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| Thomas A. Stewart, David Margulies. |
AN
EVENING WITH THE POET-SENATOR [Drama/England/Jews/Military/Politics/
Romance/War] A: Leslie Weiner; D: Isaiah Sheffer; S/L: Tom Munn; C: Anne de
Velder; P: Joel W. Schenker; T: Playhouse 2 (OB); 3/21/73-4/1/73 (14)
This play’s premise imagines that Professor Norris
Cummings (Henderson Forsythe), a distinguished Minnesota poet and ex-senator, who
chose not to fight when turned down for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination,
is delivering the last in a series of university lectures. His lecture takes
the form of a play about Aaron Silver (David Margulies), a Jewish flier from
New York who served under Cummings in World War II.
Set in England in 1944, this play-within-a-play
recounts Silver’s love affair with the aristocratic wife (Margaret Linn) of a
British brigadier general (Donald Symington) and his gradual growth from a shy,
hesitant lover and soldier into a man of strength and resolve. Cummings
interrupts the action to participate in the story, and to address the players
in the fashion of Our Town’s Stage
Manager. The point he finally stresses is that Silver, even though he died in
combat, achieved what he, the would-be-president, failed to do—to follow his
ideals and “kiss the few hundred asses” necessary to put him in the White
House.
The play, a pièce à clef about Senator Eugene
McCarthy, received several encouraging notices, although its farfetched premise
was faulted, as was the tenuously drawn connection between the Senator and
Silver. Clive Barnes appreciated the drama’s “touching and genuine” love story,
Walter Kerr was “amused” by the author’s “sly, shy, off-hand gift for
characterization,” and Edith Oliver admired Weiner’s ability conjure up “a time
and a place.” John Simon spoke for the naysayers when he griped that the play
was “dull-witted,” “limp and inept,” and “designed and directed for maximum
tackiness and amateurishness.”
Among the cast members was Tandy Cronyn as a beautiful
WAF sergeant. David Margulies, said Barnes, was the “best of all,” being “interestingly
disturbed and baffled as a nice Jewish boy in a place like the Army Air Forces.”
Barnes also noted that the military uniforms were “horrendously inaccurate.”