a clear-minded man with a purpose, is easily convinced to stay for a swim, then to stay for dinner and, finally, to stay the night. It also takes him little time to enter into a dalliance with Beth, the nature of which is nicely captured in Clay’s response when Beth remarks how strong his arms are: “[They’re] not so strong. You just haven’t felt a man in a while. And you’re glad I’m here.” In the end, Clay importunes Beth with “You’re a wonderful person. Let me take you out of here.”
Along with schizophrenic characters and soap-opera dialogue, Swim Visit is laden with some pretty heavy symbolism. Aside from the hedge-clipper fight, Ted and Clay have a swimming race which Clay wins. Among numerous others, there is a recurring reference to a “stinking carcass” in a pond—something old and dead that has been rotting there for weeks.
The cast struggles mightily to animate the characters, but the four capable performers do not seem to believe what they say or do. Lines are delivered without conviction and emotional outbursts come out of nowhere. At the end of his fight with Ted, for instance, Clay explodes, “I could kill you!” Clay’s purpose is neither personal nor particularly emotional, so where does this animosity come from?
More curiously, where does it go? Motivations are also never clear, forcing the actors to pursue actions mechanically. Clay’s sticking around never makes sense, but when he finally seems about to leave, he abruptly stops and seductively massages Izz’s shoulders.
Swim Visit never answers any of its own questions or resolves any of its problems. Too many things are simply left hanging, as if they are unimportant. Things like the audience.
[Swim Visit was produced at
Primary Stages’ home of 17 years at 354 West 45th Street (later renamed the
Davenport Theatre until 2019, when it closed as a playhouse) in the Theatre
District; it has since moved several times until 2016, when it settled in the
Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village.
The U.S. première of Moore’s play ran there 8-30 June 1990, but was previously
produced in 1986 at London’s Donmar Warehouse Theatre.]
No comments:
Post a Comment