THE CARPENTERS
 |
| Glenn Walken, Vincent Gardenia |
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previously unpublished series came to be and what its relationship is to my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.
 |
| John Korkes, Alice Drummond, Vincent Gardenia. |
Yugoslavian-born
Steven Tesich, one of the more active new playwrights of the 1970s, whose work
was usually produced by the American Place Theatre, made his professional debut
with The Carpenters. The reviews,
while not strongly favorable, were nevertheless encouraging.
A
symbolic, allegorical drama, The
Carpenters tells of a seemingly normal American family whose patriarch,
Father (Vincent Gardenia), is a carpenter. There are also the incessantly
cooking Mother (Alice Drummond), two brothers—one mentally disabled (John
Korkes), the other a college dropout (Glen Walken)—and a sister, Laura
Esterman, another dropout. They live in an odd, ramshackle house that appears
ready to fall apart.
A
struggle emerges between the younger and older generations, centered on the
plot of one of the brothers to blow up his father with a bomb planted in the
basement. Ultimately, the father kills this son, but then mourns his loss.
In
a fine production, led by Gardenia’s exemplary performance, The Carpenters elicited Harold Clurman’s
opinion that that it was “simplistically symbolic” but nonetheless interesting.
“The message is clear, the dialogue is direct, the effect for all the
unpredictable nature of the telling is not without force.” Edith Oliver agreed,
stating that for a first play “it is exceptionally well-written—controlled,
sometimes funny, [and] occasionally poignant.” The Carpenters may have been “too pat and . . . immature,” she
noted, but it showed “an original imagination.” And Clive Barnes welcomed it as
“a decent play of some interest—not dazzling, but calm and clean, and in most
respects, well-crafted.”
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
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
