DOCTOR SELAVY’S MAGIC THEATRE
 |
| Jessica Harper, George McGrath, Ron Faber. |
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE
is pleased to provide instead accounts of previous theatre
seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for theatre-hungry readers. If you'd
like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to
be and what its relationship is 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 entries
beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at the end of the current entry.
DOCTOR SELAVY’S MAGIC THEATRE [Musical/Fantasy/Hospital/Mental Illness] CN/D/DS:
Richard Foreman; M: Stanley Silverman; LY: Tom Hendry; P: Lyn Austin and Oliver
Smith in the Lenox Arts Center Production; T: Mercer-O’Casey Theatre (OB);
11/23/72-3/25/73 (144)
There was no plot to speak of in this
surrealistic farce conceived, directed, and designed by leading avant-gardist
Richard Foreman It came to New York after a showing at the Lenox Arts Center in
Massachusetts. Set within a sanitarium where a new patient arrives for
treatment, it presented the inmates and doctors of the madhouse in a series of
madcap Dadaist activities and musical numbers, the many arresting visual images
being reminiscent of such painters as Magritte, Chirico, and Devaux.
The acting was deadpan, with the
performers frequently moving in very slow motion, staring straight out at the
audience and engaging in a choreographic sequence of unusual variations and
gestures. The scenes and music parodied silent films, Broadway and Hollywood
musicals, 18th-century opera, and vaudeville.
Foreman’s directorial talent was
generally approved. Clive Barnes observed: “Mr. Foreman has done an astonishing
job of staging a mental case history with style, wit and taste.” And there were
several positive notices. Edith Oliver thought it “startling, original and
imaginative,” and Harold Clurman noted that it may not have made much sense,
but was “weirdly funny and . . . very ably done.” Walter Kerr, however, was
disappointed that it was not funnier, and John Simon dismissed it as old hat
and “comparatively inoffensive.” Much praise was accorded for the music of
Stanley Silverman and Tom Hendry’s inane lyrics. The former, in fact, was given
a Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Composer.
Cast members included Ron Faber, Amy
Taubin, Jessica Harper, and George McGrath.
Previous Entries:
Abelard and Helo/ise
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
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Changing Room
Charles Abbott and Son
Charley’s Aunt
Charlie Was Here and Now He’s Gone
Chemin de Fer
The Cherry Orchard
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Children
Children! Children!
Children in the Rain
Children of the Wind
The Children’s Mass
A Chorus Line
The Chronicle of Henry VI: Part 1, Part
II,
The Circle
Clarence Darrow
Cold Feet
Conditions of Agreement
Coney Island Cycle
The Constant Wife
The Contractor
The Contrast
The Constant Wife
The Country Girl
Crazy Now
The Creation of the
World and Other Business
Creeps
The Crucible
Crystal and Fox
Cyrano
Dames at Sea
The Dance of Death
Dance wi’Me/Dance with
Me
A Day in the Life of
Just about Everyone
Dear Nobody
Dear Oscar
The
Desert Song
Diamond
Studs
Different
Times
The Dirtiest
Show in Town
The
Divorce of Judy and Jane
Do It
Again!
Doctor Jazz
