On Stage
BERMEL, ALBERT
ON STAGE By Albert Bermel Lobby Talk When plays put you to sleep your only recourse is to review that supremely theatrical event, the grandfather of Happenings, the intermission. At The Poker...
...A lady in party dress was explaining to a friend, "The actors don't listen to each other...
...Her friend countered with, "I'm mad about that bike the guy wheeled off and on...
...Thomas Wolfe did it better (before they adapted him for Broadway), more gutsily, especially the momma bit...
...Stephen D offers the most controversial intermission in town...
...And Dylan was always 500 feet over my head, much as I adore him...
...Says here it's a Hercules...
...This draught keeps ruffling my mini-slip...
...Except that the phone kept ringing and disturbing us both...
...It seemed like a sensible example to follow...
...By the same writer...
...Another merciless inquisition of a family...
...A man who had been scanning The Portable James Joyce asked, "But did Joyce stand about all day with his hands in his pockets, drop his eyebrows when he was beefed, raise his head when a lofty thought hit him...
...Why don't they let it loose...
...The lead in Stephen D is Stephen Joyce...
...I'm hung up...
...the aptness of this name undoubtedly got Joyce the part...
...With ideas, I mean...
...His real name is John Keyes Byrne, much as Stephen D's real name is James Joyce or, as that recently uncovered manuscript will have it, Giacomo Joyce...
...As a sign that Stephen D is a diarrheic spilling of memories, it proceeds under dim lighting and to the accompaniment of music-box music...
...Hasn't he learned yet how to dramatize a lousy crocodile...
...The lady went on, "Ron Leibman comes in during the next act...
...Hugh Leonard did turn out to be the author of Stephen D, as well as of The Poker Session...
...The young man in the silk scarf said, "I was ready for any emergency...
...A young man wearing a silk scarf added, "When does the poker session start...
...He produced too, so I hold him personally and doubly responsible...
...There's a draught sneaking through the lobby doors...
...Ron Leibman did appear in Act II...
...Rich, rich sentiments...
...I think he may prove terrific...
...At the close of the evening the lady said to her friend as they filed out, "Can you imagine J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls turning on itself and biting its own rear end...
...It could be a high point...
...There is no lobby worth mentioning at the East 74th Street Theater...
...Who reads J. J. for the drama of it...
...You figure they'll replace him...
...The we're-all-equally-responsible thing...
...Two pairs, full house...
...They wouldn't dare...
...The friend replied, "I'm seeing Stephen D next week...
...She wept slightly...
...At The Poker Session I awoke refreshed at the end of Act I and paced the Martinique lobby...
...I walked in here loaded with chips, small change, everything I need...
...Never mind the sidewalk...
...At about 9:40 any night a passing Joycean can come out of the sidewalk traffic and go right into a scholarly argument about the master...
...I was looking for action...
...He threw money on the floor...
...The play has no director...
...Why doesn't somebody bring back the long skirt...
...The Anta lobby filled with theater people at the intermission...
...The atmosphere, then, is deliriously lulling...
...Her escort retorted, "I understand Burl hasn't shown for the last week of rehearsals at Dr...
...Do you know J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls...
...I'm talking about the look of a Joyce passage...
...If he wants to steal the show he's welcome to it...
...Not the commentator, the portrait of the artist qua man...
...The friend told her, "I'm freezing...
...I wouldn't pay for it," one such aficionado was saying, "not while the books are there, in print...
...One said, "Alfred really carries these items...
...This guy Paso has had X million plays put on in Madrid...
...I could have covered to the hilt...
...The flashback stuff has some historical weight, but what about the character who does the flashing back...
...Who wants to hear words wrenched out of their contextual locations, to hear them when you're supposed to apprehend them with your eyes...
...To me," said a girl with a Barnard presence, "it's upperbrow Dylan Thomas...
...He played a sprightly madman who is more sane than the rest of the uncertified cast...
...His name is Richard H. R. Smithies...
...He kept me conscious through most of the act and I spent the second intermission catching up on sleep...
...Cook's Garden...
...When the curtain rose on a preview of Song of the Grasshopper Alfred Drake was dozing on a couch next to a telephone...
...An agent who represents the author of a forthcoming play chimed in, "If they've referred once they've referred a million times to the crocodile in the bathtub...
Vol. 50 • October 1967 • No. 20
