Theater Kids

 

[The term "theater kid" (or “theatre kid,” as it is below) typically refers to a young person, usually a student, who is deeply passionate about and involved in theatrical performance.  They are often characterized by their enthusiastic embrace of performing arts, particularly musicals, and may exhibit traits like spontaneously breaking into song—almost always one from a musical—or quoting lines from shows. 

[I wasn’t a theater kid.  As I explain in “A Broadway Baby,” posted on Rick On Theater on 22 September 2010, I was introduced to theater as a young boy, but though I did the usual school performances in elementary and middle school, I wasn’t “deeply passionate” about acting.

[I also don’t insist on spelling it t-h-e-a-t-r-e, as John DeVore asserts below that all theater kids do.  I will honor the preference of each theater organization for the spelling of its name, but otherwise, I go with the American spelling.  I do not buy the distinction that theatre refers to the art form and theater to the venue.

[By the way, "Broadway baby" most commonly refers to someone, often a performer, who is deeply involved with or passionate about Broadway theater.  I guess that applies well enough.  Though, I go to a lot of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theater, and regional repertory productions as well.

[I did a couple of plays in high school, but only my first two years.  I transferred to schools in Switzerland for the rest of high school, and they didn’t have student theater—and I didn’t miss it.  (See “Going to a Swiss International School” [29 April, 2, 5, 8, 11, and 14 May 2021].)

[I did more stage work in college and joined the university’s Troubadours, the extra-curricular theater group, and then, when I was in the army and stationed in Berlin—and no longer a “kid”—I found myself drawn to theater and acting as an amateur.  (See “Berlin Memoir” [16 and 31 December 2016, 20 January 2017, 9 and 19 February 2017, 11 and 29 March 2017, and 13 April 2017].)

[Then I got out of the service and came to New York City—I’m a native Washingtonian—to go to acting school.  I got an MFA in acting, knocked around New York auditioning, doing a lot of Off-Off-Broadway shows, trying my hand at directing and doing a little teaching. 

[Then I saw that I wasn’t advancing in the profession.  I went back to school for a doctorate with an eye on teaching full time—just at the moment when I was offered a role by one of the theaters back in the city where I was born!  I’d already committed to attending school for that Ph.D., but I toyed with blowing it off for the stage gig . . . but I decided it was a chimera, and stuck with my original plan. 

[I discovered that what I was good at was writing about this subject.  I got some articles published, delivered a few papers at conferences—not really my favorite thing, it turned out—and contributed to a couple of books.  I even won a prize with one of my essays.  Then, in 2009, I started this blog.  This will be my 1,281st post—though not all of them have been on theater, or written by me.

[Now, to the matter at hand in this post, John DeVore’s memoir of his sojourn into the land of theater.  He says theatre, but I’m stickin’ to my guns (prop guns, of course).  In addition to “A Broadway Baby,” which is my memoir of encountering theater at a boy, I have posted a number of pieces here that touch on children and young people’s encounters with theater. 

[Some are about youngsters engaging in the theater world itself, and others are about theater in the schools.  What I’m not going to list here are the posts about “children’s theater” or “theater for young audiences,” which cover theater for young people by adults.  That’s an important gateway for kids to get into theater, but it’s different, I feel.

[Here’s the list, with links, to ROT’s coverage of theater and kids (note that several of these titles contain multiple articles):

    • “Missoula Children’s Theatre” (28 August 2009
• “Making Broadway Babies” (25 November 2013)
• “Kids on the Broadway Boards” (30 November 2013)
• “Nobody Wants to See a Tired Bat on Stage” by Oona Haaranen (9 January 2014)
• “Musical Theater Programs for Kids” (18 May 2018; rerun on 5 February 2023)
• “Jimmy Awards” (2 September 2024)

[For the other posts on children and theater and the arts in schools, I suggest using the search engine a the top left corner of the screen, or browse through the archives to the left of the text column.  You can also click on an appropriate label at the bottom of the post.]

“HOW TO TELL IF YOU’RE A THEATRE KID”
by John DeVore

[This excerpt of John DeVore’s memoir appeared on the American Theatre website.   The piece is categorized as “Book Excerpts” and is dated 6 September 2024.  It wasn’t published in the print edition of the magazine.]

In this excerpt from a new memoir about his years toiling Off-Off-Broadway, the author reflects on what it means to be young and bitten by the acting bug. 

Lights up on a small theatre in Brooklyn, New York. Enter John DeVore, late 40s. His hair and beard are streaked with gray. He stands in a spotlight centerstage and says: 

My name is John, and I’m a theatre kid. I’m a theatre kid the way a raccoon is a raccoon, or a pineapple is a pineapple. I like to think of it as my astrological sign, something about me that is fixed. It is who I am, and I had little choice in the matter.

During one of my very first school plays, a teacher suggested I had been bitten by the acting bug, contracting a virus with no known cure. But I knew better: I had been screaming for attention since I was born. If I could have been the opposite of a theatre kid, I would have. But I can’t be who I’m not. I’m pretty sure the opposite of a theatre kid is a Dallas Cowboys fan.

Being a theatre kid is like that Groucho joke about not wanting to join a club that would have you as a member. That’s my experience, at least. I’ve never been a joiner. If I could change that about me, I would. I want to be loved and left alone at the same time. That is my default setting. My therapist is always telling me to open my heart to other people, and my usual response to his gentle requests is, “I’m trying, Gary.”

[Groucho Marx (1890-1977) was a comedian, actor, writer, and singer who performed on the vaudeville stage and in films and on television, radio, and the stage. Groucho made 13 movies with his brothers (Chico [1887-1961], Harpo [1888-1964], Gummo [1892-1977], and Zeppo [1901-79]), who performed under the name the Marx Brothers. He later had a successful solo career, primarily on radio and television, most notably as the host of the game show You Bet Your Life (radio: 1947-60; NBC-TV: 1950-61).

[As for the joke about joining a club, it was long attributed to Groucho, and in both his son’s biography of his father, My Life with Groucho (Simon and Schuster, 1954) and Groucho’s own memoir, Groucho and Me (Bernard Geis Associates, 1959), both men quote the “Resignation Joke,” which they record as Groucho’s withdrawal from the Friars Club (sometime around 1950-52). In Groucho’s rendering, he sent a telegram stating: “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”]

I once denied being a theatre kid, a bit like how the apostle Peter repeatedly lied when asked by the mob if he knew Jesus. My denial happened years ago, in the late aughts. 2008? Right before the economy cratered. Those were dark times for me. I had gone on an impromptu weeknight bender with a former colleague—a lonely old journalist with a talent for sniffing out bullshit and a sickening thirst for crème de menthe—who suspected I had acted in high school or college. I just laughed him off. Me? A theatre kid? No.

And my ruse would have worked had we not stumbled, piss-drunk, into a nearly empty karaoke bar and had I not insisted on performing a sloppy, surprisingly poignant rendition of the popular torch song “On My Own” from the blockbuster 1987 Broadway mega-musical Les Misérables—which, if you’re not aware, is a weepy, blood-and-thunder pop opera written by Claude-Michel Schönberg [French; b. 1944] and Alain Boublil [French, born in Tunisia; b. 1941] and based on Victor Hugo’s [French; 1802-85] 19th-century novel [1862] about poor French vagrants suffering beautifully. “On My Own” is sung by the forlorn street waif Eponine, who pines after handsome revolutionary Marius, whose heart in turn belongs to Cosette, the adopted daughter of our hero, ex-convict Jean Valjean. Eponine is a lonely victim of unrequited love, and later she dies in Marius’s arms, fulfilling the deepest, darkest, most pathetic fantasy of anyone who has ever longed for someone they could never have.  

[The French version of Les Misérables premièred in Paris at the Palais des Sports on 24 September 1980. Its English-language adaptation, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer (1925-2020), produced by Cameron Mackintosh (b. 1946), has been running at the Barbican Centre London since 8 October 1985. The London show had its 15,000th performance on 28 September 2023.

[The musical had a pre-Broadway tryout at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House in Washington, D.C., on 27 December 1986 and ran there for eight weeks through 14 February 1987. The production then transferred to the Broadway Theatre on 12 March 1987. It moved to the Imperial Theatre on 17 October 1990, and after 6,680 performances in 16 years, it closed on 18 May 2003. It won eight 1987 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score. There were Broadway revivals in 2006 and 2014.]

My former colleague could see the truth in my tear-filled eyes as I sang with everything I had. I couldn’t help myself. I was feeling it. I sang like I was competing for a Tony Award. I did that thing Broadway divas do where they slowly push one jazz hand toward the heavens as the emotions swell. I was in church, and from the back pew, I could hear him laughing and pointing at me like I was a fool. He knew a theatre kid when he saw one.

Like I said: dark times.  

How can you tell if someone you know, or even love, is a theatre kid? Ask yourself this: Do they take a lot of selfies? Do. They. Enunciate. Every. Word? Do they frequently sigh heavily? Do they talk about themselves and their manifold feelings incessantly? These are just a few of the signs. Do they spell it t-h-e-a-t-r-e instead of t-h-e-a-t-e-r? That’s a good one. Only a true theatre kid spells it “theatre.” A “theater” is where you watch “theatre.” You see? No? This difference matters, and if you don’t think it does, you’re probably not a theatre kid, which may come as a relief to many of you.

Now, I need you to know that I know that t-h-e-a-t-r-e is just the British spelling of the word. But I much prefer the other explanation, don’t you? It’s more romantic. The theatre is an ancient art, a sacred, almost holy occupation. It’s a way to teach moral lessons and to celebrate the human condition; it is a story full of sound and fury that can levitate you or knock you sideways. The theatre is a spirit—and the theater is where you sit and cough politely, and then the curtain rises. There might not even be a curtain. A theater can be a space, any space. A storefront, an apartment living room, a parking lot.

This wisdom has been passed down from theatre kid to theatre kid from time immemorial. It was a veteran of my high school’s drama program who taught me the difference between theatre and theater. She was a full year older than me, but she knew things. I thought she was brilliant. I remember listening to her intently: Theatre was life. This lesson probably happened over cups of creamy, sugary coffee and plates of baklava at the local 24-hour diner, where all the theatre kids at my high school would go to celebrate after a successful production—a one-act or the spring musical.

We’d pour into the diner like an army of frogs, laughing and talking a mile a minute and singing show tunes, and the poor servers endured our overbearing youthful cheerfulness. My true theatre education happened either at that diner or backstage, during rehearsal breaks, and these impromptu lectures are the closest thing to an oral tradition in action I’ve ever encountered.  

These 16-year-old elders patiently explained the superstitions and rules of the theatre, and I did the same when it was my turn to pass on the lore. I remember the rules like commandments: Never whistle backstage or say the name of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy about that Scottish couple who make a series of poorly thought-out career decisions. Both of those things are bad luck. [See my four-part series “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions” (14, 17, 20, and 23 August 2020).]

Saying “good luck” is also bad luck. You’re supposed to say “break a leg.”  

There are all sorts of explanations as to what that phrase means. I was told, over a plate of french fries, that in ye olden times, the mechanism that raised and lowered the curtains was called a leg, and so to break a leg would mean that the audience cheered for so many encores, the curtain went up and down and up and down until it broke. Is that true? I have no idea. That’s just how I heard it.  

Here are a few more sacred rules: Give flowers after a performance, not before. Always open the stage door for one of your fellow castmates and invite them to enter first with a graceful bow. One of my favorites warns against putting your shoes on any table backstage. Don’t do that. Why? I don’t think you want to find out. 

There were also practical, straightforward rules about rehearsal and being part of a production. Always be on time. (“If you’re 10 minutes early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late.” That was the mantra. I was told to repeat it and to repeat it.) Don’t skip rehearsal. Memorize your lines. Stretch before every performance, and drink nothing but hot water with lemon juice and honey if you catch a cold. And never, ever become romantically involved with someone in the cast—a rule that was broken during every production at my high school, sometimes multiple times. Show romances were a huge no-no. This rule was meant to keep rehearsals drama-free. But rehearsals are intense and intimate, and it’s almost impossible to keep theatre kids from trying to make out with other theatre kids.

Show romances—also known as “showmances”—were looked down on, even by those who had them. The only exceptions were hookups between cast and crew, which worked in my favor. I will always be a sucker for a girl who can use power tools, because I cannot use power tools, and I fell for stage managers and set builders. A boy never hit on me, but I was ready for it, just in case, and had practiced a flattered, “I like you, but I don’t like-like you” speech in the mirror. I never got to perform that speech, which disappointed me. A few years later, in college, a beautiful man kissed me on the dance floor of a party. It was a deep and playful kiss, and before I could stammer, “I like you, but I don’t . . .,” he had disappeared into the crowd, and now that I think about it, that was disappointing too.

When I was a senior I gave the newbies at the diner a variation of the speech I was given in ninth grade. It went something like: “Look around at this table. These are the friends you’ll have for the rest of your life.” That wasn’t true, but in the moment it felt true, and that’s good enough. I also passed along to them what was passed to me, from senior to frosh, and that is to always, always attend the closing night cast party, and to stay until the very end.

*  *  *  *

The publisher’s description:

Friendship. Grief. Jazz hands.

In 2004, in a small, windowless theater in then-desolate Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an eccentric family of broke art-school survivors staged an experimental, four-hour adaptation of William Faulkner’s [1897-1962] novel As I Lay Dying [1930] inside an enormous wooden coffin that could barely fit the cast, much less an audience.

The production’s cast and crew—including its sweetly monomaniacal director—poured their hearts and paychecks into a messy spectacle doomed to fail by any conventional measure. It ran for only eight performances. The reviews were tepid. Fewer than one hundred people saw it. But to emotionally messy hack magazine editor John DeVore, cast at the last minute in a bit part, it was a safe space to hide out and attempt sobering up following a devastating loss.

An unforgettable ode to the ephemeral, chaotic magic of the theatre and the weirdos who bring it to life, Theatre Kids is DeVore’s buoyant, irreverent, and ultimately moving account of outsize ambition and dashed hopes in post-9/11, pre-iPhone New York City. Sharply observed and bursting with hilarious razzle-dazzle, it will resonate with anyone who has ever, perhaps against their better judgment, tried to bring something beautiful into the world without regard for riches or fame.

Editorial Reviews:

“A wry and boisterous account . . . .  Electric prose elevates this homage to an enduring art form.” ―Publishers Weekly

“For those of us lucky to call John DeVore a friend, the skill and warmth with which he’s written Theatre Kids comes as no surprise. If you should not be in the elect group, however, the next best thing would be to read this book. There’s something funny, moving, surprising, or trenchant on every page. Often there’s all of these at once. Theatre Kids is a lemon tart made by someone who loves you, sweet and light and sharp and substantial all at once.” ―Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (see on Rick On Theater “The Method – a Review” [12 March 2022] and “Bombast to Beckett” [13 January 2025], both by Kirk Woodward)

“John DeVore is a master storyteller, and Theatre Kids is a delightful and moving read. It's a valentine to the New York City theatre scene in the late ’90s and early aughts, told through the eyes of one of the many young people who have for generations come from hamlets, small towns, and sprawling suburbs hoping to make their mark in the glittering city. DeVore will keep you laughing, gasping, and sometimes cringing all the way to the last page.” ―Catherine Burns, former artistic director of The Moth, a storytelling theater group in New York City’s Financial District

“Like all beautiful memoirs, John DeVore’s Theatre Kids will tell you not just about the author, but about things and places and people dead and gone. DeVore brings them alive again. How glad you'll be to meet them, and him. This is a funny, sad, loving, and mournful look at what artistic strivers and dreamers put themselves and others through on the quest for greatness―or, perhaps, just plain old survival.” ―Sara Benincasa, author of Real Artists Have Day Jobs (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School)

“"Theatre Kids is a rickety roller coaster ride into the hearts of New York City’s downtown theatricals – that rare breed that can turn a moldering black box and a couple of folding chairs into a diorama of the divine."” ―Mike Errico, author of Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter

“This moving memoir recounts DeVore’s life-changing experience having a bit part in a tiny, four-hour production adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel “As I Lay Dying” as he struggled with addiction and grief. The cast and crew were scrappy but passionate as they tried to bring their vision to life in a windowless theater in Brooklyn in post-9/11 New York.” ―New York Post

[John DeVore (b. 1974) is an award-winning writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and one-eyed mutt, Morley.  His debut memoir, Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway, was published by Applause Books and came out in June 2024.]

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.]

*  *  *  *

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.]

*  *  *  *

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.]

*  *  *  *

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!”] 

*  *  *  *

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.]

*  *  *  *

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.]