Even More Vintage Reviews from the Archive

 

[As I wrote in the introduction to “Yet More Vintage Reviews from the Archive” (24 May 2021), I reviewed plays in the late 1980s and early 1990s for the New York Native, a biweekly gay newspaper published from 1980 to 1997 in New York City. 

[My beat was mostly Off-Off-Broadway and occasionally Off-Broadway, and Native reviews were fairly short since the biweekly usually covered two productions in most columns.  (For the reviews republished below, the companion play isn’t posted here—but it can be found somewhere else on Rick On Theatre.)]

JUNGLEBIRD

by Martha Horstman

Red Moon Ensemble

Nat Horne Theatre

31 December 1990 

[My review of Junglebird was part of “Money, Money, Money” with Smile & Lie, a pair of one-act plays from Alarm Dog Rep: Power Lunch by Alan Ball and Tribes by P. Kevin Strader (posted in “Some Vintage Reviews from the Archive” on 15 March).  The original column appeared in the New York Native on 31 December 1990.]

Martha Horstman’s Junglebird is a slight Cinderella comedy of the ’90s.  Lorni (playwright Horstman) shares Denise’s cramped apartment with her (Jamie Richards) and Denny (Paul Mullins).  She cleans and cooks, and looks after Denise’s bird-like mother.  She loves Denny, a pencil salesman with execrable clothing taste, but he spurns her for Denise, a thrift shop clerk who lords it over both of them. 

Denny and Denise each have impossible pipe dreams.  His is a fool-proof “gotcha” sales technique that will succeed every time, with any product.  She fancies rubbing elbows with Jackie O [who would die in 1994 at 64], changing the apartment’s color-scheme with new junk from the thrift shop.

Lorni, a drudge and a char, cleans other apartments in the building despite the abuse the tenants heap on her.  She endures the ignominy because she seems to know no better, and because she suffers from mild agoraphobia.  All this may change, however, when the lottery ticket Denny has bought for Denise wins the big jackpot. 

The performances, directed by Seth Gordon, are nicely grounded and believable.  Horstman, puffy-faced and shlumpy, mopes about the apartment like a forlorn, oversized puppy.  Mullins’s sharp, whiny voice accentuates his nerdy appearance as he obsesses over his possessions.  Richards’s would-be princess is sharp-tongued and snappish, almost barking out her lines. 

The play promises some off-beat fun in the beginning, but the first act never defines the focus and the action begins to seem attenuated.  In the second act, when the lottery ticket emerges as the main plot element, the action settles even more into a groove.  The characters become as sad and threadbare as Lorni’s clothes, and the promise of wackiness evaporates.  Junglebird feels like a one-act inflated beyond its ability to sustain its flimsy premise.

Bob Phillips’s fragmentary apartment set is haphazardly furnished in ’50s flea-market tastelessness and Jonathan Green’s costumes perfectly suit each character.  Nancy Collings’s lights and Terry Richardson’s sound design (including some weird whistling by “Bursteins”) provide appropriate atmospherics.

[Junglebird was presented at the Nat Horne Theatre (442 W. 42nd Street) on Manhattan’s relatively newly established Theatre Row.  It opened on Friday, 30 November 1990, and ran Thursdays through Sundays through 15 December.  It was first read in Red Moon Ensemble’s New Plays Series in July and August 1987 at the Contemporary Theatre in Tribeca.

[The Red Moon Ensemble , which defined itself as a nonprofit theater company that explores new works, was formed in 1985 by 40 alumni of University Park, Texas’s Southern Methodist University.  (Though a business address is still listed online for Red Moon, I can’t confirm that the Off-Off-Broadway theater is still in operation.]

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STEEPLECHASE

by Eric Stephen Booth

Booth Enterprises, Inc.

The Center

28 January 1991 

[The column “Talking Heads” included the review below and Lyndon by James Prideaux, posted in “More Vintage Reviews from the Archive,” 19 April 2021.  They were first published in the New York Native on 28 January 1991.]

Steeplechase, produced in a staged reading as a kind of backers’ audition, is designated in the program as “a 21st century black gay love story.”  Well, it is a love story of sorts, and it is gay, but whatever makes it “twenty-first-century” and “black” is undiscernible.  The cast, of course, is black and Hispanic—Booth Enterprises, Inc. (whose president is author Eric Stephen Booth) is “dedicated to producing . . . gay minority art”—but the play never mentions any minority themes or concerns.

It does mention just about everything else, however.  Steeplechase, the third Booth Enterprises production, all authored by Booth, himself, is kind-hearted and compassionate, dealing as it does with love in the age of AIDS.  It includes all the requisite references: the obligation to practice safe sex, the importance of fidelity, the evils of drug and alcohol abuse, the destructiveness of codependency, the demands of moral responsibility, etc.  If there’s a hot-button, Booth pushes it. 

He also explains it at length in wordy exposition that takes the place of real dramatic action.  Everyone’s background, beliefs, concerns, fears, thoughts, and secrets are spelled out in the dialogue, usually in one- and two-minute speeches.

In fact, between the limitations of the staged reading (which Booth noted in a curtain speech is “close to a full production”) and the overladen dialogue, the actors have nearly nothing left to do but emote.  Instead of acting, they are reduced to holding each other’s hands, stroking each other’s faces and putting their arms around each other’s shoulders. 

Since director Michael Thomas-Newton misses no opportunity for his cast, usually seated side by side, to engage in these shows of affection, Steeplechase becomes a play about hands. 

The story of Steeplechase is simple enough, and, given the amount of exposition, pretty predictable.  Gil (John Pettress) and Louie (Carmelo Ortiz), both recovering alcoholics, are committed, caring lovers.  Gil’s cousin Caesar (Lawrence Joseph), a heavy drinker, declares himself in love with a new man.   Louie’s best friend Teddy (Henry Sanabria), a volunteer at an AIDS clinic, reveals that Louie’s former lover has just tested positive for HIV, but still engages in unprotected sex. 

At a party for Gil, Caesar brings his new lover, who turns out to be Brad (Brocton Pierce), Louie’s ex.  During a fight, Caesar collapses from an alcohol-induced ulcer and is rushed to the hospital where Louie and Teddy urge Brad to acknowledge his condition and convince Caesar to be tested for AIDS, symptoms of which he has begun to show.  Except that no network would air it, it’s a perfect black, gay “Afterschool Special.”

[Steeplechase was produced by Booth Enterprises at The Center (better known as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center), 208 West 13th Street in Greenwich Village.  It ran Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 12-15 January 1991.  Booth produced another showcase of the play in October 1992.

[Eric Stephen Booth-Driver-Robinson (b. 1952) is a native Brooklynite and graduated with a B.A. in Speech & Theater from the City College of New York.  He worked on Wall Street, at the Connecticut Post in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and he’s a licensed massage therapist..

[In 1984, he wrote, directed, and co-produced his first play, The Struggle, at the Puppet Loft in New York City’s Tribeca.  After that, Booth went on to write, direct, and co-produce seven Off-Off-Broadway plays: Metamorphosis, Steeplechase, Je Ne Regrette Rien, Butch Queens, Toy Soldiers, Olodum, and Forbidden Fruit. 

[Booth also had two gay public access TV shows on in the Bronx, Strange Fruits and Fruta Extrana.  In 2005, his first film, Forbidden Fruit was showcased at the Toronto Film Festival.  The Nemesis Horizon Project: Reptilian Logs, Booth’s first book, is the first of four series of titles.]

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A FIERCE ATTACHMENT

by Vivian Gornick

adapted by Edward M. Cohen

Jewish Repertory Theatre

Emanu-El Midtown YM-YWHA

1 March 1991 

[This review was part of “Creating the Self—and Other Fictions” with Road to Nirvana by Arthur Kopit (republished in “More Vintage Reviews from the Archive,” posted on 19 April 2021).]

In A Fierce Attachment, adapted and directed by Edward M. Cohen from Vivian Gornick’s memoir, Fierce Attachments, Tovah Feldshuh performs an unusual task: creating two distinct characters simultaneously.  Cohen’s play explores the troubled—and troubling—relationship between Gornick, a liberated, intellectual journalist, and her mother, a working-class Jewish socialist. 

Feldshuh must become both Gornick and Gornick’s image of her mother.  There are other “characters” in A Fierce Attachment, but the daughter and mother are the focus of this one-actor piece, early in which Vivian predicts, “One of us is going to die from this attachment.”

Feldshuh switches facilely between the roles, even recreating conversations, though she is clearly more comfortable as the daughter.  Her Vivian is natural, relaxed, and committed, talking directly with the audience over her desk or from the edge of the set, an open, Conran-style livingroom-kitchen-office designed by Ray Recht. 

At the performance I saw, Feldshuh even responded to the audience’s reactions a few times, even though Cohen told me later she wasn’t supposed to.  As the mother, however, the actress is more forced.  Using a slight old-world Jewish accent that sometimes sounds like an impression of a Billy Cristal character and occasionally stooping like an arthritic crone, the mother now and then becomes a cliché rather than a real person.  It is important to remember, though, that this is the writer’s image of her mother, not necessarily her actual mother.

Altogether, A Fierce Attachment is an engaging performance as Feldshuh’s Vivian fights through the often stifling relationship with her mother to realize that “one has to live one’s life.”  Granted, that’s something of a cliché, too, but, as Cohen pointed out, at base this is a feminist play without the polemics.  What Vivian finally understands is that “I begin and end with myself.”  Platitude though that may be, it is a hard-won revelation to someone who has to discover it for herself.

The production is not without problems.  Brian Nason’s lighting changes inexplicably and abruptly, though there may be some idea of passing time Cohen has not carried over into Feldshuh’s acting, and the actress occasionally walks in and out of shadow as she darts about the set.  More significantly, there is a repetitiousness about the mother-daughter clash that might warrant reducing the hour-and-forty-five-minute two acts to a ninety-minute single act. 

Vivian’s stance toward her mother also seems to shift, particularly when she discusses her with someone else, from antagonism to defense.  This ambivalence, though certainly reasonable, is not investigated in A Fierce Attachment.

[A Fierce Attachment was staged at the Emanu-El Midtown YM-YWHA, JRT’s sponsor, on East 14th Street; neither the Y nor JRT still exist.  The show ran 20 performances from 16 February to 17 March 1991.  Vivian Gornick’s memoir was first published in 1987, but Edward M. Cohen’s stage adaptation was premièred in this JRT production.

[JRT, a theater “committed to producing theater that details the Jewish experience in America in the English language,” was founded in 1974 by longtime artistic director Ran Avni; it closed its doors in 2004.  The Y, formed in 1960 by the merger of two other community organizations, was moved out of the East Village facility, which was demolished after 1991.]

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ANGEL AND DRAGON

by Sally Netzel

Village Theatre Company

20 May 1991 

[My review of Angel and Dragon was incorporated in the column ”Skin Deep and Heart Shallow” along with Pageant (book and lyrics by Bill Russell and Frank Kelly, music by Albert Evans; posted as “Pageant (1991)” on 4 August 2014).]

Angel and Dragon explores the relationship of two women from 1890 to 1935 by dramatizing an isolated moment in their lives each decade.  The two, painter Maggie Irving (Barbara Bercu) and poet Anna Forbish (Susan Farwell), meet and live out their romance in Paris, but the play is bookended by two scenes in New York ten years after Anna’s suicide.  

Because the play starts in 1945, then zooms back to 1890, it resembles a female version of Tom Stoppard’s recent Artist Descending a Staircase, but it lacks the imaginative twists and turns and linguistic vibrancy even of that lesser Stoppard.  Maggie and Anna are decidedly ordinary women, despite their artistic professions and unorthodox love. 

Actually, the problem lies in that love: I never believed it.  Yes, hedonistic, libertine Anna, the “Dragon” of the title (the metaphor is from some dream drawings Maggie makes), is possessive and controlling.  Yes, sincere, naïve Maggie, the “Angel,” is jealous and abandoned.  But these are just clichés as written by Sally Netzel and acted by Farwell and Bercu.  

The heart of the story ought to be the love of these two women through nearly fifty years, but the play I saw was about character traits, not relationship.  Bercu, when she wasn’t trying to be old, was the most relaxed and convincing human being onstage; Farwell often reminded me of Jane Alexander as Hedda Hopper in the 1985 TV movie Malice in Wonderland, all nasally hauteur and arch sophistication.  

Everyone, including the writer and Gigi Rivkin, the director, tries too hard to evoke period rather than the intimate friendship between two people.  This inclination is manifested in Ismael Hernandez and Jillian Maslow’s costumes, which are too pristine to look like anyone’s real clothes.  This is especially so of Anna’s, which are so flamboyant they call attention to themselves rather than enhance her character.

There is a third person in each of Anna and Maggie’s scenes, which take place in the painter’s studio.  A model—a different one each time, all played by Michelle Berke—is always present, though she has little to do, spending her stage time silently reading, eating, rolling bandages—even sleeping.  I wondered what was the point of having her present at, but not active in the life of two sometime lovers.  I never figured it out (but I kept thinking of Nicol Williamson’s problems with I Hate Hamlet; perhaps Berke should have walked offstage occasionally).

[Sally Netzel’s Angel and Dragon was mounted by the Village Theatre Company at its home theater at 133 W. 22nd Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea Wednesdays through Sundays, from 1 to 26 May 1991.  (It was presented in rotating rep with Frontiers by Meir Z. Ribalow.)  Netzel’s play also ran previously at the TOMI Theatre on the Upper West Side in June 1983.

[Sally Netzel has written over 30 plays, most produced around the country (and published by the Dramatic Publishing Company and the Pioneer Drama Service), including three musicals and 10 plays for children.   She is the co-author of a novel, Midsummer, and author of a book of short stories entitled Rosinante’s Sallies: Animal Fables for Adults and another novel Bohunk Humoresque.

[A member of the Dallas Theater Center in Texas for 15 years as resident playwright, director, actor, and producer of plays for children, Netzel is a recipient of the Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Award for Playwriting.  She holds a master of arts degree in theater from Trinity University in San Antonio, where she also served as an associate professor of acting. 

[The Village Theatre Company was formed by a troupe of actors in 1987.  (I haven’t been able to confirm if the company’s still producing or, if not, when it closed.)]

Yet More Vintage Reviews from the Archive

 

[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 TRANCES

by 

45th Street Theatre

3 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!”] 

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WORKING ONE ACTS ’89

The Working Theater

Henry Street Settlement

8 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.]

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IS THIS 24 LILY POND LANE?

by Toby Armour

Theater for the New City

8 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 VISIT

by Wesley Moore

Primary Stages

2 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.]

More Vintage Reviews from the Archive

 

[As I reported in “Some Vintage Reviews from the Archive” (15 March 2021), I wrote reviews for the New York Native, a biweekly gay newspaper published in New York City from 1980 until 1997, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.   

[The notices were relatively short because the paper ran reviews in pairs, so there were two plays covered in most columns.  (For most of the reviews republished here, the companion play has been omitted—though it may have been posted in another location on Rick On Theatre.)

[I covered mostly Off-Off-Broadway and occasionally Off-Broadway, and sometimes, the artists in the productions, including the dramatists, were prominent—or, at least familiar to theatergoers.  For “More Vintage Reviews from the Archive,” I’ve collected some of those notices.]

ARISTOCRATS

by Brian Friel

Manhattan Theatre Club

Theatre Four

15 May 1989 

[My review of Irish playwright Brian Friel’s Aristocrats was part of "Family Problems," which also included a review of The Rug of Identity (posted in “‘I’m So Confused . . . !’” on ROT on 4 July 2012) in the New York Native of 15 May 1989.

[Friel (1929-2015) was a popular short story-writer and dramatist who was considered by many as one of the best playwrights in the English-speaking world.  His plays produced on Broadway included Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1966; revived, 1994), The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966), Lovers (two one-acts: Winners and Losers; 1968), The Mundy Scheme (1969), The Freedom of the City (1974), Faith Healer (1979; revived, 2006), Dancing at Lughnasa (1991; Tony for Best Play, 1992), Wonderful Tennessee (1993), Translations (1995; revived, 2007).

[Many of these plays were also presented Off-Broadway.  In addition to Aristocrats, which won a 1989 Drama Critics' Circle Award and a 1991 Lucille Lortel Award, Friel’s drama Molly Sweeney also received a Drama Critics' Circle and a Lucille Lortel Award for OB runs, both in 1996.]

Family and relationships play an important role in a serious vein in Aristocrats, the 1979 play by Brian Friel.  Compared by some to Chekhov’s plays, particularly The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, and bearing the mantle of Friel’s Irish predecessors William Butler Yeats and Sean O’Casey—both invoked here—Aristocrats, as staged by British director Robin Lefèvre, takes a very careful look at a disintegrating aristocratic Irish Catholic family.  With some wonderful performances, most notably from Dubliner Niall Buggy, on a John Lee Beatty set so evocatively real you can smell the must and mildew, Aristocrats tries to make the O’Donnell family of Ballybeg stand in for all of Ireland, their problems being analogies for those of a whole people.

Despite the richly textured work of cast, director, and designers, however, the cross-over never really happens.  As a study of an eccentric, all-but-decayed family desperately in need of new, peasant-stock blood, the details are often fascinating in themselves.  Son Casimir’s possibly imaginary family and his fuzzy-at-best memories of past O’Donnell glories are so charmingly evoked by Buggy I wanted them to be true.  The vitality and strength of Willie Diver (John Christopher Jones) is so refreshing and robust, I wanted him to come to the rescue of the family and its moribund manor. 

The minutiae—some fantasy, some real—of the O’Donnell history so lovingly laid out for the scrutiny of Tom Hoffnung (Peter Crombie), an American sociology grad student, give the play the impression of weightiness.  The script, unfortunately, never ties it all together into something that makes the family and its fate greater than the sum of the wonderful parts. 

The researcher-catalyst doesn’t ever seem more than a contrivance and a foil to point out the historical inaccuracies in family lore.  The impending wedding of daughter Claire (Haviland Morris) to a much older man and the alcoholism of daughter Alice (Margaret Colin) never provide the apotheosis I was led to expect. 

The enigmatic appearances of crazy Uncle George (Thomas Barbour) end up being little more than a brief joke.  In the end, the death of District Judge O’Donnell (Joseph Warren), supposedly marking the end of an era like the sale of the Ranevskys’ cherry trees, just puts a period at the end of a run-on sentence that was finished long ago.

[Aristocrats was first performed at the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland, in Dublin in 1979.  The Manhattan Theatre Club revival started previews Off-Broadway at Theatre Four (55th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues – no longer functioning) on 11 April 1989 and opened on 14 April; the production closed on 24 September.  There was a revival of Friel’s play in New York City by the Off-Broadway troupe Irish Repertory Theatre in 2009.

[The MTC presentation won several performance awards and two for Friel’s play: the 1989 Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play and the 1991 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play.]

*  *  *  *

“HELLO, BOB”

by Robert Patrick

La MaMa E.T.C.

First Floor Theater

29 October 1990 

[I’ve mentioned Robert Patrick’s “Hello, Bob” several times on ROT.  The review was part of the column "Broadway Revisited" (with the review of the musical Two By Two [see below] in the New York Native of 29 October 1990.

[Patrick (b. 1937) was the most prolific playwright of Off-Off-Broadway back in the early ’60s when that cultural venue was just emerging in Greenwich Village and the East Village (see my articles “Greenwich Village Theater in the 1960s,” 12 and 15 December 2011, and “Caffe Cino,” 11 and 14 September 2018).  A list of his plays is way too long to reproduce here, but his biggest success in terms of public attention was Kennedy’s Children, presented on Broadway from 3 November 1975 to 4 January 1976.  

[As you’ll read, “Hello, Bob” is about the repercussions of the mainstream success of Kennedy’s Children on playwright Patrick.  He particularly lambastes Shirley Knight, who received a 1976 Tony as Best Featured Actress In A Play, for her performance in the play.  I have quipped that Knight ought to consider suing for defamation of character for the things Patrick says about her in “Hello, Bob.”]

Robert Patrick’s current play has two connections to his 1974 piece, Kennedy’s Children.  First, like Kennedy’s Children, “Hello, Bob” is a series of monologues; second, all the monologues relate in some way to the success of Kennedy’s Children and the effect of that success on Patrick.  The links end here, however. 

The threads that keep Kennedy’s Children cohesive—the interwoven speeches as each character, however unconnected to the others, take and then relinquish focus; the omnibus setting of the bar to which the characters retreat out of the rain—are absent from “Hello, Bob.”  Here the twenty-one speeches, sometimes one side of elliptical conversations with an invisible Patrick, range in time from 1975 to 1981 and take place, in Act I, all over New York and, in Act II, around the country.  The only adhesives are an unseen and unheard Patrick and the frequent allusions to his unnamed Broadway play.

Further, whereas Kennedy’s Children considered “the death of the idea of heroes as guides for our lives,” according to Patrick’s note in the published text, “Hello, Bob” seems only to be concerned with praising Patrick—the man, the artist, the Samaritan, the lover.  There are many references to Patrick as a “great guy” and to his “great play.”  Over and over again, he is shown to be a tireless teacher, dauntless crusader for noble causes, and unwavering friend.  Everyone loves “Bob.”  In one bit, a cabby, declaring himself straight, offers to jump into the back seat for a little off-the-meter fun “just because I like you.”  In another scene, Bob’s lover, about to leave him, proclaims Bob a “wonderful lover” and offers a quickie before departing.  Everyone is ready to sacrifice something for this terrific man; even a New York Times reporter risks his job to inform Patrick that his interview will be edited to make him look foolish. 

Under the author’s direction, a four-actor ensemble performs the monologues, with Patrick’s “favorite actress,” Carol Nelson, subject of a recent Native profile, taking all ten female characters.  With a minimal setting of black metal folding chairs and a couple of cafe tables on a black-painted, two-level stage, the actors must evoke not only their characters, but the locales and, often, a mimed Patrick’s presence as well.  (This last seems most troublesome for the cast.  Patrick keeps changing height, from a very tall standing figure to a very short seated one.  In one piece, Nelson holds Patrick’s invisible hands as if they are as flat as paper.)  Except for their costumes and their words, few of the characters are clearly delineated or imaginatively portrayed.  Arnold, a working man on a bus, has a generalized southern accent to indicate an uneducated, red-neck bigot—and he’s from Maine; Wren, who spent some time in Ireland, produces a cartoon brogue. 

Characterization is not deeply grounded, either.  Wren, for instance, relates what ought to have been a horrific experience: being tied to a bed next to her IRA lover while he is executed.  She tells of being unable to free herself “from dawn till noon” while his blood soaks her gag and flies feed on his brains leaking out of the hole in his head.  Nelson pauses not a moment, catches her breath not once, gulps back not one gasp during the description.  The audience reacted more viscerally than does the actress.

Disjointed and undifferentiated as the moments are, one is amusing.  Edmond Ramage delivers an evocative telephone monologue as Tennessee Williams.  Ramage endows “Tennessee” with wry humor, a perception of the absurdity of the worlds of art and journalism, and a neat sense of revenge.  I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the portrayal, but as theater, this was, for me, the most interesting character and most intriguing scene of the evening.

[Robert Patrick is mentioned often in my early Rick On Theatre article “Is Waiting For Godot Trash?” (17 April 2009), on which the playwright also left several Comments.  He also figures in my two-part report “Caffe Cino” (11 and 14 September 2018).

[“Hello, Bob” was produced at Manhattan’s East Village La MaMa E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club) from 11 to 28 October 1990.  It was developed in several Off-Off-Broadway theaters before being presented at La MaMa.  A 1995 production of “Hello, Bob” was presented at Chicago’s Retro Theatre and a 1996 revival was mounted at L.A.’s Lionstar Theater.  (Patrick’s complete play is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ1K8wNcNmI.)

[Kennedy’s Children was produced at Playwrights Horizons from 30 May to 9 June 1973 before it transferred to Broadway’s John Golden Theatre.  Under the direction of Clive Donner, it began previews there on 30 October 1975 and opened on 3 November; it ran for 72 regular performances and five previews, closing on 4 January 1976.  Kennedy’s Children was nominated for the 1976 Outstanding New Play Drama Desk Award.]

*  *  *  *

TWO BY TWO

by Richard Rogers, Martin Charnin, and Peter Stone

Triangle Theatre Company

Church of the Holy Trinity

29 October 1990 

[The other half of "Broadway Revisited" (see above) is this notice for Two By Two, a 1970 Broadway musical with music by Richard Rodgers (1902-79), lyrics by Martin Charnin (1934-2019), and book by Peter Stone (1930-2003).  At the Imperial Theatre, the show ran from 10 November 1970 to 11 September 1971, for 351 performances.  Danny Kaye played Noah; also in the cast were Joan Copeland (Arthur Miller’s younger sister), Marilyn Cooper, and Madeline Kahn.

[The creative team, adapting The Flowering Peach, the play by Clifford Odets (1906-63), was led by the great stage composer Rodgers, former partner of Lorenz Hart (1895-1943) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960), whose output includes classic American musicals such as The Girl Friend (1926), A Connecticut Yankee (1927), Jumbo (1935), On Your Toes (1936), Babes in Arms (1937), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), Pal Joey (1940), Oklahoma! (1943), Carousel (1945), State Fair (film, 1945 and 1962; stage, 1996), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), Cinderella (TV, 1957; Broadway, 2013), Flower Drum Song (1958), and The Sound of Music (1959), among many others.

[Charnin wrote the lyrics for the musicals Mata Hari (1967), Annie (1977), Cafe Crown (1989), and Annie Warbucks (1993).  Stone wrote the book for Kean (1961), 1776 (1969), Sugar (1972), Woman of the Year (1981), My One And Only (1983), The Will Rogers Follies (1991), and Titanic (1997). (Stone also wrote the screenplay for my favorite thriller movie, 1963’s Charade.)]

The Triangle Theatre Company’s twentieth-anniversary revival of the Richard Rodgers-Martin Charnin-Peter Stone musical, Two By Two (1970), is a small, gentle pleasure.  The story of Noah and the flood, adapted from The Flowering Peach (1954) by Clifford Odets, is an old-fashioned musical, and perhaps not one of Rogers’s greatest scores, but it is fun and sweet, and excellently performed in the small space at the Church of the Holy Trinity.

On a tiny set designed by Bob Phillips, with a lopsided hut the size of an outhouse at its center (there is an outhouse, too—even smaller), painted purple and green and gray, the cast of eight portrays the family of Noah (Kip Niven) and Esther (Meredyth Rawlins) as a bickering, disrespectful, loving, prototypical Jewish family.  If Noah sounds a little like Billy Crystal’s old Jewish man, he is less caricatured and warmer of heart.  Niven’s love song to his dying Esther is a real two-hanky moment.

Most remarkable in this production are the voices.  While all the performers sing creditably, standouts are Tom Lloyd as Japheth, who has the strongest voice and the most character when he sings, and Mary Lee Marson as Rachel.  Also excellent singers are Bryan Batt as Ham, Wendy Baila as Leah and Lindsey Mitchell as Goldie.  Singling these out should not detract from the nice ensemble acting of the cast on the sometimes cramped set.

If Two By Two isn’t one of the all-time great American musicals, it is still nice occasionally to return to the old-time shows when you could sing the songs and for which the term “musical comedy” was coined.  The Triangle show is such a respite.

[Triangle’s revival of Two By Two ran at the Church of the Holy Trinity (East 88th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues) from 4 to 28 October 1990.  The show is a favorite in community theaters and church groups, and there’ve been a number of revivals over the years with stars such as Milton Berle (The Muny in St. Louis, 1971) and Shelley Berman (National Tour,1972-73).

[Odets’s Flowering Peach, the last original play by the playwright produced in his lifetime, ran at the Belasco Theatre in the Theatre District from 28 December 1954 to 23 April 1955, 135 performances.  Staged by the author, the play starred Menasha Skulnik, a Polish-born star of the Yiddish theater, as Noah.]

*  *  *  *

MAMBO MOUTH

by John Leguizamo

American Place Theatre

3 December 1990 

[My review of John Leguizamo’s Mambo Mouth was paired with my notice for Invitation to the Beginning of the End of the World (Invitation to the Beginning of the End of My Career) by Penny Arcade in a column entitled "Come To The Cabarets" (see “Penny Arcade: Two Performances,” 15 November 2013). The two reviews appeared in the New York Native on 2 December 1990.

[Mambo Mouth wasn’t a play, but a stand-up routine in the vein of popular monologuists of the time like Whoopi Goldberg (Broadway event, 1984-85) and Danitra Vance (see “Short Takes: Some Unique Performances,” 28 July 2018).  Born in Bogota, Colombia, Leguizamo (b. 1964) is an actor, writer, and stand-up comedian who drew on his youth in Queens, New York, for the characters he played in his monologues.

[Today, Leguizamo works mostly as an actor in film, television, and theater, but in the ’90s, he was a stand-up comic with a growing reputation.  He’d been creating his own material since the 1980s, trying it out at the performance art spaces on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and in the East Village.  This eventually became Mambo Mouth which was his breakthrough as an autobiographical monologuist; the reviews launched that aspect of his budding career. 

[Leguizamo’s texts have been published, including Mambo Mouth (Bantam, 1993), which was also recorded for HBO and aired in 1991, giving the performer a national audience.  He performed all across the country to excellent reviews.  (His other published texts are Spic-o-rama [Bantam, 1994] and Freak [Riverhead Trade, 1998]; all three, plus Sexaholix, are collected in The Works of John Leguizamo [Ecco, 2008].)]

On the tiny stage of the American Place Theatre’s SubPlot, a cabaret in the theater’s basement that’s more a passageway than a room, John Leguizamo creates seven Latino characters during his hour-and-fifteen-minute Mambo Mouth.  Aside from costumes and a few props, he does this mostly with a superb physical sense of his characters.  Leguizamo is, according to his biography, an actor (rather than a writer or comic), and though I haven’t seen his film or stage performances, I’d bet he’s a terrific character actor.

[On the film website IMDb, Leguizamo is quoted as saying that he often plays supporting—that is, character—roles “[b]ecause you get to be free.”  He added, “There are more, better written supporting parts than there are leading parts.”  I don’t know the source of this quotation however.]

Directed by Peter Askin, Mambo Mouth is pretty straightforward.  One by one, Leguizamo presents his characters in brief scenes: Agamemnon, an oily Latin-lover type hosting “Naked Personalities,” “the most dangerous show on public access TV”; Angel, a street punk busted for knocking one of his many girlfriends around; a young teenager telling his friend that he just became a man at Nilda’s Bodega & Bordello; an illegal immigrant caught in an INS sting; a streetwalker consoling a friend; a stoned-out street vendor who calls himself an “Inca god” selling ointments and artifacts; and, in his cleverest persona, “The Cross-Over King,” a Latino who “became” Japanese selling the concept in a slide lecture.

There’s some Spanish in Leguizamo’s routine, and there were a number of Hispanics in the mixed audience, but his material is readily accessible to all of us—especially if you watch TV.  Leguizamo’s brief is to use Latin stereotypes to bust them open and his characters—except the last one—are recognizable from our pop culture. 

Along with his thorough and natural physical portrayals, Leguizamo’s lines are clever and pointed.  They are also often vulgar and belligerent.  Agamemnon, for instance, tells us his father dismisses him with “Out of a hundred thousand sperm, I can’t believe you were the quickest!”  The knife-wielding hooker regularly threatens to cut off the “peepee” of anyone who annoys her.  Sex, sexuality, and the genitals are the most common focus, as if they were the only forces in these people’s lives.  

Mambo Mouth is billed as “A Savage Comedy,” but it isn’t always really funny.  It’s clearly not meant to be.  Underlying the humor is a base of anger and bitterness, and, disturbingly, an apparent self-hatred which ultimately made me uncomfortable.

[In a 1991 interview with Glenn Collins of the New York Times, Leguizamo said, as if in response to my last comment above, that counselling sessions at Manhattan’s Youth Counseling League “helped me to get over my rage and my negativity toward myself."

[In another interview, he told the Los Angeles Times’ Patrick Pacheco, “Writing this play was like an exorcism . . . from the self-loathing and all the ugly things that I feel I carry around in myself . . . .”

[Mambo Mouth began performances at the American Place Theatre (on 46th Street west of 6th Avenue) on 8 November 1990 and, after a short hiatus, transferred to the Orpheum Theatre in the old Yiddish theater district along 2nd Avenue (between 6th and 7th Streets in the East Village) on 4 June 1991.  Altogether, the show ran 187 performances, closing on 25 August.  It later played in LA.

[Directed by Peter Askin, the performance piece garnered the 1991 Obie Award for Leguizamo’s performance and the 1991 Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Award  for his writing.  Productions have been mounted all over the country, as well as abroad, Other actors have performed Leguizamo’s texts, such as Peter J. Mendez who did Mambo Mouth in Baltimore in 1997 and Riley Faison in 2015 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.]

*  *  *  *

LYNDON

by James Prideaux

John Houseman Theatre

28 January 1991 

[I reviewed James Prideaux’s Lyndon, a one-man bio-play about Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, as part of “Talking Heads,” combined with my review of Steeplechase by Eric Stephen Booth, in the New York Native of 28 January 1991.  (The playwright described Steeplechase as “a 21st century black gay love story.”)

[Prideaux (1927-2015) was principally a writer for film and television, but his best-known stage work was The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1972), which won him a 1973 Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright.  It also won Julie Harris a Tony for Best Actress In A Play for her performance in the title role.

[Several other of his plays were performed on the summer straw-hat circuit with stellar casts and his TV movie, Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986). was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Drama/Comedy Special.  It starred Katherine Hepburn as the title character, for which performance she was also nominated for an Emmy.  Prideaux’s memoirs are entitled Knowing Hepburn and Other Curious Experiences (1996).]

Laurence Luckinbill’s performance in Lyndon is remarkable.  While he may not look or sound exactly like the real LBJ, he doesn’t look or sound like LL either.  With the aid of an incredible make-up job (designed by Kevin Haney and taking a 2½-hour session with costuming), he completely convinces you that you are watching someone real up on the stage.  His gestures, movements, and business, his inflections, phrasing, and rhythm are all natural and unforced. 

The experience was not unlike that of watching Pat Carroll as Gertrude Stein or Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain.  It’s mesmerizing to watch Luckinbill, especially when he dons Johnson’s signature Stetson, as he reminisces on the former president’s political career from the late ’20s through his announcement in 1968 that he would not run again for the presidency. 

There is some serendipitous juxtaposition of history with current events when Johnson discusses the Congress’s 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and the protests in Lafayette Park across from the White House.  [President George H. W. Bush had led the U.S. into the Gulf War against Iraq, August 1990-February 1991, on the strength of a U.N. resolution and weakly supported Congressional authorization.]  

In the end, however, I am left with the question of why this man’s life is worth dramatizing now.  Unquestionably, the mid-1960s were a dramatic and tumultuous era, but, despite some excellently mimed moments, Lyndon is essentially all talk as Luckinbill, directed by Richard Zavaglia, meanders around the simplified, gray-toned Oval Office set.  James Prideaux’s play, drawn from Merle Miller’s book, Lyndon: An Oral Biography (1980), is really a living history lesson, perhaps more moving for those of us who remember the events than for those born after Vietnam became little more than a bad dream. 

I also can’t shake the feeling that Prideaux and Luckinbill have sanitized the LBJ image, making him a more endearing, grandfatherly figure than he really was.  Though the reminiscences contain several admissions by Johnson that he made some deals and occasionally voted against his own beliefs on issues like civil rights and desegregation, the timbre of the performance is one of calm, thoughtful deliberation and righteous governance for the benefit of all Americans. 

That’s not the LBJ I remember, nor the man whose reputation for back-room infighting, self-interested wheeler-dealing, and even downright vindictiveness was reportedly well deserved.  President Johnson was not one of the nicest men to occupy the White House, though, by God, he got things accomplished.  Such is not the figure embodied by Luckinbill on the stage of the John Houseman Theatre.  Still, the fiction presented is an extraordinary performance for its own sake.

[James Prideaux’s Lyndon opened at the John Houseman Theatre (demolished in 2005) on Theatre Row on 10 January 1991 and closed on 3 May.  Luckinbill was seen in an earlier version, called Lyndon Johnson, on the Public Broadcasting Service on 8 April 1987.  (Jack Klugman portrayed LBJ in an earlier version of Prideaux’s play in 1984 at the Eisenhower Theater in Washington, D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.)

[My reference above to Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain was to the actor’s one-man portrayal of the writer in Mark Twain Tonight!, seen on Broadway originally in 1966.  I saw it on CBS TV in 1967.  Holbrook won both a Tony and a Vernon Rice Award (now the Drama Desk Award) for his Broadway performance; he was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama for the TV version. 

[(Dick Smith, a special make-up effects artist, won the Emmy for Individual Achievements in Art Direction and Allied Crafts – Makeup for Holbrook’s transformation from the 41-year-old actor to the 70-year-old humorist—a four-hour long application.)

[The mention of Pat Carroll as Gertrude Stein was a reference to the actress’s one-woman, Off-Broadway play, Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1980 for which the actress won two 1980 acting honors: the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Performance.

[While I was watching the performance, I kept saying to myself, ‘Gee, Stein’s a really interesting person.  I’m so glad I got to meet her’!  When I realized what I was thinking—that that was actually Gertrude Stein in front of me—I was mighty glad I didn’t say that out loud so my companion and others near me could hear how deeply I’d fallen under Carroll’s spell.

[I don’t write fan letters, but I sat down and wrote one to Carroll and said that if she ever took on students, I was ready to sign up!]

*  *  *  *

ROAD TO NIRVANA

by Arthur Kopit

Circle Repertory Company

18 March 1991 

[Reviewed alongside Vivian Gornick’s A Fierce Attachment (adapted by Edward M. Cohen), Arthur Kopit’s Road to Nirvana was part of the column I called “Creating the Self—and Other Fictions” in the New York Native of 18 March 1991.  (Attachment explores the relationship between a liberated, intellectual journalist and her mother, a working-class Jewish socialist—with Tovah Feldshuh playing both parts.)

[Kopit (1937-2021; the dramatist died on 2 April at 83, while I was preparing this post) came to the theater world’s attention in 1962 with Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad (as much for the length of its title as for the content of the absurdist drama)—which won the Vernon Rice Award (now known as the Drama Desk Award).  He was nominated for another Drama Desk Award in 1979 for Wings (see my report on a later production on 26 November 2010).

[Kopit was a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist—for Indians (1969) and Wings—and a three-time Tony Award nominee: Best Play, Indians (1970); Best Play, Wings (1979); and Best Book of a Musical, Nine (1982).  He was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2017.]

Arthur Kopit’s Road to Nirvana was first produced as Bone-the-Fish (1989, Actors Theatre of Louisville), a title reminiscent of Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow (1988) to which Kopit’s play is a reaction.  In fact, Kopit has said that the inspiration for Road to Nirvana was the casting of Madonna in Speed-the-Plow: “I became interested in the phenomenon of Madonna, partly because she was cast in this play and couldn’t have been cast in a high school play.  I wondered what it was like to be that powerful as a pop star, that untalented as an actor and yet mysteriously talented.”  The Nirvana of his play’s title is Kopit’s take on Madonna, with a little Shirley MacLaine thrown in.

But Nirvana doesn’t show up until the second act.  Until then, the play is about Hollywood deal-making at its most venal.  Not filmmaking; deal-making.  Have you ever heard anyone say, “I’d cut my wrists to get that . . . “? or “I’d eat shit for that . . .”?  Well, in Road to Nirvana, they mean it literally.  Jerry (Peter Riegert) is so desperate to get back into making feature films, he agrees to everything his old partner, Al (Jon Polito) demands to get in on the deal of a lifetime—a film, called Moby Dick, that is the life story of rock phenom Nirvana (Amy Aquino). 

Nirvana, it seems, has been a) strung out for so long, and b) reincarnated so many times, that she can’t remember her real life, so she wrote Moby Dick, changing Ahab’s name to hers and the whale to a giant cock.  Al and Lou (Saundra Santiago), his new partner and lover, want to make this flick so badly they’ll do anything to get the deal.  Eventually, so does Jerry, but he has to sway Nirvana.  He does this finally by agreeing to one last humiliation.  I’ll give you a hint: Have you ever heard anyone say, “I’d give my left nut . . . “?

The cast, under Jim Simpson’s sure direction, performs these absurdities with complete conviction, handling Kopit’s occasionally Stoppardesque dialogue stylishly and firmly.  They toss around obscenities, one in particular, until they are meaningless and make you believe completely in even the most meaningless phrases.  (James Puig’s performance as a confused and abused servant should be noted.  Never saying more than two words, Puig communicates volumes with a single look.)  

Trouble begins at the second act when the play splits into two.  Act one is fast, funny and absurd, but act two slows considerably, covering much of the same territory.  The character of Nirvana isn’t as ditzy or flaky as we are led to believe she would be.  She’s just a manipulative and paranoid control freak.  

If the second-act set, designed by Andrew Jackness, weren’t so exotic—a Roman bath-cum-Mayan temple—there would be little of interest save the not-so-surprise climax.  The act doesn’t so much end as stop—but, then, anything following a surgical castration would be (ahem) anticlimactic.

[Arthur Kopit’s Road to Nirvana opened at the Circle Rep’s theater in the West Village on 13 February 1991; it ran for 54 performances, closing on 31 March.  The play had been commissioned by the Actors Theatre of Louisville and premièred there (as Bone-the-Fish) in 1989. 

Between the ATL début and CRC production, Road to Nirvana was presented at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, in 1990.  Subsequent productions were mounted in L.A. (1991); Chicago (1993, 1997); Burbank (1993); Herndon, Virginia (1994); and Venice, Florida (2015).

[Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow’s première was produced by Lincoln Center Theater at Broadway’s Royale Theatre (now the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre) in 1988.  Directed by Gregory Mosher, the artistic director of LCT, the cast included Madonna, Joe Mantegna, and Ron Silver.  It ran 23 previews and 279 regular performances and won the Tony Award for Best Actor In A Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor In A Play, both for Silver.

[Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times: “Madonna serves Mr. Mamet's play much as she did the Susan Seidelman film ‘Desperately Seeking Susan,’ with intelligent, scrupulously disciplined comic acting.  She delivers the shocking transitions essential to the action and needs only more confidence to relax a bit and fully command her speaking voice.”

[Frederick M. Winship of United Press International deemed, however, “The role of Karen, a young woman with no past that we know of, is an impossible one and Madonna has too little talent or theatrical imagination to make something of it, even with Mosher’s expert help.

[He continued, “She is rigid, almost as though she is terrified to be on stage.  Her voice has a one-note quality that becomes boring and her characterization is limited to superficialities that only establish Karen as an overly intent, patently naive young woman who is all too ready to admit she has done ‘bad’ things to establish rapport with a man all too ready to seduce her.”