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| (rear) Brian Farrell, Diane Gardner, (front) Everett McGill, Elaine Sulka. |
"In Lieu of Reviews"
For background on how this previously
unpublished series—introducing all mainstream New York shows between 1970 and
1975—came to be and its relationship to my three The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage volumes (covering every New
York play, musical, revue, and revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the
prefaces to any of the earlier entries beginning with the letter “A.” See the
list at the end of the current entry.
BROTHERS [Drama/Family/Military/Vietnam/War]
A: Stephen White; D: David Williams; S/L: C. Murawski; c: Jeanne Button; P:
Whitecaps Productions; T: Theatre Four (OB); 2/13/72 (1)
Brothers, a self-described
“peace play” that had five previews but closed the night it opened, was damaged
by its excessive predictability. Both the My Lai and Kent State tragedies
figured in the background of this tale about Frank Lewis (Brendan Fay), a super-patriotic
World War II veteran, one of whose two sons, Sandy (Everett McGill), is a
soldier in Vietnam, the other, Ronnie (Brian Farrell), being a militant
pacifist.
Sandy
returns from combat physically intact but, as in David Rabe’s Sticks and Stones, is haunted by the
apparition of a Vietnamese woman (Tisa Chang). In this case, the ghost is that
of a nurse he raped and killed during a village massacre. He is forever racked
by guilty nightmares of the incident. The play’s major touch of irony is in
having the pacifist brother killed by the National Guard during a campus
antiwar demonstration.
Good
intentions did not salvage this “slogan-bearing little drama,” which was “wandering
and lost,” poorly written, sloppily melodramatic, and “murky,” according to
Clive Barnes. Douglas Watt judged it “inept.” “His dialogue is clumsy and he
has no ability to build a scene,” Watt said of the playwright, to which Richard
Watts noted, “It is downright terrible.”
Previous entries:
Abelard and
Heloise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brother Gorski