60. DANCING
ON NAILS
America,
of course, is once more having “a national conversation on race,” a
conversation that never seems to end. I had my own private conversation about
the subject last night as I rode home on the A train from DANCING ON NAILS, a
play by Paul Manuel Kane, at Theatre 80 St. Marks, in the East Village. An
African-American woman, in what I imagine to be her mid-60s, was having a
spirited but polite conversation with a young white man in his early 20s in the
seat before me. This combination alone, even in today’s generally liberated
climate, raised my curiosity, but when the young man soon got off the train and
I took his seat, I quickly realized that he did not know the woman, since she immediately
engaged me in conversation as well. The only people with whom I’ve had such an
experience on the train have tended to be drunk or otherwise unstable, but this
lady was simply a pleasantly garrulous individual who liked to talk. Before
long, the conversation somehow turned to race, including my saying how unlikely
it was that she and I would have been chatting on the subway like this when we
were young. I was prompted to say this because DANCING ON NAILS concerns the
relationship between a white man and a black woman in 1953 New York. I then
recounted the basic plot to the woman.
Sam Heisler (Peter Van Wagner) is a
50-year-old Jewish bachelor who lives in the Bronx but owns a successful hardware
store in Greenwich Village. His bookkeeper, who manages the store, is his 38-year-old
sister, Rose Levitt (Lori Wilner), who lives rent-free in a basement apartment
provided for her by Sam. Her somewhat loutish husband, Joe (Michael Lewis), is
a cab driver and would be clarinetist whose behavior has cost him his job,
forcing him to earn what he can cleaning cabs and serving as a gofer at the
taxi garage. Rose, unable to bear children, wants to adopt a child. She gets
the reluctant Joe to agree but they need $15,000 to qualify for the adoption
process, and their finances are too severely limited to earn it on their own. Joe
insists that Rose, despite her objections, must ask her brother for the money.
But Sam is in no state of mind to pay attention to his sister’s needs. He has
hired a young “colored” woman, Natalie (Jazmyn Richardson), to work as his
stock clerk and, as he gradually learns more about her, finds himself falling
in love with her. Natalie, who needs the job but who desperately wants to study
at Juilliard to become an opera singer, is unaware of Sam’s true feelings, but
Rose knows them and decides to take action.
The idea of a working-class, middle-aged, Jewish man
in 1953 New York falling in love with his black employee and planning to
propose to her has strong dramatic potential, although maybe not as strong as
playwright Kane may believe. I was 13 in 1953 and remember well how family and
friends spoke about blacks, who, even in otherwise liberal homes, were likely
to be treated as second-class citizens and referred to as “shvartzes.” The subject matter of DANCING
ON NAILS is enough to keep you attentive during its hour and 45 minute,
intermissionless, length, but the play is simply too superficial (an example
being Natalie’s fondness for MADAME BUTTERFLY, which hits us over the head with the
obviousness of its mixed-race romance), its characters too stereotypical, and
its few attempts at humor forced. An example of the latter is when the presumably unsophisticated Natalie
visits an Italian restaurant for the first time and pronounces minestrone as “myne-strown.”
The actors still seemed to be feeling their way
through the material on opening night, and the ensemble had yet to fully find
its footing. Technical problems were evident in the way scenes were joined; a
scene would end with an anticlimactic and poorly timed fadeout and there would
be an unnecessary delay before the start of the following scene. Full
disclosure: the director, Allen Lewis Rickman, is a former student of mine, best
known as an outstanding actor in Yiddish-related material. I suspect his experience in the
highly colored emotional theatrics of Yiddish theatre may be responsible for
some of the acting choices on display, especially in the work of Peter Van
Wagner, who shouts and shrugs in a way that overemphasizes Sam’s ethnic
background and makes him too obnoxious for the pathos in the role to be
conveyed. The best work is provided by Lori Wilner as
Rose, despite the difficulty of accepting her as 38. (Equally difficult to buy
is Mr. Wagner as a 50-year-old.) She brings a quiet cynicism and restrained
desperation to her performance that suggests a level of reality the other
actors fail to match.
DANCING ON NAILS is an earnest attempt to come to
grips with a time and place in American racial relations that is still within
the living memory of many people. In today’s world, where interracial
marriages, at least in certain parts of the country, are taken for granted, it
may be hard for some to appreciate how far we’ve come. The lady on the train was certainly appreciative of our progress. This play serves as a
useful reminder, even if watching it now and then feels a tad like what its title says. Perhaps thumbtacks would be better.
