Dark Vision and Blindness

...On Stage DARK VISION AND BLINDNESS BY DEAN VALENTINE AMISTRUST-and in some cases, a hatred-of language has been one of the modern theater's characteristic features The stage's metaphysicians, people like Beckett and Ionesco, attack the spoken word because they feel it gives the semblance of coherence to an essentially incoherent reality, the homespun philosophers, like Peter Brook, are concerned with making drama a ritual, and in that task conversation comes second, if at all Although this attitude has produced great theater, its inherent dangers have lately moved to the fore Beckett has lapsed into silence, and for ritual we have had to make do with the derriere of the avant garde, Andrei Serban We must count it a happy omen, then, that our more talented young playwrights—David Mamet, Ronald Ribman, Albert Innaurato—are renouncing this trend and returning to basics, they seem to realize that once you give up language it is hard to say anything Accordingly, they try to duplicate people's speech—a focus that leaves their work indelibly stamped "Made in America " (Whereas II ailing lot Godot can be translated into any language without damage, even English audiences would find it difficult to fully appreciate American Buffalo ) To this company we can now add the name of Thomas Babe, whose engrossing A Prayer for My Daughter is currently at the Public Theater The world of the author's imagination is not a congemal place Two homosexuals—at least I think they are homosexuals, it is never clear—are picked up in New York on Independence Day for the brutal murder of an elderly woman In the grungy station house, where a faded American flag is displayed on one wall and the floor is strewn with bunting (the superb set is by Bill Mikulewicz), two policeman interrogate and manhandle them By the time the evening is over, both suspects and one of the cops have shot up with laudanum, the elder policeman's daughter has committed suicide, and the bearded suspect, the actual killer, has fingered his effeminate, spacev companion, and gotten away scot-free It that were all, 4 Praver would be, at best, an interesting study ot the criminal milieu, or perhaps a comment on how those who ostensibly keep the peace and those who disturb it differ only in the clothes they wear And indeed, such purposes are not strangers here But the play is much more than that It is distinguished, first, by the adroit use of authentic dialogue The talk rightly ranges from high to low, sometimes combining the two, as when one cop calls the criminals "a bunch of hyperventilated creeps " A Prayer's, second claim on our attention is its universality For it is really about the betrayal of one's friends and one's better self, a betrayal that may be necessary to survive the evils of existence To underline his meaning Babe employs metaphors, the most ubiquitous being "daughters " All four characters have them Kelly, the older officer, and Jack, his buddy, each have two, Jimmy the junkie has one, his Judas, Simon, refers to Jimmy as his daughter What the playwright is up to soon becomes clear Daughters represent the feminine virtues—affection, vulnerability, compassion, a sense of the poetic—that every man has inside him but longs to kill because it threatens his ability to go on amid the surrounding crud Thus Simon has killed one woman, and at the end symbolically destroys another by sacrificing "her" to the courts Kelly not only feels scant remorse when his daughter dies but is relieved to be nd of her In a lighter vein, Jack reads Norman Mailer's The Prisoner of Sex, from which he extracts this moral "Women always kill the men, given half a chance " Yet the very quality that lifts this work above countless other serious plays—the intensity of its vision—is also responsible for the occasional excesses Not content to have dramatized his point...

...Babe inserts a few tanc\ theological discussions on whether good can exist without evil In the mouths of his sleazy people, quod-libets are rather glaring and pointless They detract Irom the subsurface tensions crackling throughout the ret ot the play Moreover, the rhetoric acquires an over-abstract quality Freed of its grimy moorings, it floats away into airy babbling ("My bram, you know, is a plate glass window and you just hit it The fragments are like star-dust ") This attempt to stretch naturalism to its breaking point may gain the author the applause of the avant garde establishment, but it can hardly elicit the sympathy of an audience For us to accept what we see on stage, characters must stay true to character Still, these lapses are few One can recommend A Prayer for My Daughter whole-heartedly, especially in its present production Robert Alan Ackerman has directed with brio and insight He has wisely disregarded some of the stagnant Pinteresque elements and opted instead for constant action The players walk about, roll madly on the chairs, sprawl on the benches, bang heads against metal desks in rage and frustration, slam down telephones, and storm into the adjacent rooms The cast is equal to the demands made upon it Laurence Luckenbill (Simon) is a trifle calculated for my taste, one can feel his actor's gears churning Yet he does have one supernal moment when, after betraying his catamite, he leans back in his chair and smiles, as if his mother had just kissed him for being a good boy Alan Rosenberg's Jimmy is thoroughly appealing and seductive, in an androgynous sort of way, despite his awkward blending of Southern and Puerto Rican accents The great accomplishments of the evening, however, are Jeffrey De Munn's Jack and George Dzundza's Kelly De Munn is nearly perfect, from his tight polyester pants that barely reach his shoe tops, to his slick combed-back hair He is a supremely intelligent actor, giving his role that extra touch—the habitual shake of the leg, for instance—that makes his character come to life Dzundza is perfect His corpulent cop is a Caliban, a monster with undeniable dignity and sensitivity, who manages to cast an exiguous but steady light from the depths of this play's unremitting darkness JL.f i wanted to write a sure-fire Broadway comedy, I would pick adultery as the subject Extra-marital exercises have been big in recent years, judging by the success of / Love My Wife and Same Time Next Year My story would be mechanical And to guarantee audience appeal, I would tailor it for those quintessential shle-nuels, Jack Weston and Lou Jacobi, making sure, of course, that they pull down their pants at least once during the night to reveal polka-dot or checked boxer shorts Better still, I'd have one of them wear stud ded leather underwear, now that would leave 'em laughing all the way back to Larch-mont Unfortunately, I would be too late with my scenario, for Michael Jacobs has used it in Cheaters It may seem unfair to impugn the motives of the author, but my contention is supported by the fact that Jacobs is 22 years old and hence could not possibly have any knowledge of the emotions and events he describes Besides, I find it disconcerting that a fellow just recently escaped from adolescence should even attempt to write from the perspective of a stolidly bourgeois sextagenerian We expect our young playwrights to show signs of originality, excitement, inexperience, and an occasional inability to handle the technical problems they have created Of these, Jacobs exhibits only the last For the plot he must have assiduously studied and plundered the collected works of Neil Simon To wit, (or the opposite) Monica is married to Sam Howard is married to Grace Grace is having an affair with Sam Monica is having an affair with Howard Monica and Sam have a son, Allen, who is living with Michelle, daughter of Howard and Grace Michelle demands that Allen marry her He wants 24 hours to think it over, and he goes home to his parents in New Jersey While he is with them, Michelle gives him a call and invites him and his progenitors to dinner at her parents' place I need scarcely tell you what happens when the invitations are accepted and the cheaters finally meet Sam falls behind a couch upon sight of Grace, she, in turn, dives into the closet, Howard cries "Oh my God'" and hot foots it into the kitchen, and Monica—well, frankly I don't remember what she does Accusations on the order of "You never satisfied me sexually" and "You haven't touched me since we went on our honeymoon" thud through the air, and the play plops to an end with each adulterer discarding his/her old mate and taking up life with the new one That Jacobs has managed to have a second-hand version of hackneyed material produced on Broadway is bad enough That he has not done it well is unforgivable The denouement, for example, depends on the brittle plot device of a telephone call (Why, knowing he would give her an answer within a few hours, does Michelle invite Allen and his parents for dinner9) Equally objectionable is Jacobs' pathetic belief that happiness and social bonds are opposites For centuries, farces ended with the veering passions channeled back into marriage Today, they conclude with a cry of "Every man, woman and child for himself" The good times were all courtesy of the actors The cherubic Jack Weston (Sam) and the slinky Rosemary Murphy (Monica) ham it up to compensate for the script's drabness, and Roxanne Hart, who will be remembered for her performance in Equus two years back, was a most lovely Michelle By contrast, Jim Staskel was an ugly duckling Allen He talked like dis, and he clumsily gesticulated for no reason and to no effect Director Robert Dnvas has manfully tried to resuscitate this dead beast (the play, not Staskel), and designer Lawrence King has faithfully reproduced the tacky environment of suburban social climbers...