“Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows”
Following the review of the Metropolitan Playhouse’s Off-Broadway
revival of Lindsay and Crouse’s State of the
Union is a slightly edited entry for the
play taken from my Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, 1940-1950. I've tried not to repeat most of its contents in the review.
The play originally opened at Washington, D.C.’s National Theatre, November 5, 1945, and opened on Broadway, November 14, 1945, at the Hudson Theatre, where it ran for 765 performances. The director was Bretaigne Windust.
The play originally opened at Washington, D.C.’s National Theatre, November 5, 1945, and opened on Broadway, November 14, 1945, at the Hudson Theatre, where it ran for 765 performances. The director was Bretaigne Windust.
 |
| Anna Marie Sell, Kyle Minshew. Photo: Elizabeth Shane. |
When I first heard that State of the Union, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse’s 1945 political comedy-drama about a millionaire being groomed for the presidency, all I could think was, “It’s about time!” There was a Ford’s Theatre revival in Washington, D.C., in 2006, but New York has had to wait till now to see if the play’s scrutiny of backroom politics still holds up, 73 years later, and whether an audience could still appreciate a play that drops contemporary references like flies sprayed with DDT.
The big surprise is that the play, even with the sting taken
out of its tail by its lack of topical tang, and given a necessarily low-budget,
less-than-sterling revival, remains interesting. This, however, is primarily because
of the play’s existence as a document allowing us to compare current practices
with those the playwrights pictured during the last year of World War II, which
had ended only a few months earlier.
 |
| Jamahl Garrison-Lowe, Kyle Minshew, Jennifer Reddish. Photo: David Patlut. |
The play is set two years later, in 1947, Truman is still
president, the Democrats have won four presidential races in a row, and the
Republicans are desperate for someone exciting to run in 1948. Imagine a modern
version being produced in 2019, with Trump the president and the Democrats struggling
to overthrow him in 2020. Wonder where that notion came from.
If any play ever needed constant Wikipedia alerts to ward
off a pall of datedness, it’s State of
the Union, which mentions journalist Drew Pearson,
and politicians like Wendell Willkie, Harold Stassen, Robert A. Taft, and Henry Wallace, among many
others, as well as legislation like Taft-Hartley
and the Hatch Act.
One can easily imagine a 1945 audience chirping every time one of these items was mentioned, the way today’s audiences bark at every Trumpian insinuation.
An updated telling would mention not only Trump, but journalists
like Wolf Blitzer and Rachel Maddow, as well as politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and
Chuck Schumer, not to mention Beto O’Rourke, while Dodd-Frank
and other controversial issues would also be referenced. But that, of course,
would mean a completely new play, one that didn’t have people listening in on extensions
to what folks on the phone in the next room were talking about.
Ultimately, State of
the Union’s generalized domestic policies, focused mainly on labor, unions, and farmers, and foreign ones, like the postwar rebuilding of Italy—for all their
historical attraction—aren’t as crucial to the plot as is its treatment of the POTUS-making
machinations.
These are in the hands of Republican kingmaker James Conover
(Michael Durkin), who tries to convince idealistic, determinedly honest Grant
Matthews (Kyle Minshew), a millionaire (who’d be a billionaire today) airplane manufacturer, to run. Although we get to hear classic Republican positions,
like that favoring privatization versus government competition, Matthews
sometimes sounds like a liberal donkey in conservative elephant’s clothes.
 |
| Michael Durkin, Jennifer Reddish. Photo: Gloria Nelson. |
Conover’s maneuvers require the cooperation of Matthews’s
estranged wife, Mary (Anna Marie Sell), who hates public appearances, as well
as of his mistress, powerful newspaper publisher Kay Thorndyke (Jennifer Reddish).
Mary must pretend all is well, while Kay must step into the shadows for the
nonce.
It’s a setup with lots of potential and considerable relevance,
especially when we consider the marital and extra-marital imbroglios of recent presidential
candidates, one of whom even has a movie about his misstep (The Front Runner)
in theatres at this very minute. And the notion of a candidate, like Matthews, a
businessman with no political experience who prefers to follow his own principles rather than those of his party, rings a deafening
bell.
 |
| Anna Marie Sell. Photo: June Siegler. |
Livingston deserves praise, however, for squeezing this
rather sizable show, with its several different settings, and cast of 12, onto
the Metropolitan’s teeny, three-quarter-round stage, where designer Vincent Gunn has
cleverly managed—with the help of the actors serving as choreographed
stagehands—to create a set that shifts from a wealthy man’s study, to a fancy hotel, and then to a
New York apartment.
Given the company’s need to economize, one must also applaud
Sidney Fortner’s period-based costuming, especially the women’s outfits. The
period feeling, though, is thinned by the lack, not only of smoking, but even
of a single ashtray as part of the décor. The attempt to introduce a traditional
seltzer bottle went awry the night I attended as the poor actor trying to spritz
a drink with it had to keep shaking the bottle just to get a narrow trickle of water. And one could certainly begin a conversation
about whether the production’s color-blind casting serves or distracts in the
context of a play written at a very specific moment in history when racial
issues hung heavily in the air.
In fact, if I may digress, the 1945-1946 season was a remarkable
one for politically-oriented theatre that spoke directly to current concerns. If
Burns Mantle’s 10 Best Plays of the Year can be taken as a basis, seven had
political themes, including two, Home of
the Brave and Deep Are the Roots,
that specifically addressed issues concerning African Americans and racism. Others
were The Magnificent Yankee, about a famous
Supreme Court justice; Jean Anouilh’s modern version of Antigone, with its updated take on the individual versus the state;
Born Yesterday, about graft in
Washington; and The Rugged Path, about
a liberal journalist and the politics of the recent war. It’s fair to say that State of the Union was the best of the interesting lot.
The acting ranges from sprightly to serviceable to mediocre to better luck next
time. It might help those familiar with famous old actors to know that Adolphe Menjou played Conover
in Frank Capra’s 1948
movie version, which is available on YouTube for a couple of bucks; Margalo Gillmore
played Kay on Broadway, while Angela Lansbury took
the role in the movie; and movie star Ruth Hussey handled Mary
on Broadway only for Katharine
Hepburn to play her on the screen.
Durkin, Reddish, and Sell may not be in the same
constellation as these stars, but they hold their own respectably enough to
keep the play afloat. In smaller roles, Jon Lonoff brings jollity to wealthy
donor Sam Parrish, and Linda Kuriloff has a nice bit as Lulubelle Alexander, the
boozy wife of a southern judge (Doug Hartwyk), but few others make much of an
impression.
The casting blip that sinks this ship is Minshew, who is so
out of his league as Grant (Ralph
Bellamy on stage; Spencer
Tracy on film: ‘nuff said), and so lacking in the presidential light the
others ascribe to him, that what might have been politely recommendable for a
wider audience is hard to endorse for any but political junkies and cognoscenti
in search of lost Broadway treasures.
***
STATE OF THE UNION from The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage,
1940-1950, by Samuel L. Leiter
Burns
Mantle selected this highly regarded wisecracking satire—originally called I’d Rather Be Left—as one of his ten
best plays of the year; even more prestigiously, it won the Pulitzer Prize for
drama. It was one of the most successful politically oriented works of its day,
satirizing, among other targets, voter practices and corrupt campaigning.
It was inspired by actress Helen Hayes asking Lindsay
and Crouse if they might not like to write a political play with a hero based
on Wendell Willkie, an idealistic politician who had run in the controversial
1940 presidential campaign. Hayes turned down other opportunities as she awaited
the promised script, but writers’ block kept the collaborators from putting pen
to paper. One night, Crouse was at a party where a Ouija board was being used.
He asked it when he and Lindsay would write the play. The planchette
immediately spelled “tonight.” Crouse immediately made a dash for Lindsay’s
house and began to write the piece.
When the play was completed, Hayes turned it down as being
too political for her. “I could smell the cigar smoke coming from the back room,”
she said (as quoted in Cornelia Otis Skinner’s Life with Lindsay and Crouse). Crouse, asked later if the leading character
was, in fact, based on Willkie, replied, “He’s not Willkie. But he’s certainly
Crindsay—and maybe Louse.”
To keep it as up-to-the-minute as possible, certain lines
were changed periodically and there was a new newspaper headline read each
night to reflect the actual headline of the day. The dialogue was peppered with
the names of current political figures to give the play a cachet of even
greater authenticity.
The story, designed to demonstrate that political leaders
are chosen not by the people but by other politicians, is about Grant Matthews
(Ralph Bellamy), a well-to-do, idealistic airplane manufacturer, married to the
cynically amusing Mary Matthews (movie actress Ruth Hussey, in her Broadway
debut), from whom he is estranged. His view of postwar America is of a nation
whose unity is becoming unraveled, and it his desire to reunite the nation as
it was during the war.
His mistress is a powerful newspaper publisher, Kay Thorndyke
(Margalo Gillmore*), who seeks to ride his coattails to the White House. She uses
her persuasive powers to get the Republican party interested in him as a potential
1948 presidential candidate, and Grant is himself bitten by the bug. The party
bigwigs insist that he make his speaking tour with his wife, while his liaison
with the publisher is discreetly hidden. Mary’s jibes are a healthy tonic for
keeping Grant’s overweening self-esteem in perspective.
But Grant’s manager, the hard-boiled ex-reporter Spike
McManus (Myron McCormick) comes to see the danger in the marital relationship
because Mary’s uncompromising sense of truth is not the stuff of practical
politics. Grant and Mary must host a dinner for various politicos, and Mary,
despite her vow to keep from drinking so as to avoid saying anything untoward,
finds herself sipping a potent concoction. Soon her inhibitions fly out the
nearest window. Rebuked by Grant, she responds, “Personally, I’d rather be tight
than president.”
Before long, each of the guests, including the tough party boss,
James Conover (Minor Watson), is devastated by her tart remarks. Pushed to the
limit, his integrity on the line, Grant realizes that to gain the nomination,
he will have to make too many compromises and too many deals; he thereby loses
his presidential bid. He and Mary are reconciled, and Grant promises to fight
for his ideals and the “state of the nation.”
One major reason many enjoyed the play was its ability to
provide solid entertainment while offering an appropriate lesson in morality
for both those in politics and those outside it. “Cynical as it may be to
demonstrate that a candidate for president can rarely preserve his personal integrity,
a capitalist is exhibited who prefers to remain true to his wife and without
any sticky sentiment,” averred Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt in Catholic World. “With wonderfully funny
lines and situations, the new comedy . . . also has enough sentiment to keep it
from being farce, enough idea to show that its heart is in the right place,”
noted Lewis Nichols in the New York Times.
“In spite of all its little tricks, its smartly tailored laughs, it is really a
human play,” wrote Louis Kronenberger in PM.
“Its characters, as far as they go, are lifelike.” Howard Barnes commented in
the Herald-Tribune that “It tosses
barbs at a great rate, but they are honeyed with good fun and persuasion.”
There were, however, some criticisms of its occasionally
sagging action, unfocused dramatic issues, and contrived happy ending. George
Jean Nathan noted in Theatre Book of the
Year that it was a rewrite of various similar plays of fifty years before
and thought its politics naïve.
The performances by the leads were first-rate. . . . In
general, the production was considered virtually flawless and an excellent example
of slick Broadway showmanship.
Bellamy, in When the Smoke
Hit the Fan, remembered how adept coauthor Crouse was at coming up with
important lines in an emergency. This was illustrated when it became evident
that a strong curtain line was needed for the backroom political discussion
that served the play as a prologue. When nothing had been provided to end the
scene and the company began to grow nervous, Crouse’s collaborator, Lindsay,
asked him please to ] climax of the political argument someone mention the difference
between the Democrats and the Republicans. Minor Watson improvised, “The only
difference between the two parties is: they’re in, were’ out!” This became the
scene’s all-important curtain line.
As mentioned, a daily headline was read in the play to keep
it fresh [obviously, this is not done in the revival]. Bellamy had the nightly
task of thinking of an appropriate one and would scan the papers and listen to
the radio as part of his daily research. The line would be delivered after Mr.
and Mrs. Matthews came downstairs to await a room service meal of hamburgers
and martinis before he delivered a major political address.
One night, when British prime minister Winston Churchill was
in the audience, Bellamy, wanting to come up with something especially
pertinent, concocted the headline, “After two strenuous weeks, Churchill
relaxes in New York seeing plays,” which precipitated a huge laugh. The
following day, as Churchill prepared to embark on the ship back to England, he
was asked his opinion of State of the
Union. After a brief pause, he declared, “I don’t know what kinbd of speech
a man could make on a hamburger and only one martini.
. . .
*An error in the original entry attributes the role to “Kay
Johnson.”
Metropolitan Playhouse
220 E. 4th St., NYC
Through March 10
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
