The Close Up Archive

The Ephrons seem to have set out to make the point that on some profound level, women’s clothes are themselves, and that women’s very lives are bound up with their clothes and vice versa. But the case is not well-documented. And little of it bears the stamp of the Ephron wit. But the performances are fine.

The flaws I’ve mentioned are real, but are far from detracting altogether from the enjoyment Bus Stop has to offer. Inge not only speaks up for crazy love, but for rustics who in their own ways are crazy like foxes in their pursuit of it.

The Challenge Is Still...

AS the play shows, even if the personal is political, personal trajectories and political ones can diverge. The sundering of Mattachine’s founders from the Society, and then from each other, is deftly rendered, along with the disagreements, persisting to this day, between those who embrace queer culture and wish to stay somewhat aloof from the straight world and assimilationists who view homosexuals as another marginalized minority that must strive for acceptance and integration. In short, this is a big play, with big themes.

The monastery must now meet the demand for an “incorruptible,” a corpse that never decomposes, the Rolls-Royce of relics. Marie seems ready to be pressed into service over what may be her dead body. And only a bona fide miracle will save the day.

I was intrigued as soon as I heard that Director Eve Muson was bringing the show to a professional company. My sense was that Muson felt she could build a better product on the same platform of stars, costume and set. She was right. The end product is a modern historical tragedy that obviously speaks directly to contemporary racial and gender issues but also past them to the human condition, as all great tragedy does.

The folklore passed on from parents to children under the deceptively superficial name of fairy tales is profound. Fairy tales are timeless because the kitchen drudge who yearns to become a princess, the little girl vanquishing a wolf encountered on the way to grandmother’s house, the simpleton who sells the family cow for a handful of magic beans, and their kindred, are archetypes of each of us, at various moments in the trajectories of our lives. As such, there is actually nothing superficial about them.

In a play in which morally acceptable and unacceptable stances are hopelessly intertwined and might turn an audience off, there are two things that will draw us to the play anyway: these two characters, Portia and Shylock. If they are right, the play will succeed, despite all its difficulties. They are right as can be in this staging.

The songbook of Jerry Leiber (1933-2011) and Mike Stoller (1933- ) is a natural for jukebox musical treatment, because it encompasses such variety that it requires little by way of setting to stay interesting. You don’t need a plot, you don’t need performers to talk or act, all you need is a band, some choreography and costumes, and some great singer/dancers, and you’re there.

A youthful cast, showcasing a number of talents from Morgan State University, brings out Waller’s exuberance and his ambivalence.

Rodgers and Hammerstein designed the ending to reduce you to tears, and they knew what they were doing. Resist, even at this excellent revival,and think about the conundrums of race, class and gender that that lie just beneath the surface.

As playwright Michael Weller intelligently conveys, except in the most empty marriages, no matter what the parties may have done to each other, there are still ties of love holding them together. In living through these crises, then, both forces, the centripetal and the centrifugal, must have a part. To the observer, it might seem laughably incoherent, but actually it is just the way things are at such moments.

These are small-timers, and what makes their souls as small as their business, I think, is America itself, a place where there is no state religion nor any religion or code of ethics at all which anyone is required to internalize. Here you are free to be a scheming psychopath while talking a blue streak; no one will stop you. And while Mamet is clearly pointing out how amusing people who do this can be, I do not see much evidence he thinks we can learn much from them; the encounter is all. Fortunately, it is enough.

The big reason for the audience’s enjoyment, however, is the performance of Nigel Reed as Barrymore, who absolutely inhabits the legendary old ham’s persona, grandiose and gross and catty and orotund. A strong physical resemblance to the man does not hurt either.