The Man in the Bright Nightgown
KANFER, STEFAN
On Stage THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN By Stefan Kanfer John Barrymore was fond of saying that an actor's life is writ on water. Perhaps that was why he decided to write his on alcohol....
...And what of Lily Dale...
...I looked like George Sand...
...After all, at the age of 37 he still had a "roommate"—a fellow from Atlanta whom we never meet, but who we learn has borrowed some $35,000 from Lily Dale...
...One wife was Sapphic...
...Robert Falls' direction is a reflection of the play itself: never less than competent and never more than professional...
...For the most part, though, he insists on a frivolity that cannot quite disguise the terror of failing powers and the imminence of death—"The Man in the Bright Nightgown...
...Luce is an old hand at one-person recreations—The Belle of Amherst (Emily Oickinson), Lillian (Lillian Hellman), etc.—and he has not stinted here...
...This is one of those evenings for which the word bravura was coined...
...In the Houston of 1950, a prosperous marriage comes undone...
...Another dowager, wary of such shenanigans, demanded, "Will you kindly remember that I'm a lady...
...Even so, the two best performances are by black actresses in small domestic roles...
...Will's health, his bank account and his wife disintegrate before our eyes—although to tell the truth, Lily Dale Kidder (Shirley Knight) has had a head start...
...The candid answer, "Not anymore...
...It is here that William Luce's play finds him...
...As Clara, the maid and cook, Jacqueline Williams exhibits a forbearance and dignity that her employers cannot manage, and as Etta Doris Meneffree, a former servant, Beatrice Winde purloins the show when she comes to call, speaking about the departed with an affection and understanding that seem beyond the reach of his parents...
...he is trying to prod the performer inside the voluptuary...
...The ex-husband has a chilling thought—"If I don't make my alimony payments next month, will my wives repossess me...
...The discipline of the theater proved too great a burden, however, and when Hollywood beckoned in the early 1920s he clambered aboard the Twentieth Century Limited and never looked back...
...The same must be said for David C. Woolard's costume designs...
...But then, so could the other plot turns that Foote chooses to neglect or ignore entirely...
...it was invented by his close friend W. C. Fields...
...Plays about homosexuals have been à la mode for the last several years...
...The time: 1942, the last year of the actor's life...
...Thomas Lynch's set evokes the 1950s in a way that makes one glad to be living in the 1990s...
...those recollected ad libs are the heart and soul of Luce's diverting play, and of Christopher Plummer's memorable performance...
...It will be talked about long after Plummer takes the show on the road...
...Still, the material has been lying around for some 50 years, and no one else has used it with such panache...
...Never mind...
...the sardonic title of his last book, Oh, What a Paradise It Seems, said more in six words than The Young Man From Atlanta does in two hours...
...Occasionally Barrymore responds to the stimuli, and in a few twinkling couplets there appears a glint of the bright star who used to be...
...and the supporting men—particularly McGuire—lend the proceedings an authenticity of place and period...
...Horton Foote has entered his eighth decade...
...In the very first scene...
...He began well enough, lauded as the "The Great Profile" in such silent vehicles as Dr...
...Foote, a canny man around a stage, has found a new way to write about the gay life: Leave the iceberg underwater, and concentrate on the tip...
...Theoretically, this could have been an intriguing mystery...
...The circumstances of his death are difficult enough for the Kidders to deal with...
...Jekyll and Mr...
...Atparties, "She looked like George Sand...
...When pressed to do the "My kingdom for a horse" speech, for example, he suddenly recalls the time a scholar inquired, "Do you think Hamlet slept with Ophelia...
...The place: the stage at the Music Box Theater, where the 60-yearold is in the throes of rehearsal...
...Whether the son, the man from Atlanta and Carson were part of a gay cabal is hinted at—and then left for the audience to wonder about...
...Another mate was less challenging: "We were ecstatically happy for 20 years...
...Is she the long-suffering soul she appears to be...
...Late middle age found "Jack" beached in Celluloid City...
...Attempting to be deferential, Frank inquires, "What were you last in, Mr...
...Until then, Barrymore will be one of Broadway's main illuminations...
...As for the audience, "Will they remember me when I'm washed up...
...Today she is a religious fanatic, hysterically ransacking the Scriptures for solace...
...Barrymore's reply, "Only in the Chicago company...
...Barrymore: "Your secret is safe with me...
...Any of these problems might have made a compelling play...
...The subject of the deceased rises from time to time, but never in detail...
...Granted, this is 1950, when coming out of the closet meant social obloquy and a familial break...
...Hoping to resuscitate his faded reputation he went east for one last fling with Broadway...
...In the unrewarding part of Lily Dale, Knight is believable if not interesting...
...For in The Young Man from Atlanta, inspiration, like the piano that Lily Dale refuses to play, is nowhere to be seen...
...As for Will, is he a sensitive soul locked in a massive, suffering body...
...There is no other performer under the age of 60 who could so effectively mix comedy and melancholy, mockery and tribute...
...That fact has been advanced as one reason why The Young Man from Atlanta was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1995, when the tepid drama was given a regional theater production—a prelude to its current Broadway run at the Longacre Theater...
...But I have another theory...
...That bit of information, and just about every anecdote told onstage, comes from two biographies of Barrymore, Good Night...
...They have nothing to do with the plot, but everything to do with the time...
...Did he drown by accident...
...Not likely, considering that the nonswimmer waded into a placid lake until the waters closed over his head...
...In the 1930s, when sound arrived, he used his stentorian tones effectively in Grand Hotel and Bill of Divorcement...
...John Cheever anatomized the Good Life in suburban America more than 20 years ago...
...Between snorts from a hidden pint, Jack asks "I don't lookmiddle-aged, do I, Frank...
...In the past decade Plummer has quietly become a world-class actor, a man of polish and daring—like John Barrymore, but without the latter's grandiose gestures and over-the-top approach to classic roles...
...But by then he had become a full-time wastrel with many affairs, four wives and an extravagant drink habit that was impossible to break—not that he had any intention of climbing on the wagon...
...Lily Dale will hear none of this: To her this Southerner is nothing less than a secular saint who used the money to aid suffering relatives...
...In happier moments she was merely a churchgoer...
...Luce is careful not to give all the gag lines to his bibulous hero...
...Who is right, the youth who trusts no one—or the woman who needs to believe...
...But this is hardly a startling revelation...
...He quickly became a matinee idol in trivial romances and melodramas, then won national acclaim in two profoundly serious roles, Hamlet and Richard III...
...the circumstances of his life might be unbearable if they were brought out in the open...
...Alternating between an ill-pressed suit and the robes and hunchback of Shakespeare's wicked Richard, Jack is doomed from word one...
...The choice amounted to slow-motion suicide...
...On paper Barrymore is a rich collage of anecdota...
...Frank: "Of course they do, Mr...
...Torn specializes in windy, vulnerable types, and he gives Will a sad dignity that will not be found in the script...
...The previous year, the Kidders '37-year-old son walked into a lake and drowned...
...As it turns out, Carson not only knew the son, he also knows the Atlantan—and describes him as a thoroughgoing con man...
...Actually, Jack's alternative title for the Grim Reaper was not original...
...Sweet Prince and The Minutes of the Last Meeting, both by Jack's other close friend, Gene Fowler...
...Before the decade was out he lost his professional footing and skidded into self-parody, playing a series of bombastic and ultimately pathetic old soaks...
...Two other men complete the scene: Lily Dale's kindly stepfather Pete (William Biff McGuire) and his weaselfaced nephew Carson (Kevin Breznahan...
...Luce might have acknowledged them a little more formally (there is a slight mention in the dialogue and none in the Playbill...
...Once, we are told, she was a fine amateur pianist...
...Santo Loquasto's set and costumes are, as always, outstanding, Mastro's timing matches his master's—which is to say, it is superb— and Gene Saks' direction finds laughter and tears at every turn...
...Hyde, Beau Bruitimeli and Don Juan...
...Only when the money ran out did he join his brother Lionel and sister Ethel in what they called "the family business...
...Yet Carson seems unburdened by a similar guilt...
...We can see that the Kidder marriage, like their big house and its trappings, suffers from an excess of surface and deficiency of substance...
...Will Kidder (Rip Torn), a harddriving executive, is given a pink slip and replaced by a much younger man (Marcus Giamatti...
...Take the son's tragedy...
...Since the death of her only child she cannot bear to go near the keyboard...
...A boozer from adolescence, he first opted for the careers of barfly, womanizer and newspaper illustrator...
...This leads to a memory of the day he taught a society lady's parrot to caw obscenities...
...Indeed, so many have been produced that the subject now engenders snores rather than sympathy...
...Then there are the tales of Jack's catastrophic marital adventures...
...For if he can fluently recite the lines he said in private life, he can no longer remember the ones he has to speak onstage...
...Then we met...
...Coached by the offstage voice of a prompter, Frank (Michael Mastro), Jack nonetheless veers into a series of digressions...
...That it was: the trio's parents and grandparents were actors, and tradition had it that performers could be found on the family tree clear back to the Elizabethan minstrels...
...The youngest Barrymore was too handsome for the comic parts he was assigned...
...As articulated by Christopher Plummer, it becomes a reincarnation...
...The cast far outshines this inadequate material...
...Or is he really a loutish Texan who drove his kid to misery...
...Frank is not being cruel...
...But why should it have been deliberate...
...After a long pause to consider the question, Jack responds: "I believe it was Joan Crawford...
...none is explored...
...Or is she a pampered beauty gone to fat, weeping for the woman who was, rather than for the son who kept his distance...
Vol. 80 • March 1997 • No. 5
