Among the Intellectualoids/Stage Left

...He then theorizes that it is not the artwork that matters, but the identifying plaque, which is frequently absent from modern artworks, but always present on statues of Bolivar...

...The only exception to this whole theory is Henry Moore...

...It's the sort of wise-ass jive that makes a nomadic sociopath sound like a Greek chorus...

...That's a nice line, but it doesn't sound like something a Sioux Falls home builder would say...

...In short, not South Dakota Man of the Year material...

...By the time he's finished his fifteenth trenchant soliloquy, we're convinced that Joe is an Enemy of the People, a Despoiler of Nature, a Beater of Women, a Betrayer of His Children and Their Children and the Children of Their Children, and, I believe, A Recovering Alcoholic, though he may just be a Drunk...

...that his wife (played by Lisa Eichhorn, who does not talk like someone from South Dakota) is not a ladylike goodytwo-shoes but a rehabilitated tramp who's slept with everyone in town...

...Tesich is a facile writer, giving such great lines to the Bag Veteran and the incredibly sage Boy Next Door (Mary's dweebish boyfriend, played by Robert Sean Leonard, who does not talk like someone from South Dakota) that the unsophisticated theatergoer, or even the chief drama critic for the New York Times, might not notice right off the bat how incredibly ridiculous this play is...

...The Speed of Darkness was performed at the Belasco Theater, one of three Broadway playhouses that is experimenting with drastically reduced ticket prices in an effort to lure intelligent audiences to "serious drama...

...As played by Stephen Lang, whom we can forgive for not talking like someone from South Dakota, the character of Lou brought a refreshing aura of deranged zest to the proceedings, and I for one can't wait till Martin Sheen reprises the role in the not-yetscheduled movie version of the play...

...Early in the play, Joe, a Vietnam War Hero and Successful Home Builder, learns that he is a finalist for the South Dakota Man of the Year Award...

...Something inside me warned that before I staggered out of the theater that afternoon, I would have been exposed to prostitution, financial corruption, the illegal dumping of toxic waste, the rape of the environment, and that great-granddaddy of emotionally overpowering stage devices: the messy suicide...

...That structure is: Start off normally, crack a lot of jokes, then round toward the end of Act I, work toward the Dark, Dark Secret...

...Speaking as an occasional theatergoer who found Cats a dog, Les Miserables miserable, and who doesn't enjoy plays that involve roller skates, men who dress like women, or men who dress like women on roller skates, I find this undertaking altogether commendable...

...Alas, this happy household is soon thrust into a maelstrom of emotional discombobulation when Lou—one of Joe's old Vietnam buddies who is now an astonishingly articulate bag person —resurfaces and tears the facade off this stereotypical American family...

...Something inside me set off an alarm that before the afternoon was half-over I would revile these characters to the very core of my being...

...Lacing into Middle America the way only people who earn their living in either New York or Los Angeles can, Tesich has produced a real fire-and-brimstone number here, making the theatergoer wonder just what the hell is going on out there in South Dakota, and why the rest of us leading quiet lives of middle-class desperation in Any Town, USA, haven't heard about it up until now...

...Nevertheless, Tesich's play is merely an Old Testament rant that fuses clever but implausible dialogue with continuous pressure on all the modish sociocultural hot buttons...

...Most of us, I would say ninety-nine percent of us homeless—bums—or at least ninety-nine percent of the homeless bums I have encountered, are very conservative when it comes to urban art...

...It's not much, you know," says Lou, "but it's nice to have a little reading material before bedtime...

...and that poor, little Mary (played by Kathryn Erbe, who doesn't talk like someone from South Dakota) is not Joe's true offspring, and could have been sired by any one of dozens of men in the greater metropolitan area...

...Personal-ly, I was sorry to see him go, because bag people, even in their worst moments, are always more entertaining than people in the construction business...

...Shazam...

...It's the sort of stuff one expects from a non-Vietnam veteran who's been living like a screenplay writer...

...AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS STAGE LEFT by Joe Queenan A s the curtain rose on Steve Tesich's new play The Speed of Darkness, I found myself gazing at an ordinary living room in an ordinary American household headed by an ordinary Mom and Dad who were raising an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl named Mary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota...

...What I hadn't counted on were such bonus attractions as vindictive bag people, deranged Vietnam veterans, explosive alcoholic rages, and, yes, even a teenaged boy having his private parts tugged on by a supposed pillar of the community...

...Pigeons, I've noticed, also seem to prefer the traditional over the modern...

...By the time it's over, we have learned that Joe (played by Len Cariou, who does not talk like someone from South Dakota) is not the upstanding business leader he seems to be, but a man who once dumped toxic waste all over the site of a pristine area now to be developed into luxury housing...

...Both the birds and the bums seem to feel at home with Henry Moore...

...The same is true for all the other modern art pieces, I believe they're called, in all the other cities I've been living in...

...Which is roughly par for the course in the contemporary theater...

...That's the kind of honor that many upstanding people from more populous states never really get a crack at (if only I lived in Rhode Island instead of New York, I might have a 50-50 shot at it myself), and we instinctively feel empathy for a man who appears to be a stand-up guy...

...Tesich, best known for Breaking Away, perhaps the finest account of Indiana high school bicyclists in motion-picture history, gives the thoughtful their money's worth...

...Even at $14.00 (plus $1.50 handling charge) it is overpriced...

...Consider Joe's comment about journalists who want to know what it was like to fight in Vietnam: "That's the worst kind of greed: the greed to get from me for nothing what it cost me plenty to learn...

...S tructurally, The Speed of Darkness follows the exact same format as the last really stupid play I'd seen, a George C. Scott/John Cullum vehicle of a few years back that portrayed Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer as old men (that is, senior citizens), with the irTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1991 41 repressible Tom Sawyer in trouble with the authorities because of a child-abuse charge...

...The Speed of Darkness, recipient of an incredibly enthusiastic review from Joe Queenan is a frequent contributor to Barron's and other publications...

...Tesich's work features another staple of Truly Bad Plays: the on-stage suicide, this time with the bag person going down for the count...

...Then, in Act II, let all hell break loose...

...For example, there's the world's biggest Picasso in Chicago, but the last time I passed through there, there wasn't one bum sleeping under it—or near it, or even in the vicinity of it...

...This is funny stuff, but it's not the sort of stuff one would, or should, expect to come dancing off the lips of a Vietnam-vet-turned-bag-person who has been living in the streets for the past decade...

...Something inside me warned that beneath this veneer of normality lay buried a secret so horrid, so vile, so pernicious that I would come away shaken to the core of my being, loathing a society that masks unspeakable depravity beneath a thin gauze of bourgeois decorum...

...It should speedily be cast out into the darkness...

...And yet, the traditional statues in those great cities—General Grant, Giuseppe Verdi, Simon Bolivar—are quite crowded all over with assorted homeless bums...

...it sounds like something you'd hear from a screenplay writer...

...An even better example of Tesich's ventriloquism is the remarkable speech about the shortcomings of contemporary public sculpture that Lou, the itinerant bag person, delivers near the end of Act I: It's a curious thing about the homeless—bums...

...Cancel my summer excursion to Sioux Falls...

...the normally truculent Frank Rich of the New York Times (followed by two only slightly less rapturous paeans by Rich's colleagues), is an early favorite for this year's Tony for Most Politically Correct Play That Is Neither an Arthur Miller Revival nor Written by David Rabe...