On Stage
KANFER, STEFAN
On Stage MASTERS OF THE MINIATURE By Stefan Kanfer A one-act play is the theatrical equivalent of the short short story, a genre in which, as Irving Howe pointed out, "Writers need to be...
...And then, almost before it begins, the fiction is brought to a stark conclusion—abrupt, bleeding, exhausting...
...An argument breaks out over who has the most significant alter ego, and in one of the evening's funniest interludes, Sparks almost gets knocked off his perch...
...It further develops that he was not above a little murder now and then...
...Nonetheless, this adulterous, homosexual pederast murderer is adored by both women—up to the moment they abruptly relinquish their identities, return to normality and wish each other good-bye until next time...
...But she was hardly his only extramarital interest...
...In the '90s it is also funny, touching and memorable...
...In the title playlet, three construction workers (Sparks, Burton and Weems) perch on a girder 50 stories above Manhattan...
...and the costumes of Anita Yavich, which go from golf clothes to gossamer wings in a twinkling of a spotlight...
...Chuck II (Arnie Burton) is more of a klutz as he attempts to win Annie (Nancy Opel...
...Victor also liked secretaries, executive assistants and good-looking boys...
...Should the artist live in an illusory world, or is he strong enough to learn the truth and transmute it...
...Not to be outdone, his coworkers vie for their own self-importance...
...The same art form concerns the Threshold Theater Company's production of Caught in the Act...
...One of the most poignant of those recollections concerns Heinrich's mother, with whom he carried on a long love affair after she was abandoned by her husband...
...Things go into reverse with the third couple: Chuck III (Andrew Weems) is the target of the nymphomaniacal Alma (Anne O'Sullivan...
...The younger and more demure one, Suzanne (Carolyn Dempsey), begins to reminisce about her late husband, Victor, a paragon in all ways...
...Moreover, his ultimate decision—that he is better off in the real, everyday world with a real everyday job and a real everyday apartment and real everyday wife—is merely a hipper version of TV sitcom fantasy...
...None are helpful...
...Costumes for the evening—every one of them a winner—were by Rob Bevenger or Anita D. Ellis...
...As Nancy Opel emerges in male drag with a large cigar, the rest of the cast frantically recall the happenings in Oleanna, Speed the Plough, American Buffalo and other works that once seemed so promising but are now revealed as balloons with an excess of surface surrounding a large quantity of hot air...
...Schnitzler, a physician by profession, made a secondary reputation as the anatomist of Viennese society in such plays as La Ronde and Anatol...
...The "things" were the manifestations of desire and sublimation, and the contrasts between the public self and the inner life...
...On Stage MASTERS OF THE MINIATURE By Stefan Kanfer A one-act play is the theatrical equivalent of the short short story, a genre in which, as Irving Howe pointed out, "Writers need to be especially bold...
...Fearful of fathering Castor, Pollux and Helen, the god decides to make scrambled eggs of his potential family...
...In this oneact play he is less concerned with mordant observations than with examining the artist's responsibility...
...Speed-The-Play" is the sort of sendup David Mamet has deserved for the last five years...
...High style is the hallmark of John Rando's direction this time, as it was with All in the Timing...
...Mere Mortals and Caught in the Act more than make up for the deficiency...
...In René de Obaldia's "The Late Lamented," translated from the French and superbly directed by Norman Rose, two women meet in a park...
...Various devices are used to head bedward—the seducers all suggest, for example, that the miniature golf course is a kind of tiny Stonehenge, evidence of dwarf tribes that once occupied this space...
...On alternate evenings, the company offers a festival of one-acters, all of European origin, ranging from turn-of-the century works to those of the present day...
...Not to worry, says an eavesdropping mortal (Brian Voelcker), "The Bible will follow...
...Chuck I (Willis Sparks) is in aggressive pursuit of Amy (Jessalyn Gilsig...
...Using a combination of Mametian tropes and tics, Ives riffles through some half-dozen plays in five minutes...
...Hausdorfer lives a quiet retired life, advising his gardener (Phil Miller) and organizing his memories...
...Here, as in all the other plays, the minimalist set was shrewdly designed by Eugene Brogyänyi, Jeanine Phaneuf and Russell Stevens...
...Whenever his text verges toward the existential, he rings in a TV lampoon of David Attenborough narrating one of the breathless PBS nature programs...
...That label also applies to a risible and versatile cast led by O'Sullivan...
...He will see the world through the eyes of a sensitive painter and transform everyday experiences into epiphanies...
...Weems confides that he is the long-lost heir to the Romanov throne, and Sparks asserts that he is none other than Marie Antoinette...
...In selections from "The Little Theater of the Green Goose," translated by Daniel Gerould, Polish avant-gardist Konstanty Ildefons Galczyiiski whimsically alters ancient history...
...rumors of his death were false...
...A nobody (Weems) decides that this day he will transform himself into Edgar Degas...
...The timing of both players is the sort displayed when Steffi Graf and Martina Hingis are on the court...
...Hausdorfer (Richard M. Davidson...
...It's the ordeal that goes through you...
...In the midst of their workaday conversation, Burton suddenly discloses a secret: He is the kidnapped Lindbergh baby grown up...
...the comic-book sets by Russell Metheny, who can conjure up a swamp or a skyscraper with equal ease...
...indeed, he snuffed out his grandmother one evening...
...Small is beautiful, goes the old '60s slogan...
...The lady in question grew ill...
...The voice of the writer brushes, so to say, against his flash of invention...
...A young poet, Heinrich (Robert Weldon), pays a call on an old family friend, Mr...
...This conclusion need not complete the action...
...Hanging by a hand, then two fingers, and finally one, he manages to work himself back into position, continuing the debate as objects fly by, most of them as absurd as the dialogue...
...Three couples employ a variety of suggestive words—stroke, hole in one, scoring, etc.—as golf becomes a metaphor for the larger game of seduction...
...If the meaning of the work is slippery, some of the lines are worth preserving: "How quickly the time passes...
...Those in search of richer entrees will find them on and off Broadway, but there has been a shortage of hors d'oeuvres recently...
...Has he the right to show it to the son...
...Despite the many temptations, Ives never gets portentous...
...The absurdity continues as the tempo picks up and the trio of duets speak simultaneously, their speeches meshing in a weird and hilarious counterpoint until the blackout...
...Flaws and all, he remains a master of the miniature...
...He seems to be a dash man, not a miler: None of his longer efforts have been hits, but a collage of his brief pieces, All in the Timing, was the sleeper of the 1993-94 season...
...Her responses are nightmarish: She speaks to a stuffed figure as if it were a phone ("this doll has been ringing off the hook all day"), and changes into a variety of personae, including God...
...In the brilliant "Time Flies," May (O'Sullivan) and Horace (Burton) are newly hatched mayflies with just 24 hours to live...
...She chomps the entire fruit—stem, core and all—before Adam (Etheridge) even has a chance to look at it, thereby obviating the need for Exodus or for the rest of the Good Book...
...As he caroms off a cross section of city life, including his businesswoman wife (Opel), a grocer, an OTB worker, a jockey, and a man costumed like Renoir, he seems less a charming eccentric than a self-indulgent nuisance...
...it has only to break it off decisively...
...During an exchange between the young man and his surrogate father, a bitter truth emerges...
...They stake everything on a stroke of inventiveness...
...The curtain raiser at the John Houseman Theater, provocatively titled "Foreplay," takes place on a miniature golf course...
...Ives has a merry time puncturing them all...
...Fritz or: The Forces of Light" tells of a tourist in Mexico (Burton) afflicted with a bacterial misery, feverishly attempting to communicate with a village crone (Opel...
...So is the production of Arthur Schnitzler's "Living Hours," translated from the German by Grace Isabel Colbron...
...In it she confesses that she is taking her own life to spare her son the agony of seeing her grow helpless and pain-wracked...
...that they work so well is a commentary on Threshold's gloss and professionalism...
...But in the next offering, "Greedy Eve," the title character (Hampton) is presented with an apple by the Serpent (Voelcker...
...Threatened by a huge and hungry offstage bullfrog, bewildered by their swamp surroundings, they nonetheless seek the comforts of love and home, just like their longer-lived human counterparts...
...Through his scrim of fever he pleads for medical aid...
...The missive, though, was a personal message for Hausdorfer's eyes only...
...Hausdorfer knows better, and he has a letter to prove it...
...Is the revelation an act of decency or cruelty...
...In the finale, "Degas, C'est Moi," Ives' saline solution suddenly turns to treacle...
...The ones I saw varied in length from half an hour to less then two minutes, and each was presented with first-rate performers and excellent production values...
...The following year, when various companies went on tour, it became America's most performed theatrical piece, with the exception of Shakespeare productions...
...Heinrich assumed that she simply took a turn for the worse...
...On the present Off-Broadway scene there is no bolder representative of the one-act playwright than David Ives...
...After reading one of the Viennese playwright's works, his contemporary, Sigmund Freud, commented, "I was astonished to see what such a writer knows about these things...
...You don't go through an ordeal...
...The Tragic End of Mythology" presents Jove (Michael Etheridge) and Leda (Kate Hampton) as a dysfunctional family...
...They exchange familiar greetings—and then turn into quite different people...
...doctors predicted that she had about three years to live, yet she died soon afterward...
...The star of the evening, however, is Ives...
...The last two short shorts are less satisfactory...
...each chats blithely away, discussing the contents of his sandwich, his availability for bowling, his life in general...
...They have no fear of the high iron...
...Schnitzler provides no definitive answer to these queries, but they are posed with fervor and acted with sophistication, under the firm control of director Mitchell Greenberg...
...It is impossible to maintain a straight face while watching this work, or the one that follows...
...Now he has followed that up with another collection of fragments entitled Mere Mortals...
...Sometimes they have to be prepared to speak out directly, not so much in order to state a theme as to provide a jarring or complicating commentary...
...These directorless sketches are as insubstantial as smoke...
...The elder, extravagantly dressed Louise (Jane House) makes a great show of sympathy...
...Yes, it's the minutes that go so slowly...
...Increasingly interested in style over substance, the wit-impaired playwright has become famous for macho posturing, staccato dialogue and scabrous language...
...As the chat goes on, however, it develops that Louise is not merely being polite: She was Victor's mistress...
Vol. 80 • September 1997 • No. 15
