On Stage

...Alma rises in defense "I don't judge people by the tongues of gossips I happen to know that he has been grossly misjudged and misrepresented by old busy bodies who 're envious of his youth and brilliance and charm1" The Reverend Winemiller answers "If you're not out of your senses, I'm out of mine " She points out, "We're all a little peculiar, father" You said it, Alma But not peculiar enough The townspeople of Glorious Hill, Mississippi are, to aman and woman, empty cliches, niggling little whisperers, eunuchs, or reciters of Blake's verse His quatrains are supposed to float in the air like soap bubbles, instead they hang there like dust motes In keeping with the rest of this pseudolyncal drama, the end is preposterous After a chaste, unsatisfactory flirtation with Alma, the Doctor reforms, becomes partners with his father, Dr John Sr (James Pntchett), and proposes marriage to the young Nellie Ewell (Hayley Sparks) She represents everything that Alma is not energy, beauty, unselfconsciousness, and a bovine acquiescence to her lover Distraught, the spinster, unable to touch the man she loves, picks up a traveling salesman and begins the long roll down the ramp to perdition Such are the ways of the flesh when misunderstood by the innocent Even worse than the arbitrary plotting is Williams' use of entry-level symbolism (this at the age of 37, after Glass Menagei te and Stieetcai) John exhibits a huge anatomical chart, dividing the body into various parts, with particular attention paid to the genitalia Alma is having none of it "So that is your high conception of human desires What you have here is not the anatomy of a beast, but a man And I—I reject your opinion of where love is, and the kind of truth you believe the brain to be seeking1 There is something not shown on the chart" That something takes the form of a stone angel, which dominates the play from Act I, Scene I According to the author's instructions, the figure "should be elevated [it is, on strings, no less, like a marionette] so that it appears in the background of the interior scenes as a symbolic figure Eternity, brooding over the course of the play" The winged icon, naturally, has no genitalia Williams' detailed instructions invoke the name of the Spanish painter Giorgio de Chinco Under David Warren's far too literal direction, Derek McLane has produced floating mansions, also supported by strings In the same spint, Martin Pak-ledinaz' costumes attempt to recreate the bygone time of long skirts, waistcoats and canes None of the work is convincing, none of it persuades for a single moment that we are anywhere but at an ill-advised revival, featuring but one real character The reason why Alma seems the most credible of the personae—at least until the final scene—was stated by Williams himself in an offstage confessional She grew up, like him, "in the shadow of the rectory, and came only late to sexual experience " But if Alma is Tennessee, who is John17 Nobody As the playwright later acknowledged, the doctor "never seemed real to me, but always a cardboard figure " Since that is the author's own opinion, who am I to disagree9 Given Williams' shortcomings, Hamlm does well enough, leaning on animal magnetism where the words, and the playwright, fail him Would that the rest of the cast were half as effective, yet the failure is hardly their fault If John is cardboard they are paper and tracing paper at that...

...Professor Mashkan (Hal Robinson), seems a strange choice Grunting commands in an imperious, heavily-accented English, the aging Austrian is as much vocal coach as piano teacher Normally, when he deals with the keyboard it is to train accompanists, not soloists Older and wiser heads have decreed, however, that an unconventional affliction needs an unconventional treatment To further complicate matters Stephen is Jewish and very critical of the pnde of Austria and the bane of the United Nations ex-Nazi Kurt Waldheim The professor has no patience with the American, other people suffered too, he insists Not content with merely putting down visitors who come to Vienna and immediately begin making statements about moral responsibility, Mashkan goes out of his way to curse another client who tried to Jew me out of a payment" The insulted, overwound student argues without wi nmng a point and, as a parting shot, threatens to abandon what will clearly be a series of painful sessions But at this late date no one else will have him Like it or not, he is trapped here for the next several weeks So begin the furious exchanges between the American and the Austrian that are sometimes about Schumann heder, more often about history and lies The biggest he is revealed in the second act Against his professor's advice, Stephen visits Dachau and sees the worst humanity has to offer When he flings the facts in Mashkan's face, the anti-Semite counters with an unbearable response He rolls up his sleeve to reveal a blue serial number He, too, is a Jew, but a closet one, a man who has made a secret, separate, uneasy peace with his country He denigrates his coreligionists in front of every stranger, in the belief that he will disarm them before they can make their own vile statements (Freud and his avid disciple, Theodor Reik, had much to say on this matter The Jew at his most desperate, wrote Reik, "sharpens, so to speak, the dagger which he takes out of his enemy's hand, stabs himself, then returns it gallantly to the anti-Semite with the silent reproach, 'Now see whether you can do it half as well'") With each personality clearly defined, the evening becomes a match in every sense The youth gradually relaxes, softens his sharp edges and recovers his talent, the older man comes to grips with the past he has denied up to this moment So playwright Jon Marans has designed it—or perhaps overdesigned it In Theatrical Composition 101, students are taught that by the final curtain the main characters must have changed, each in his own way, resolving whatever con-flicts were presented in Act I Old Wicked Songs takes that instruction as if it were a mathematical principle Stephen, the neurotic, uptight artist mellows out step by step, m the presence of a real victim Meanwhile Mashkan rises in stages from tyrant to humane and understanding father-figure Yet if Marans' work suggests that it has been written by a student in a play-wntmg course, he must surely have been the brightest student in the class His dialogue is bright and affecting, and he has wisely eschewed all the obvious sentimental turns Mashkan's description of his years in the camps, for example, is told out of our hearing, and Stephen's sexual encounter with a young Israeli girl he met at Dachau is only fleetingly referred to, without the details that television and film writers never manage to resist, unless they're adapting Jane Austen Old Wicked Songs made its way to the Promenade Theater by way of the Jewish Repertory Theater, far off Broadway This group has been responsible for a number of highly original works—as well as several mainstream, relentlessly middle-class productions Marans'drama straddles both genres Its discussion of post-Holocaust Jewish identity offers a departure from the customary plays on that subject Its steady progress from misery to understanding, though, seems tailored for theater-party audiences who prefer to avoid challenges or ambiguities Still, there are a lot worse ways to begin a season Seth Bamsh's direction is cnsp and well-paced, and the two principals offer the eye and ear a satisfying contrast in styles and personalities Markas Henry's set has just the right amount of intellectual clutter, and Red Ramona's electronic ticks, making both actors seem to be wizards of the keyboard, is a model of sound design in every sense of the words FOLLOWING the heady critical and popular success of A Stieetcai Named Desuem 1947, it was assumed that its creator, Tennessee Williams, could do no wrong Then, the very next year, came Summer and Smoke Labeled as pretentious and heavy-handed, the play had a brief, unhappy run, and made the first big dent m the playwright's reputation Williams, aware of Summer's shortcomings, swiftly rewrote it under the title The Eccentricities of a Nightingale Aside from some technical improvements, this attempt was just as stultifying as the first one Neither version found a champion until director Jose Qumtero's now legendary Circle in the Square revival in the early 1950s With Geraldine Page as Alma Winemiller, the fluttery maiden of Mississippi, circa 1916, that production glowed so brightly that a commanding performance was mistaken for a great play The Roundabout Theater Company's presentation, at the Criterion Center Stage Right, suffers from the same confusion If Mary McDonnell has only a hint of Geraldine Page's neurasthenic style, she nevertheless brings a formidable intelligence to the role Her diction, her confused wavering between desire and shame, manage to make Alma curiously sympathetic But even she cannot save a drama that drags from its opening scenes with the protagonist and her suitor, John Buchanan Jr (Harry Hamlin), as children (Nathalie Paulding and Chad Aaron) The little ones have a few excruciatingly self-conscious exchanges, ending with the boy's suggestion "Well?let's—kiss each other" Alma rums away Finally, they do have a furtive smooch before the lad scampers off, leaving the girl bewildered An instant later the youngsters disappear and behold1 decades have passed Alma has achieved womanhood, burdened by a rigid father, the Reverend Winemiller (Ken Jenkins), an insane mother (Roberta Maxwell) and a thousand formless fears John has also grown, but m quite a di fferent direction No madness in him, only a fondness for booze, an indiscriminate libido and, although he has recently graduated from medical school, an unwillingness to cramp his style by hanging out a shingle Revisiting the town, John seems to have eyes for Alma—then again, he has eyes for anything in a skirt She is bedazzled by his glances and discerns a noble soul within the reprobate When her father, well aware of the young man's fondness for dice, whiskey and womenof easy virtue, expresses disapproval...

...On Stage BUNDLES OF NERVES BY STEFAN KANFER DURING THE PAST few seasons, the one-man show was very much in fashion This season, the two-man show is coming into its own In films there is American Buffalo, in the US Open there were the tennis singles, and off-Broadway has Old Wicked Songs, which features as many booming volleys as anything performed by Pete Sampras and Michael Chang The time is 1986 the place, a flat in Vienna Stephen Hoffman (Justin Kirk), a hyperkinetic pianist from the United States, has traveled overseas to work out the kinks in his technique and personality Althoughheismdeepdenial, the young player has quite obviously gone dry and desperately needs help His instructor...