On Stage

...The play consists of Jimmy waiting around for the girl he has remained faithful to deep down inside ever since high school, and meanwhile playing out in flashbacks the events that brought him to an impasse as a non-painting painter...

...While these actors make the simple farce come vibrantly alive, David Williams, playing Buck White, gives color and music to the ideological portion of the evening...

...Comparing these ensemble achievements with the poor work at Lincoln Center and other institutions has reinforced my belief that for a group to exist its members must share certain ideas that transcend their personal ambitions...

...Not only are Williams' little sermons contradictory, but the farcical nature of bad seems to cancel out some of his message, for it would be ridiculous to feel threatened by such a disorganized bunch...

...He also participates in the farce, and his explanation of Watts, fooling around with the whats and whys of Watts, mocks much recent tedious analysis...

...Once again, some fine actors have a field day with thin material...

...It is a confused, very funny display, full of the vulgar energies of life...

...he warns us, will return to mugging and housebreaking unless sufficiently placated...

...A coup against Jive's leadership has been organized by one of his henchmen, and the meager plot is devoted to this attempt to wrest bad from its founder...

...He is on the side of militancy, but since its terms are no more cogently defined than usual, about all I can say is that the trend is definitely against the status quo...

...Kirk Kirksey, as Hunter, "does his thing"—strutting about in his "dak sheeki" (as he pronounces it) and telling elaborate stories about the other brothers' failings...

...The work seems to aspire to the condition of musical comedy, for the actors break into song occasionally, and when this does not occur individual scenes have so little specific density that only a rousing buck and wing could make the material interesting...

...In the course of the infighting, we find that Jive has discovered a potential new black leader, Big Time Buck White, who eventually arrives to harangue the audience on such topics as black power, black revolution, and the benefits of mutual love...

...For the moment Hoffman appears to be every woman's ideal kid brother...

...Buck White's most passionate utterances are on the subject of the wrongs done black people...

...Thus there is a kaleidoscope of constantly shifting alliances, personal and ideological, as bad's members maneuver for position, and this provides much motion if little matter...

...they are more concerned about control of the organization and its finances...

...Van Kirksey as Weasel, the organizer of the coup, provides a finely drawn parabola of anger turning into fear when he is betrayed...

...A better title for the play might have been "Andy Hardy Meets Greenwich Village," since it seems designed to give the leading character, played by Dustin Hoffman, a chance to display a number of endearing characteristics that add up to Hoffman as the cutest kid in town...

...I recognized bits of Groucho Marx and Jimmy Durante in the more spirited moments, but even these impersonations were thrown away lightly...

...To take a particularly foul example, one of Jimmy's high school teachers, off to a hot date, rearranges her clothing in a provocative fashion, while at the same time exhorting Jimmy to try harder in his studies...

...The entertainment consists of a farce about an organization known as Beautiful Allelulia Days (bad), organized by a resourceful young black man named Jive to milk foundations, bureaucracies and the general public of funds...

...Jive and his followers have a program, but this is largely a put-on...

...Buck White arose out of a workshop in Watts, and the players, many of them experienced pros, devoted an inordinate amount of time to what cannot be a very rewarding affair economically...

...There is a running gag, repeated ad nauseum, about the hero's having to go to the bathroom whenever he sees the heroine...

...The Living Theater has seemingly degenerated into a collection of cultists, and the Studio members have lost all sense of community, becoming merely high-priced actors with only their own talents to nourish them...

...Although the locale is New York City, Schisgal is really trying to affirm Thornton Wilder's kindly, warm-hearted America, and if he doesn't succeed it isn't for any lack of mawkishness...

...But the principal triumph was engineered by David Moody as Honey Man, always trying to get on the good side of everybody, occasionally proving obstinate yet ready to vacillate or retreat in panic if he encounters opposition...

...There is no substitute for this high commitment which must be organic, felt down to the bone, not instilled by high-sounding platitudes...

...The parts are narrow in scope, little more than stereotypes, yet the actors have so perfected them that their variations on psychologically primitive patterns hold our attention...

...To obtain relief from these guilt feelings Jive suggests generous donations to himself and his associates, who...

...He mainly relied on this charm and did not appear to exert himself unduly...

...In the Actor's Studio End as a Man the commitment was to a certain method of acting sufficiently important to a group of young, then unknown actors to keep them rehearsing Calder Willingham's melodrama for over a year...

...For the most part, Hoffman just coasts, depending on his ability to maintain a comfortable, relaxed, even slightly debonair appearance on stage...

...With the aid of a nervous laugh, a sheepish grin, and an alertness to the slightest shift in another's attitude, Moody would be my choice to play any ingratiating subordinate—black, white or green...

...Fortunately, we find on the stage no less than six fine actors who do their stuff with an ease, adroitness and enthusiasm that keeps us continually diverted...

...ONSTAGE By Henry A. Zeiger The Vital Ingredient Big Time Buck White, at the Village South Theater, is neither a compelling comment on race relations nor a beautifully wrought work of dramatic art, but it succeeds as an evening of raw contact with vital spirits that inspires raucous laughter...

...The Connection, performed by a melange of amateurs, actors down on their luck, and jazz musicians, was inspired by the Becks' personal vision of theater...

...It was my impression that the audience was not certain of the rules of this part of the game, and although a few queries that were not prearranged emerged, the players were prepared for a total drought of actual curiosity with a number of plants in the audience...

...It is hard to believe that anyone who advocates black revolution and the power of love in consecutive speeches has a very carefully worked out program...

...All of this is simply thrown at you, with so little preparation that it forces the supporting actors into rather embarrassing antics as they attempt to arouse stock responses to the hoary devices...

...The few recent productions that I remember achieving a real ensemble were brought to us by vitally committed actors, so concerned with making a statement that they spent the time necessary to thoroughly prepare a performance and then were able to sustain it without going dry...

...Don't be afraid to feel ashamed," Jive remarks to the audience, which is supposed to be attending one of bad's public meetings...

...All this material, including the question and answer period, is rather piffling, and in the hands of less skilled performers would be both silly and dreary...

...It also must be admitted that playwright Joseph Dolan Tuotti keeps the shaky story moving by having his characters manipulate each other...

...Ladies of all ages were telling their husbands how adorable Hoffman is, and the laughter evoked by Schisgal's little whimsicalities was distinctly feminine in pitch...

...The poor actress is launched into this business so precipitately by Schisgal, that her playing is grotesquely exaggerated and obnoxiously unfunny...

...As Rubber Band, Arnold Williams is called on to do little but fume and fuss, a task he accomplishes by varying the energy he puts into his perpetual state of comic black rage...

...Laying back may be the wisest thing to do with this material, but it is hard to understand the critical raptures Hoffman's performance has drawn...

...Difficult moments with more knowing girls were part of Andy Hardy's stock in trade, and here we have a number of incidents demonstrating the hero's comically ineffectual manner with the opposite sex...

...Still, these disparate elements somehow saved the play for me, giving it a kind of fuzzy richness that a well-developed piece might lack...

...The total picture is of a black community angry, but sometimes merely fashionably militant, and totally uncertain about the solutions to their problems...

...Certainly this is a difficult condition for any artistic group in our society to attain, and the subsequent history of both the Becks and the Actor's Studio proved that they were unable to sustain it...

...He then announces that he is willing to take questions from the audience...

...Their appeal, though, is more rhythmic than rational, and in rendering them Williams constructs elaborate edifices of tonality, pitch and volume that are fascinating to listen to as pure music...

...The standard middle-class fantasy of the artist's life envies him for carousing all night and not having to get up in the morning...

...Ron Rich as Jive does well as a small-time big-shot, cussing out his unruly subordinates, and alternately placating and subtly threatening the audience...

...Another shining example of Schisgal's wit, a black-out line to a sketch involving Jimmy and an eager female, has Hoffman quipping: "I just bombed out with a nympho...

...This daydream serves as the basis for Murray Schisgal's Jimmy Shine, now at the Brooks Atkinson Theater...

...Dustin Hoffman, short and cuddly, is more of a latter-day Mickey Rooney than the potential Edmund Kean some have declared him to be...