289. ACT
ONE
I
was in my second year of college in 1959 when Moss Hart (1904-1961) published
his best-selling autobiography, ACT ONE, and still remember the buzz about it among
my fellow theatre students. Moss Hart was then known to me mainly as the name
connected with an “and” to George S. Kaufman (who was familiar to me
because of his presence as a TV panelist), since the classic comedies the pair
wrote, including YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU and THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, were
(and continue to be) among the most frequently revived American plays of the
day. Of course, Hart went on to have an abundant career in theatre and film,
but his autobiography tells only of his life up to his first Broadway play,
1930’s ONCE IN A LIFETIME, cowritten with Kaufman when Hart was 26.
Andrea Martin, Matthew Shechter. Photo: Joan Marcus.
In
1963, only two years after the book was published, a mediocre film version
appeared starring, of all people, George Hamilton as Hart, the child of Jewish
immigrants from England, who grew up in poverty in the Bronx and Brooklyn
before getting work in a theatrical producer’s office in Manhattan and
eventually being linked up with the 15-years-older and already very successful
Kaufman (played by Jason Robards, Jr.). The film’s director, Dore Schary, who
was one of Hart’s early show business friends, is not a character in the film,
but (as played by Will Brill) he’s one of a trio of Hart’s buddies in the new
stage adaptation written and directed by James Lapine at the Vivian Beaumont
Theatre. The film and stage versions, while essentially telling the same story,
are considerably different from each other, and a number of characters who
appear in one (like Archie Leach—later, Cary Grant—in the movie) don’t appear
in the play, and vice versa.
Matthew Shechter, Mimi Lieber, Santano Fontana. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Mr.
Lapine’s ACT ONE is in two acts, but its own act one is far less interesting
than its second. Rather than concentrating on the most dramatically interesting
part of the story, Hart’s virgin collaboration with the acerbically witty,
germophobic—as shown here—Kaufman (Tony Shalhoub), the play chooses to cover
Hart’s life from boyhood to young manhood, showing him and his struggling
parents in their shabby flat, and making a big to-do about his close
relationship with his Aunt Clara (Andrea Martin), a colorful theatre lover who lived
with Hart’s family and introduced young Moss to the glories of the drama, even
if only at the Alhambra, a cheap uptown venue on 126th Street. Friction with
Hart’s father led him to kick her out, giving Ms. Martin a big dramatic moment,
but the scene—and many others depicting Hart’s rise from tenement living to
when he’s able to move his family to fancy digs across the river—lacks dramatic
thrust; while engrossing on the page, they’re mere time killers on the stage. The
play would have been much more effective if Mr. Lapine had chosen to
concentrate on the period when Hart was introduced to Kaufman and developed an
odd-couple relationship with him as they worked on preparing ONCE IN A LIFETIME
for what, after running into script problems, turned out to be a hit that made
Hart a new theatrical force with which to be reckoned.
Tony Shalhoub, Santino Fontana. Photo: Joan Marcus.
As
an episodic play covering many years and introducing numerous characters, ACT
ONE requires a set that can quickly shift from one locale to another, and a large
cast in which some must play multiple roles. The set problem is solved by Beowulf
Boritt’s design of an elaborate skeletal structure with multiple sections built
on a turntable that, like the recent MACHINAL, takes frequent advantage of its flexibility
to keep spinning from place to place as Ken Billington’s lighting highlights its
many facets as they come into view. The huge set, though, is as distracting as
MACHINAL’s, although one or two scenes, like that upstairs in Kaufman’s
beautiful home, where the playwrights work, are striking.
The
large company, with 22 actors playing at least twice as many characters, has
some performers playing roles for which they might not be ideal. Thus,
Alexander Woollcott, the famously rotund critic and raconteur, is played by the
slim Will LeBow, while the white producer Max Siegel is in the hands of black
actor Chuck Cooper, whose other roles include a Langston Hughes who never
looked so well fed. Many famous theatrical personalities of the day are among
the dramatis personae, of course, and those who know the period and the book
will enjoy the game of name recognition, even if the actors only rarely
resemble their roles. Andrea Martin, for instance, plays not only Aunt Clara
but eccentric agent Frieda Fishbein and Kaufman's wife, Beatrice Kaufman, while Deborah Offner
has five roles, including a turn as Edna Ferber, dressed in a pants suit to hint,
it would seem, that she was a lesbian, a claim that’s never been supported.
Mr.
Shalhoub makes a credible Kaufman, but he also must play a middle-aged Hart,
narrating the story (along with two other Harts, Mr. Fontana as the young
playwright and Matthew Shechter as Hart, the boy). Mr. Shalhoub’s Kaufman
brings to mind the multi-phobic character of Monk he played successfully on TV,
but Kaufman’s aversion to touching anyone, while good for a laugh once or
twice, is overdone and loses credibility. I wonder, by the way, why the show
chooses to produce Kaufman as Cough-man, when I always remember it being
Cowf-man. For verification, simply Google “Kaufman TV panelist” and you’ll see
a YouTube clip of him from an old TV show being introduced by host Clifton
Fadiman as Cowf-man.
Mr.
Santino’s Hart is artificial and charmless, with none of the qualities
one would associate with someone of Hart’s background. He’s an energetic
cipher, without any romantic entanglements, and could conceivably exchange roles
with the equally uninteresting Zach Braff in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, who also
plays an ambitious young playwright of the 1920s.
Mr.
Lapine’s production is overproduced and flat. The first act is played at
such a brisk pace, with such outsized performances, that it feels like a
musical comedy. I kept expecting characters to burst into song every five
minutes. The second act, because the story of ONCE IN A LIFETIME’s writing is
the focus, is more restrained, but by then it’s too late to regain
traction and the play never fully finds its footing. There’s so much narrative
about the art of playwriting that one wonders who, outside of theatre people,
would even be interested in listening to it. The irony, of course, is that so
many of the playwriting notes seem to have been ignored by the play before us.