Different Kinds of Kin

...On Stage DIFFERENT KINDS OF KIN BY LEO SAUVAGE Three plays that opened on Broadway m the same week earlier this month—Brighton Beach Memoirs, K2 and 'night, Mother—have all been widely praised for their warmth, sincerity and emotional impact The last, moreover, has just won the Pulitzer Prize If I could share in the general enthusiasm, I would say this was good news indeed toward the end of a theatrical year principally marked by works that have been uninvolving, insignificant and incapable of arousing deep feeling But while I was strongly, albeit not unreservedly, impressed by Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother, the mountainous production of K2 left me far from overwhelmed and I found Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs tedious, mawkish and cliche-ridden Norman's first play, Getting Out, proved that she knows how to write for the stage, and that she has the artistry to build a drama behind and beyond her dialogue These qualities are evident again at the John Golden Theater in her new work called, a little cutely, 'night...

...Mother The title derives from the last two words Jessie Cates (Kathy Bates) speaks to Thelma Cates (Anne Pitomak) before she locks the bedroom door and shoots herself The purpose of the evening is to show Thelma, and us, why Jessie decides to commit suicide and how right her decision is Although this is not exactly what one would term "entertaining," it makes for a fine piece of theater Jessie Cates has perfectly good reasons to say night to her mother and to the world Her future, as she sees it, holds nothing to look forward to, her past is uniformly depressing The father she loved is dead Her husband has left her, and thinking about their life together or catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she can't blame him Her son is a young tough on his way to becoming a jailbird In addition, she has a history of epilepsy which, notwithstanding the increasing effectiveness of newly developed medications, continues to cripple her emotionally Nonetheless, the play's chief drawback is that it is too easy to imagine a happy ending for Jessie For one thing, in spite of the fact that she couldn't hold her last job, she apparently has no money problems (Norman's indifference to this nontrivial aspect of modern life is a bit odd) More to the point, one can envision a good-looking man walking in, taking her out for the evening, and prompting her to change her hairdo, diet, clothes, etc The playwright, however, wants no fortunate twist She steers Jessie down a carefully plotted path to a foregone conclusion The progression is in a sense mathematical, yet it is not without some artifice, too We can perhaps understand Jessie's blindly stubborn refusal to admit any possibility besides a bullet in the head But in the name of the logic that Norman pursues, we are entitled to wonder why the unhappy woman finds it necessary to torture her mother for two hours, instead of simply leaving a letter with her explanations and posthumous instructions about daily chores around the house On the other hand, if Jessie opted for a suicide note there would be no play—and that would be a pity For with the help of director Tom Moore and the two superb actresses, Marsha Norman's second effort gives us a beautifully written drama that is hardly bereft of witty and, yes, even entertaining moments Neil Simon's 20th play in as many years relates what he has decided to remember—and assumes everybody will be eager to hear—about his days as a Brooklyn boy whose family struggled through the Depression The young Neil is represented at the Alvin Theater by an alter ego named Eugene, played by Matthew Broderick with a professionalism that is a little too crafty Though Simon was 10 years old in 1937, he has made Eugene 15, presumably so that the audience will find it easier to accept the boy's main preoccupation—pestering his older brother Stanley for a detailed description of what their cousin Nora looked like when Stanley caught a glimpse of her slipping out of the shower Zeljko Ivan-ek portrays the harried sibling with a so-briety that is mostly absent among the rest of the cast As Nora, Jodi Thalen, perhaps in part because of Patricia Zipprodt's unimaginative costuming, doesn't look like a girl who would stir the dreams of anybody besides Eugene Still, Simon dwells on the adolescent's fantasies in language reminiscent of another successful Broadway play, Oh' Calcutta1 The two brothers' affectionate, understanding relationship is illustrated by a gift Stanley tenders Eugene upon returning home following a brief escape from the close-knit family The prize is a "French postcard" that shows, as Eugene ecstatically stammers, 'everything " Why Stanley was away clues us in to the dynamics between parents and children in this Brighton Beach household Having lost his weekly salary of $ 17 in a poker game, he is afraid to face his father, Jack, not because of the patriarch's sternness but out of deference to his heart condition Despite Peter Michael Goetz' abilities as an actor, Simon's writing and Gene Saks' direction leave him little room to mask Jack's obvious resemblance to Arthur Miller's Willy Loman Understanding that autobiography alone does not a play make, Simon has allowed himself some "rearranging" in compiling his Memoirs None of the added wrinkles, alas, create theatrical interest Typical of the low level of inventiveness is the playwright's recourse to a by now worn-out device from Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie Eugene periodically appears alone with pen and paper, composing the family chronicle that is then acted out Similarly, few of the gags that are supposed to lend flavor stray from the traditional repertory of a Jewish comedian In the role of Eugene's 100 per cent Jewish mother, Kate, Elizabeth Franz is overloaded with the stock witticisms, aphorisms and mannerisms of that enduring New York character Eugene's widowed aunt Blanche, played by Joyce Van Patten, is used to introduce a rather unappetizing ethnic subplot Blanche is being courted by, and may be in love with, an Irish neighbor who, of course, is a drunkard and winds up in the hospital after crashing his car Not wishing to be accused of bigotry, the author tries to make amends at the end by having the souse's mother write Blanche a beautiful letter of apology and regret But this cannot dispel the unpleasantness of an evening's worth of wisecracks about the Irish son's stereotypical "weakness" and his mother's uncleanliness The woman's windows, one of the Jewish children remarks, are so duty they look as if they were covered by black curtains To judge from the laughter exploding all around me, that was one of the particularly funny "jokes" in Brighton Beach Memoirs Waiting for the curtain to rise at K2, we learn from the Playbill that the title is the name of the world's second largest mountain, located in the Karakoram Range of the Himalayas We are further informed that although Mount Everest, situated to the southeast, is 750 feet higher, the peak of K2is harder to reach American teams have made five unsuccessful attempts over the past 40 years, leaving five men dead in the process These notes—accompanied by a map, explanatory diagram, as well as comments from the leaders of the 1953 and 1978 U S expeditions—are a useful background to what we see when the curtain goes up on Patrick Meyers' drama at the Brooks Atkinson Theater The stage is almost entirely occupied by an enormous facsimile of a chunk of K2 1,250 feet below the summit The ingenious set designer and engineer Ming Cho Lee has made his mountain out of artificial ice, capped by styrofoam sufficiently hard and elastic to allow one of two climbers stranded on a small ledge to hack into it with ice axes and boot spikes His companion cannot move because of a broken leg The equipment is real, and the technique displayed by the actors under the supervision of special assistant director William S Morris has so far met with no objections from mountaineering experts The numerous technical effects in Terry Schreiber's staging, including a big avalanche and several smaller ones, are well manipulated Allen Lee Hughes' lighting makes a delicate, poetic complement to Lee's spectacular assemblage The only problem is Meyers' script I always thought climbers of the Himalayas were professionals who spent long, hard months in training beforehand Not here Taylor (Jeffrey De Munn) is a district attorney—tough, cynical, contemptuous, reactionary He is drawn to climbing as a means of forgetting the criminals he deals with every day and the women he meets for fleeting affairs The immobilized Harold (Jay Patterson) is a physicist-kind, generous, loving, meditative He is married and adores his wife and only child If I understood correctly the laborious philosophical espousals Meyers puts in his mouth, Harold has chosen his solitary hobby as a source of respite from the politicking and social prejudices predominant on the more densely inhabited parts of the earth Being in the mountains may also make him feel nearer to God The two men are not good friends Indeed, there is enough antagonism between them to make the audience wonder what brought them together for such a venture Meyers appears to imply that the mountain itself is responsible—its power to justify and regenerate If you find this hard to believe, you won't swallow For the logic of the play's climax is at least as thin Taylor and Harold, unlike the five groups that preceded them, have attained the summit and are on their descent when they start to slide The ledge saves them, but a vital cord remains stuck to the ice somewhere above With only one cord, there is no way for both men to get down alive Meyers attempts to turn this dire situation into a hymn to brotherhood Taylor at first rejects the idea of leaving Harold to die alone Eventually, the physicist changes the DA's mind Unfortunately, it was not quite clear to me which of his arguments was the persuasive one De Munn and Patterson are both excellent Schreiber directs them well on the few square feet that are available for acting halfway up the wall Yet the text, by turns weak, pompous, vulgar (when Taylor speaks), and vapidly "lyrical," is ultimately impossible to put up with...