On Stage
BERMEL, ALBERT
ON STAGE By Albert Bermel Fighting Back An authentically redecorated alehouse in Greenwich Village, within striking distance of the Cherry Lane Theater, which houses Frank Gagliano's Night of the...
...Whit: And you condone that...
...His eyes are rolling...
...Whit: And while you debate with yourself...
...Dimh: Young, yes...
...Do you go on with your polite chat about fiberglass...
...Whit: The quicksand of indifference...
...He's about to let you have it in the gizzard...
...Dimh: If guns weren't more potent in fiction than in life, there'd never have been a gangster movie, not to mention The Desperate Hours, The Petrified Forest, and a zillion other plays...
...Fry an egg with it...
...You're down on directors...
...And that's after the philosopher in tennis shoes has pointed out that the blade is rusty but sharp...
...You come home, you're about to take off your raincoat, you find this young geek pointing a pistol at your wife and daughters...
...You're the lady librarian in the play...
...Principle is principle...
...Whit: That's ridiculous...
...The dialogue runs on, as such dialogues will...
...You can't be against strength...
...Whit: Sheer mindless violence...
...The lives of your wife and children are at stake...
...Whit: Okay, so it was a grubby library, the corner of it that the designer showed us...
...Maybe he's like the character in the play: He comes in ostensibly to check a reference to fiberglass...
...Whit: Come on...
...Whit: You don't believe in marshalling the strength of the community to defend itself...
...Dimh: Yes...
...You're welcome to it...
...Your wife and daughters are trembling...
...she wants to give him tetanus...
...In a corner booth dimh and whit are contending for a toasted cheese sandwich...
...And the local people don't patronize it the way they used to...
...Whit: His finger is tightening on the trigger...
...Whit: The moral is: The public mustn't bury its collective head in the sand like an ostrich...
...Some of them, the young successes, already had everything for nothing, according to you...
...But I might be standing on one of our slippery rugs...
...I bunch up my tired muscles...
...Or suppose it's closed early that evening, the way libraries do when you need to find out something about fiberglass...
...An ostrich...
...For one production only...
...They were scared...
...Dimh: I don't go for any kind of marshalling, especially of strength...
...They wanted everything for nothing...
...They wanted Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, instead of that dingy hole run by a prissy woman who held exhibitions of door knobs...
...Tell me it wasn't...
...Or hit him with everything you've got...
...Whit: If you hid a weapon in the apartment, had it ready...
...Audiences got hardened...
...Dimh: I'm saying any decision I make here, now, is irrelevant...
...But they had to up the suspense somehow...
...And swallow it...
...Some don't...
...And I'm still wearing my raincoat...
...I can spare him a look at the index of my book on fiberglass...
...Dimh: I'm not too thrown by today's violence...
...Dimh: Could be they had nothing else to do...
...Whit: Forget about apartments...
...It's a topic of conversation...
...Whit: Now you object when an author brings on a gun...
...like the pediatrician in our building...
...Dimh: I don't like too much toasted cheese...
...Like all those witnesses out in Queens who let the girl get murdered without even leaning out to see what was happening...
...They were mean, demanding...
...One evening the super was checking the doors and our minuteman shot him through the elbow...
...Whit: You don't sneak out of your apartment that easily...
...Shouldn't we use the violence in us now and again—honorably...
...I can spare him the book...
...Dimh: I wouldn't have to...
...Two feet away, six inches away, two inches, a quarter of an inch...
...Whit: Let's take a personal instance...
...As the lady librarian says, "We're all beasts...
...He kept a carbine in the hall closet...
...I test him...
...You've stepped through your front door...
...Not an old geek or a middle-aged geek...
...I wasn't there...
...Dimh: God help you keep that pickle down...
...Dimh: Seems to me that everybody in that play is a homicidal maniac...
...The second he menaced me my daughters would murder him...
...That's why directors like Serjeant Musgrave's Dance...
...Now, suppose there's no library handy????the nearest one to our apartment is 15 blocks away...
...Whit: I fought back...
...Davy Crockett...
...With him...
...Dimh: The pickle has a washed-out look...
...And instructing the world to have courage makes about as much sense as trying to legislate happiness...
...You don't launch yourself from a slippery rug...
...The directors retaliated by pushing the guns nearer and nearer to the faces of the actors...
...Is he or is he not a homicidal maniac...
...Whit: What do you expect a director to do when he has a gun on stage...
...God help us keep it down...
...And missed...
...And the lady librarian has to send inflated reports to the commissioner to keep it operating...
...I'd like to have Harpo Marx still alive, for many reasons...
...I defended my rights...
...Dimh: Not with myself...
...One reason is, I'd cast him as a victim...
...What could be more orderly than a library with its card catalogues, numbered shelves and neatly overlapping magazines...
...Dimh: Certainly I'd think about it...
...What did violence get you...
...Who knows if there's more than there ever was...
...Even the police keep switching their categories around, depending on whether or not they release their reports to the public...
...What units do you choose to measure violence...
...It's the duty of the lady librarian to fight back...
...One thing's for sure...
...Now, that kid lives by aggression the way Terry Kiser plays him, with the droopy eyelids and the nervous laugh and the tip of his tongue flicking fangily back and forth across his upper teeth...
...I even went on to the offensive...
...Dimh: Some forces...
...Won't you dive at him...
...First thing, they ordered the prop man to procure bigger weaponry: cannons, howitzers, you name it...
...What did it ever do for me...
...Another actor would shove a rifle down his throat...
...Whit: You're queasy...
...Dimh: The decay of civilization...
...Whit: But to wreck a library, willfully . . . Worse than rape...
...I'm not going to be violent till I know what's the least he's prepared to take...
...Whit: You're down on causes...
...They've had a power of fun with the bit where a Gatling gun is aimed into the auditorium...
...Or for a street-corner cop...
...The way I see it, the kids in Gagliano's play wanted a new library...
...Dimh: I'd like to be a director...
...Clean, polished oak and fluorescent lighting...
...Then, just when the audience was expecting Harpo to splash all over its clothes, he'd bite off the end of the barrel...
...You don't realize what a gun stands for...
...The smaller half...
...Whit: Ostensibly...
...And smile...
...When a crazy heroine drew a bead on a villain, they'd whisper, "She won't hit him...
...She's confronted with this punk, this Dunce, as he labels himself, though he's pretty smart, really...
...Dimh: We have police locks...
...ON STAGE By Albert Bermel Fighting Back An authentically redecorated alehouse in Greenwich Village, within striking distance of the Cherry Lane Theater, which houses Frank Gagliano's Night of the Dunce...
...A bunch of punks comes down on a library...
...Whit: He has a police key...
...Dimh: Who knows...
...Dimh: They knew what was happening...
...There's this geek, rare, medium, well-done, however you want...
...She's not merely about to decapitate him...
...The day you reached the watershed, 35, you started to discover all kinds of things wrong with the younger generation...
...With Ibsen and Checkhov somebody had only to clean a revolver or show a revolver or mention a revolver and the audience started to quiver...
...Whit: It's what Robert Ardrey and the anthropologists have been telling us...
...I'd have to figure if he could really handle that pistol, if he looked scared, if I felt scared...
...The law-abiding citizen who'd blast the head off a punk isn't the guy I'd pick for a friend...
...Dimh: Some people behave bravely in a situation...
...Most directors work better with guns than with actors...
...The wise old guy, the neighborhood clownphilosopher in tennis shoes, he tiptoes out to get help from anybody around...
...If I skid or trip that's humiliating as well as dangerous...
...Whit: The forces of order, decency, learning, the accumulated wisdom of history...
...He turns his pistol 45 degrees to the right and includes you in the holdup...
...Whit: You're so sore about losing the pickle you won't admit how tense the scene was...
...We're innately brutal...
...What if a burglar busted into your apartment and threatened your library, all your high-priced paperbacks, your old copies of The New Leader going back to...
...Dimh: I writhe when I see what the director does with it...
...See????while you were attacking I also grabbed the pickle with my free left hand...
...Dimh: To start with, I know he's interested in fiberglass...
...Dimh: I don't anything it...
...Dimh: Why not...
...the punks smash him as he tries to tiptoe back, and just before he dies at the librarian's feet he tells her nobody gives a good goddam about the library...
...Now let me be personal...
...A raincoat is an impediment...
...Or a few books...
...Whit: You're finking out...
...In Night of the Dunce Joseph Hardy has his actors poke a rifle up somebody else's nose, or past his eyelashes so the rifling scrapes the guy's cornea, or de-waxes his inner ear like a Q-tip...
...You'd tackle him...
...The idea is that if the gun went off it would do such damage to the victim's head that the people in row T would find a cheek or nostril blown into their laps...
...You'd have to...
...People have talked hoodlums out of hurting them...
...Whit: Ha...
...As they tug, it splits dramatically into two unequal pieces...
...My brain'd be whirling...
...Now, what does that neglected library represent...
...We had no hot water for a week...
...Go ahead: dare to say it...
...Well, audiences got used to that too...
...The lady librarian, didn't you notice how she lays the edge of a sword on the back of Kiser's neck...
...They needed those guns...
...I could use more room on my shelves...
...Dimh: What sand...
...Gagliano is right...
...Some forces...
...After that there were a lot of plays in which a bullet was actually fired...
Vol. 50 • January 1967 • No. 2
