On Stage

...On Stage POLITICAL CARTOONS BY STEFAN KANFER David Hare's villain never varies Different guises may be assumed, but sooner or later the mask comes off to reveal the evildoer Western capitalist society Even in his early works the British playwright was the bard of political correctness, wagging a finger at a nation obsessed with money and dominated by white males Law By, written back in 1971, blamed pornography on the profit motive Years later Hare took on the British Establishment segment by segment the haughty upper crust (Plenty), the kept press of Fleet Street (Pravda), the hypocritical Church of England (Racing Demon) In his latest, Sh light at the Royale Theater, he heaves his bombs at the Thatchentes—and by extension the Ma-jorites, and ultimately all those to the right of the Left It is these climbers, in Hare s judgment, who have displaced altruism and decency with wealth and pow-er This time the malefactor (that can also be read as male factor) is identified as Tom Sergeant (Michael Gambon) Change the last letter of Tom Sergeant's first name from an 'm" to a p" and you have a fair idea of his character Oversized blustery used to snapping oiders and having them can led out posthaste, Sergeant is a self-made type who rose through the ranks No polish here, no high-born attitudes The lestauranteur started small, knew what he wanted, faced forward, acquired more eateries, and swiftly became head of a small empire En route he picked up a few pointers on how to dress and talk, but essentially he is the same gruff, take-charge bloke he was in the old days Yet one thing has changed He is no longer in full control of his days or nights Tom Sergeant's business has gone public, now he has to report to a board of directors Moreover, his love life has vanished Mrs Sergeant, an ex-model, died several years back after a horrific battle with cancer And his former restaurant manager, Kyra Hollis (Lia Williams), who lived with the Sergeants for six years—secretly carrying on with the boss every one of those years—abandoned him even longer ago He has found no one to love since All he has left is his 19-year-oldson Edwaid (Chris-tian Camargo), and like the others Ed-ward has fled from the predator's grasp Sky light takes place in Kyra's flat, located in a down-at-heels section of Northwest London Edward abruptly drops in unannounced The gawky, bewildered youth is in the middle of a late adolescent search for truth and meaning He demands to know why Kyra abandoned the family so suddenly, when he was just a tad That infoimation is not disclosed until Edward leaves and Tom stomps in, demanding his own explanation As it turns out, Kyra had been quite content to continue the clandestine affair But it was not to be For she doted on secrecy and he wanted openness, even if it wounded all those around him One fateful day Tom failed to put away some love letters, they were "accidentally" discovered by his wife Kyra learned of the incident and early the next morning, without con-fiontmg either of the Sergeants, she vanished into the backwaters of London This is the first time the lovers have met since her departure They make a strange pair these days Tom is a festival of big gestures and explosive manners of speech He cannot stop talking about the days when he was building a fortune and the Conservatives were in full sway ("For once you could feel the current running your way You walked into a bank, you went in there, you had an idea In Money Thank you Out") Kyra rarely looks back She has become a teacher in a slum school, and her focus is on the students—volatile, vital pieces of the future Her voice is calm, her movements subtle Any attraction to the dynamo rises from nostalgia, not hope ("With the energy comes the restlessness And I can't live in that way") Ebb and flow is the name of this game Sometimes Tom scores a point, mocking Kyra's modest digs ("Put a bucket in the comer and you can take hostages and tell them this is Beirut"), then turning on the charm so winningly that she allows him—briefly—back into her bed More often it is she who triumphs, putting down Tom and his kind for their ill-dis-guised avarice ("Now we must call 'making money' something much nicer Now we must call it 'the creation of wealth "') In a parting shot, she compares their two careers What the teacher does for a living is not only more useful than fortune-building, it is obviously more lewarding to the spirit Although hardly a unique message...

...Hare seems afraid to present it undiluted In a coda he brings Edward back, bearing breakfast from a luxury hotel So Kyra can have her scones and eat them too, she can refuse the father as lover but have the son and heir as friend, complete with his material goods A happy ending for everyone—except for those in search of significance Skylight played in the West End, where many British critics praised the drama as a Shavian battle the wily businessman vs the dedicated altruist Despite his pretensions, however, Hare is not even a road-company Shaw As GBS observed, in a good play everyone is right, the contest between Tom and Kyra is one-sided almost all the way If it occasionally seems a battle of equals, that is in spite of the writing and because of the cast Gambon, who has quietly become one of Britain's most important actors, is remembered in the U S for his work in Denis Potter's extraordinary TV series, The Singing Detective In Skylight Gambon's beagle-faced plutocrat is more appealing than he should be, thanks to a lightness of movement and phrasing There is something of Zero Mostel m the delicate movements that belie his bulk, and something of the silent movie heavies in the way he fills a scene while leaving room for the star And star Williams is, projecting a thirtysomethmg woman who is at once vulnerable and as incorrodible as stainless steel She has won shelves of awards in Britain, this is her first big Broadway role It will not be her last All three actors have been directed with vigor and precision by Richard Eyre John Gunter's costumes are fitting in every sense of the word, and his set is accurate down to the last Penguin paperback on the makeshift bookshelves I hope one of the volumes is Major Barbara—in which Shaw was secure enough to give a munitions manufacturer some of the play's wittiest moments—and that one day Hare will take a close look at the text He may have the talent to write a great play, but not until he finds the com age to give the bad chap the best lines James Joyce had a hang-up about organized religion and its influence James Joyce was a genius Christopher Durang has a hang-up about organized religion and its influence Therefore Christopher Durang is a genius In philosophy classes this kind of syllogism is called the fallacy of the undistributed middle At the Cort Theater it is called Sex and Longing, an attempt to produce satire with a Joycean mix of literary allusion, nony, surreal events, and stream of consciousness dialogue The play has one major target the Religious Right and its attitudes toward sexuality—gay, straight and all stops between those terminals The plot is not quite complex enough to be called one-dimensional A young woman named Sadie Thompson (Sigour-ney Weaver) has changed her name to Lulu Dubois The monikers are intended to invoke memories of the hooker in Somerset Maugham's novella, Rain, the depraved creature in Frank Wedekind's play, Pandora's Box, and the lost soul of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desue Lulu shares her apartment with a well-mannered young man named Justin (Jay Goede), who is also a sex addict Lulu needs to make love every 15 minutes, Justin can wait as long as three hours The pair lecently collaborated on a coffee-table book...

...Like "and" and "because...

...Surely he means injunctions Given this inability to make distinctions, it is no wonder Durang has blundered with so many words and images, and squandered so much time and space...

...in hopes of attracting an available male Despite her beauty, and the fact that she offers herself gratis, just one customer can be found Senator Harry Mc-Crea (Guy Boyd) He is your standard po-litical cartoon, a pompous, overweight hypocrite who spends his nights patronizing whores and his days investigating America's moral backslide As we learn in subsequent scenes, the Senator is abetted in his cause by several other cartoon figures One is his wife (Dana Key) a fanatical Catholic moralist others include the brimstone Reverend Davidson (Peter Michael Goetz), Jack the Ripper and Jesus (Eric Thai in both roles) The props are as obvious as the per-sonae Hauled before a Senatorial committee, Justin squirms as McCrea consults with his colleague, an inflatable pornographic doll Later, when Mrs McCrea meets the Reverend in his study, she finds herself intimidated by a statue of the crucified Jesus, two stories high Mary, she explains nervously, is more her sort of person But neither scenery nor people aie as incredible or as awful as the writing itself Weaver, in fact, looks smashing in her voluminous blonde wig and scanty attire, and Ivey has the requisite mixture of wormwood and gall The men, in lesser roles, do what they can in a hopeless and essentially humor-free cause Their few memorable moments aie all borrowed, a scene, for instance, in which Justin seems to be pursued by a policeman—only to turn and embrace him as a new lover—is lifted from a Monty Python sketch Indeed, 20 years ago the Python quartet lampooned the sexual attitude of bluenoses and religious leaders with far more panache and wit As for Garland Wright s direction, John Arnone's set and Susan Hilferty's costumes, they are as gross as the text It could hardly be otherwise In the Playbill, Durang natters on about politics In times past he has gone after the Catholic Church with vengeful amusement (see Sistei Marv Ignatius Explains It All For You) For this effort he seeks a broader target "The Christian Right-wing" he says,' uses sexual compulsives as examples of what's wrong with American morality The ones in my play take it even further by trying to amend the Constitution in 25 different ways—basically to write Biblical conjunctions into the Constitution " Conjunctions...

...Sex and longing...

...Explicit Photogi aphs of the Last 300 People We Slept With That bestsellei is the only thing they have done together Justin is homosexual...

...Lulu is strictly hetero We find her between engagements, forced to run out in the street, crying "Sex and longing...