[I haven’t posted any of my old script reports on Rick On Theater since last April. It’s a good time to put up a few more.
[This selection are all scripts by writers from the last century who are well known in the business. If you don’t recognize their names, you probably know one or two of their plays. Most have had Broadway successes in the middle of the century, some have also had work seen in the movies or on television.
[These reports were all prepared for StageArts, which is a theater where I interned as a literary advisor in the 1980s when I was a grad student taking classes in dramaturgy. (I’ve described StageArts in past posts, and I direct readers especially to my introductions to “Yevgenii Shvarts: Biography & Literary Criticism,” 6 March 2020, and “More Script Reports IV: Classics,” 14 December 2021.)
[The plays below are all in the vein of works by established writers that would add variety and a little surprise to a StageArts season as a change from their usual fare of new scripts.
[The first is by Paddy Chayefsky (1923-81), whose best-known stage work is probably The Tenth Man (1959). For the movies, he composed the scripts for The Americanization of Emily (1964) and Network (1976), and for television, Chayefsky wrote the teleplay Marty in 1953 (remade as a film in 1955). The play evaluated below, The Bachelor Party, is also a teleplay from 1953 (remade into a film in 1957).]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
Date: 6/26/84
Evaluator: [Rick]
The Bachelor Party by Paddy Chayefsky
Plot Synopsis: Charlie and Helen have been married for 3 years, and they are having trouble getting ahead. Before the play opens, Helen told Charlie she is pregnant—something they hadn’t planned on.
Charlie is very taken aback. This puts all his plans—a car, a belated honeymoon—in jeopardy. On his way to work on the PATH train [Port Authority Trans Hudson, a commuter rail system between lower Manhattan, New York City, and points in northern New Jersey], he sees a young man pick up a girl, and he begins to feel the strictures of married life and impending fatherhood.
At home, Helen worries that she may be losing Charlie. One of his coworkers is getting married, and Charlie attends the office bachelor party. He gets very drunk and when the groom-to-be corners him with his second thoughts, Charlie ducks him and takes off with the office bachelor, whom everyone envies for his freedom and success with women.
On the bar-hopping binge, Charlie sees the loneliness and emptiness of the bachelor’s real life, and he goes home to Helen with renewed love and commitment.
Theme: There is nothing ulterior in Chayefsky’s meaning here; he is simply saying that love and commitment, even when they bring hardships, are far better than a freedom that has no purpose. It is unabashedly soap-opera and simplistic.
Genre/Style: Romantic naturalism; crisis drama
Structure: 3-act cinematic. It is, in fact, a TV play.
Setting: 1950s NY and NJ; many locations—kitchen, office, bars, PATH trains, etc.—requiring quick changes and cinematic dissolves. Suggested settings in a unit set rather than fully realized realism is necessary.
Language: Basically naturalistic dialogue, but slightly stilted in ’50s colloquialisms. This is an “Actor’s Studio” type of script with long pauses and silences and uneven pacing.
Characters: 5 women: 4 are 20’s, 1 is 40’s; 7 men: 5 are 20’s, 1 is 30’s, 1 is any age.
Evaluation: This is a heart-warmingly charming play with good roles for actors. (It is frequently used in scene-study classes.) It has little depth, but there is dramatic impact in the relationship of Helen and Charlie and a number of scenes are so good they sound, even after 30 years, like overheard reality.
The main problem (aside from securing rights to stage it) is the transfer of the teleplay to the stage. Careful and clever staging should accomplish this, and the result should prove well worth the effort. The period language (indeed, the whole play) may be up-dated for easier handling, but I’m not convinced it would serve us to do so.
A stage version of this play will undoubtedly please a StageArts audience, and may also attract some critical attention. I don’t believe it has ever been done outside of acting classes.
Recommendation: Possible production
Source: [Rick]
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[Philip Barry (1896-1949) is probably best known for his play The Philadelphia Story (1939), which starred Katherine Hepburn and was turned into a wonderful film in 1940 with Hepburn and Cary Grant. (It was later remade as a movie musical called High Society (1956) starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm. High Society was adapted for the Broadway stage in 1998—and I included it in my report on “The 2006 Shaw Festival (Part 1),” 8 December 2015.
[Barry’s other well-known play is Holiday (1928), also later filmed with Hepburn and Grant. The play evaluated below is Second Threshold (1951), which Barry left unfinished at his death in 1949 from a heart attack at the age of 53. Finished by Barry’s friend, playwright Robert E. Sherwood, it ran only 126 performances on Broadway.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
Date: 7/16/84
Evaluator: [Rick]
Second Threshold by Philip Barry
Plot Synopsis: Miranda Brook, who just got her BA is psychology, is convinced that her father, Josiah, is so depressed by recent events that he is trying to commit suicide. She has some reason to think this: he opposed her imminent marriage to a man older than he; his son has just flunked out of law school; his wife has just divorced him; and his brother has just been killed in a fight over a woman—and he has had 2 unexplained accidents and now plans a solitary hunting trip in the West.
Josiah has been a famous international lawyer often called on by the government to act as a diplomat-at-large; now he seems to have little interest in anything. Miranda calls everyone close to Josiah together and explains her fears. They plan to reengage him in life by bringing their problems to him.
Miranda’s plan is for Josiah to talk brother Jock into returning to law school and mother Susan to return to him. Things backfire, however, and Jock gets Josiah to agree to let him go into show business as a song-and-dance man, and Susan gets him to bless her marriage to Russell Evans, Josiah’s friend and business advisor.
When he discovers the plot, Josiah throws a few monkey wrenches into the works, and in the end Miranda finds she is in love with childhood friend, Dr. Toby Wells, Susan realized she doesn’t want to be married to anybody, and Josiah goes off to California with the woman over whom his brother fought to free the man who shot him.
(Just as Miranda’s assumption seems to be entirely fallacious, Toby points out that the two accidents were unlikely and Josiah admits privately that there was something to his family’s fears.)
Theme: Barry was exploring an idea he had had for a long time—a father saved from loneliness and death by a daughter’s love. On a broader scope, he says that over a lifetime, one may achieve success, renown, and respect, but no one can bear the cost of the achievement alone. This is done with humor and comedy, but the gist is serious.
Genre/Style: Realistic comedy-drama in the high style of the ’30s and ’40s.
Structure: Standard 2 acts, 5 scenes; strong action line.
Setting: The study of Josiah Brook’s townhouse on W. 10th St., NYC; realistic.
Language: Basically realistic dialogue, but period and class idiom is used, making some of the phrases slightly awkward to a modern ear. (It should not really be changed—unless the entire play is up-dated—but the actors will have to become comfortable with the idiom.)
Characters: 3 women: 1 48, 1 24, 1 20; 5 men: 1 65, 2 50’s, 2 mid-20’s. Jock should be a good dancer and be able to sing.
Evaluation: There are two versions of Second Threshold, the original version as Barry left it when he died, and a revision done by Barry’s friend Robert E. Sherwood from Barry’s notes. I read the former; the latter was performed on Broadway in 1951 (2 years after Barry’s death).
There are some confusing moments in this play—it is not as smooth as Barry’s famous plays—but it is an unusual blend of the serious and the comic, and there is truth in it. The characters are all charming and appealing and provide excellent roles for actors. (There is one brief passage that is sexist by today’s standards and can be easily cut with little adverse effect.)
Some of the reversals are truly surprising, and the final revelation that Josiah was, indeed, trying to kill himself, is startling, and raises the play above a matter of comic misunderstanding with a pleasant end to a serious play handled in a unique manner. (The revisions in Act II may smooth this out—it would be worth checking.)
Philip Barry is famous for Holiday and The Philadelphia Story (recently revived on Broadway [1980]), but his other plays are seldom performed. This is a good area to mine, and Second Threshold could make an excellent choice for revival.
Recommendation: Possible production
Source: [Rick]/E[rnie]. Schier [1918-99, former theater reviewer for the Philadelphia Bulletin and Director of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center]
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Supplemental Report on Second Threshold by P. Barry, revised by Robert E. Sherwood – 8/23/84
Plot: Basically the same as the original version, but certain extraneous action lines have been eliminated. The characters of Josiah’s wife (he is now Josiah Bolton, not Brook) is only referred to, and Russell Evans no longer exists at all. Josiah’s brother and the whole story of his death is expunged, and Jock is already a working actor, rehearsing summer stock on Long Island. What is left is leaner and more direct, and a good deal smoother.
Structure: 1 less scene: 2 in each act
Evaluation: As I said, this version is smoother and more direct than the original, but it seems less interesting and quirky. There is far less humor in it and the plot Miranda cooks up to snap her father out of his dumps is less convoluted. The reviews of the original production in ’51 were lukewarm, and I imagine part of the reason might have been the missing eccentricity. I missed the convolutions and the remaining characters all seemed so much tamer they were almost lackluster.
On the other hand, the loss of some of the extra complications (e.g.: the brother incident) make the story more believable, and less contrived, which was a problem. Some of the heavy-handed exposition and explication has been removed to the benefit of the piece.
Recommendation: Make a composite script of the two versions for a Workshop Reading.
Rights: Robert A. Friedman holds the professional rights;
DPS holds the amateur rights and has a m/s of the revised version, which is out
of print.
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[Sidney Michaels (1927-2011) was best known for the early and mid-1960s works Tchin-Tchin (1963), Dylan (1964), and Ben Franklin in Paris (1964). He also wrote for television, scripting episodes of several series, and film, most notably The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968).
[I found no record that The Guy with the Flashlight was ever produced, and the date of its composition isn’t recorded anywhere that I’ve found. I suspect, however, that it was probably a recent script of Michaels’s (i.e., ca. 1984).]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
Date: 8/4/84
Evaluator: [Rick]
The Guy with the Flashlight by Sidney Michaels
Plot: Susan Frost, owner of a struggling publishing house, and Elias Katz, a lawyer and friend, have called upon Boardman (Boardy) Daugherty, the “Equalizer of Inequities,” for help. It seems Max Gould died in Susan’s bedroom. He had come to negotiate a loan to Susan’s company and died on his way to the bathroom, but Susan is afraid of the scandal and wants Max to have died somewhere else.
In a series of outrageously conceived attempts to dispose of Max, Boardy gets Susan and Elias into a number of absurd situations, but Max always ends up back in the apartment. Finally, Boardy deduces Max had been poisoned by his wife, who is having an affair with the druggist.
They try to call the police, but while Elias is on “hold,” Max, who has only been unconscious, walks in on them. They tell him the plot, turn him over to Elias for legal help, sell his story to Susan for publication, negotiate the loan—everyone gets something out of the adventure, and Susan rides off with Boardy on his motorcycle (which was parked in her living room!).
Theme: I’m not sure there is one—it’s a farce.
Genre/Style: Farce—a little on the absurd side.
Structure: 2 acts in 5 scenes with 5 “interludes” and a prologue. The “interludes” are the attempts to get rid of Max somewhere far-fetched; the scenes are all in Susan’s apartment as they plan their next move.
Setting: A penthouse apartment with terrace overlooking Central Park West [8th Ave. on the West Side of Manhattan where it runs along the western edge of Central Park from 59th to 110th St.; apartment rents rival those of 5th Ave. on the Upper East Side] with a scrim or screen “in one” for “interlude” projected scenery. [“In one” designates the area of a stage downstage between the frontmost pieces of scenery, i.e., at the front edge of the stage.] This latter may be a problem in a small house and another way of accomplishing this scene shift may have to be found.
Language: Basically realistic dialogue, though Boardy has his own idiom. Michaels’s writing is very interesting and unusual. This man is a pro with an impressive background.
Characters: Susan is 35; Boardy is 50, Elias is 39; Max is 40-60, a shaving-lotion tycoon. Susan and Elias are basically ordinary people in a crazy situation, but Boardy is a unique creation: part hippie, part Groucho Marx, with a touch of larceny in his heart. The actor who plays this role will have to have the charisma to make the most absurd suggestions seem reasonable and overcome each failure with complete aplomb. Max has no dialogue until the last scene, and must be carried and buffeted about as a “corpse” with a will of its own for most of the play. This may be the hardest role to cast.
Evaluation: This may not be StageArts’ cup of tea, but I feel it will play well and be a great success with an audience and critics. Nothing quite like it will have been seen anywhere around, I’m sure, and it’s crazy enough to be a real laugh riot.
Michaels is a significant writer, author of Dylan; Tricks of the Trade; Tchin-Tchin; The Night They Raided Minsky’s; and Goodtime Charlie, as well as TV and film scripts. If this play isn’t for us, perhaps he’s got something else that is.
A friend of mine worked with him for a while (and knows this play). She tells me Michaels has not been doing well lately and would be delighted to have anything of his produced right now. He is not unknown, but has been “lying fallow” recently. He does have a number of other plays available.
Recommendation: Second reading; if it appeals, a reading with actors would be a good idea. (This play should not be considered for the same season as The Unvarnished Truth [1978, Royce Ryton]; they are too much alike.)
Source: Mitch Douglas [1942-2020, literary agent] (ICM [International Creative Management])
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[Patrick Hamilton (1904-62), a British playwright and novelist, is most familiar as the author of Rope (1929), the source of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film of the same name. It ran on Broadway in 1929 under the title, Rope’s End. He also wrote Angel Street (1938), which after the film versions, Gaslight (1940, UK; 1944. US), was retitled to match the popular movies.
[Rope as a stage play had fascinated me for many years. I’ve never seen it on stage, and it was never revived on Broadway after its New York début. (Two Off-Broadway productions were staged in 1962 and 2005, but I didn’t seen them.) As I mention below, I’ve tried to find a theater interested in producing it, but never succeeded. StageArts didn’t step up, either.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
Date: 8/21/84
Evaluator: [Rick]
Rope by Patrick Hamilton
Plot: Based on a 19th-century thrill-killing case, but recalling more the famous 1924 Chicago case of Leopold and Loeb, this is the story of a murder for the sheer art of the act. Wyndham Brandon persuades his weak-minded friend, Charles Granillo (Granno), to help him murder a fellow Oxford undergraduate named Ronald Kentley. They place the body in a wooden chest, and invite a few friends, including the dead boy’s father, to a party at which the chest holding the body serves as the buffet server.
Only poet Rupert Cadell suspects, and after all the guests have left, Brandon and Granillo break down and confess their guilt, supposing that Cadell would appreciate their act. He doesn’t and after an intense scene of great intellectual and philosophical content, he calls the police.
Theme: Even the greatest intellects and artists are not above the common law. Mostly, this is a superb psychological study and suspenseful thriller.
Genre/Style: Realistic mystery drama
Structure: Well-made play; very strong, with crescendo-like suspense build-up. 3 acts.
Setting: Realistic interior of the study/drawing room of the Mayfair (England) house of Brandon and Granillo. Time is 1929, but could be up-dated and even transferred to NY with some small changes in the text. Leaving it alone might be more fun, though.
Language: Realistic dialogue; upper-class British—very literate.
Characters: 2 women: 1 50’s-60’s, 1 20’s; 6 men: 1 50’s-60’s, 4 20’s, 1 any age (French butler). All are extremely well drawn, wonderful character roles for talented actors; Brandon, Granillo, and Cadell require superb performers able to handle subtleties and intellectual language and concepts in what amounts to a dialectic justifying their philosophy.
Evaluation: In case you don’t recognize this, it is the play on which Alfred Hitchcock based his 1948 movie of the same title, starring Jimmy Stewart (recently rereleased [1984] to excellent reviews). He up-dated the story and moved it to NY and made Cadell (Stewart) older and a former professor of the young murderers whose philosophy inadvertently led them to their act.
This is a wonderful thriller—taut, intelligent, suspenseful, and literate. If it hasn’t already been grabbed by someone for a major revival, S/A could stage a coup by doing it—it’s very movable. I’ve been trying to get a hold of a copy for some time, but it is currently out-of-print at French’s, who own the rights—others may have had the same idea I did.
As I stated earlier, this can be (and had been) relocated and up-dated. I think it would be better to do it as a period piece and leave it set in England. That way the similarities with the Hitchcock movie will not seem so obvious. Besides, the ’20s are such fun to do, and the characters are so wonderfully English, it would be a shame to deprive the actors of the pleasure.
Recommendation: Produce. This strikes me as a perfect S/A play.
Source: [Rick]
Rights: SF [Samuel French, play publisher] (currently available in m/s only @ $10 ea., plus $25 deposit. NYPL/LC [New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center] copy would be ca. $6-9 to copy.)
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[The Lady’s Not for Burning (1948) by Christopher Fry (1907 -2005) became one of my favorite plays when I saw a television production of it on PBS in 1974. I used a speech from it as an audition piece for a language play (in lieu of a classic) for several years.
[So when I read The Firstborn (1946), I had to see if it was something I could pass along to the artistic directors of StageArts. I questioned both whether it was something they’d like and whether it was within the capabilities of the small theater company S/A was, but I gave them my report anyway.
[Other plays by Fry include A Phoenix Too Frequent (1946), Venus Observed (1950), and The Dark is Light Enough (1954). He also wrote for the movies and TV, in the latter instances, often adapting his own plays for the small screen.]
StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION
Date: 8/31/84
Evaluator: [Rick]
The Firstborn by Christopher Fry
Plot: This is the story of Moses’ struggle with the Pharoah Seti before the Exodus. Seti’s sister, Anath, cannot forget Moses who had been her adopted son until he discovered his Hebrew background and left Egypt.
Egypt is under attack from Libya, and Seti needs Moses’s prowess as a general. Upon his return, however, Moses refuses to help the Pharoah repel the Libyan invasion.
Ramases, Seti’s son, looks upon Moses as an uncle and offers to help him. Although fond of Ramases, Moses reminds him that they must go separate ways in life.
Except for his brother, Aaron, Moses’ family considers him a source of trouble. His sister, Miriam, and her son, Shendi, just want to be left alone to get along as well as they can for themselves,
In an effort to appeal to Moses and do him honor, Ramases suggests to Seti that Shendi be made an Egyptian officer. Moses asks Shendi to refuse the commission, but they boy accepts, and he and his mother move into the officers’ barracks and luxury.
Moses sues Seti to let the Hebrews leave Egypt, but the Pharoah keeps none of his promises to Moses, and darkness comes over the land. The biblical plagues strike Egypt, and finally, when the plague of the Death of the Firstborn comes, Moses summons his people.
Shendi refuses to stay within the protection of Miriam’s tent, marked with the blood sign of the Passover, and runs out into the city, obscured by “sand.”
Moses now realizes that since all Egyptian firstborn must
die, Ramases will be included. He attempts
to save the boy by warning the court of the impending doom, but Ramases crumples
before him. Anath, sending Moses out to
find liberty for his people, bids him farewell.
Moses had been happy and successful as an Egyptian prince and general, and Shendi sees himself following the same path. Miriam and Shendi see Moses’ attempts to oppose the Pharoah as personal attempts to prevent them from having what he had and lost.
Genre/Style: Verse drama
Structure: 3 acts, 7 scenes: classical structure
Setting: Non-realistic unit set that can represent a terrace and a room in the Pharoah’s palace, and the interior of Miriam’s tent; minimal props.
Language: Free verse dialogue; will require very experienced actors with a gift for using language in the classical vein. The language is contemporary, but very literate and sophisticated. The poetry here is not as lofty and soaring as Fry’s The Lady’s Not for Burning, but it is impressive nonetheless.
Characters: 3 women: 1 50, 1 30, 1 15; 10 men: 1 50-55, 2 30-40, 2 18-20, 5 extras (any ages; easily done by 2 actors). These are all fascinating portraits, particularly Moses, Ramases, Shendi, and Anath. In the hands of talented, exceptional actors, these would all be wonderful showcase roles with challenges to any serious actor.
Evaluation: This play is not as scintillating as The Lady’s Not for Burning, but it is certainly an interesting work by a well-known writer that should be seen again. In these days of world-wide tyranny and struggles of national liberation, the ideas of The Firstborn are certainly topical and powerful. The treatment is unusual—I can’t think of another play using an old-testament story this way—and might be a unique offering around the Easter-Passover holiday season,
Recommendation: Possible production
Source: [Rick]
Rights/Scripts: DPS [Dramatists Play Service]
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