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| Ronny Cox, Lewis J Stadlen. |
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| (top, center) George Loros, Lewis J. Stadlen, Paul Sparer. |
The Happiness Cage, the first play at the Public Theater's new Estelle R. Newman Theater, evoked
numerous expressions of admiration, even from those who noted various cracks in
its sci-fi oriented composition. It tells of a medical experiment being carried out in a
Veterans Administration hospital where, under the supervision of an Army general (Paul Sparer) and a hospital adminstrator (Henderson Forsythe), young vets are
given a sort of shock treatment to prevent them from feeling anguish and to
make them perpetually happy.
Three vets are the subjects and two die from the experiment,
but the surviving guinea pig, Reese (Lewis J. Stadlen), who entered the facility with
a broken arm, and resists the treatments because he insists on suffering if he
so chooses, becomes an eventual victim and turns into a human vacuum.
This drama about the dangers of thought control, and of
medical science’s unchecked experimentation, demonstrated that Reardon was a
highly promising new playwright. Otherwise intriguing and interesting, the work
was weakened by excessive length and a diffuse structure. John Simon
acknowledged the writer’s talent, but felt as did others that the anticlimactic
ending was ineffective. He pointed out that the play “begins with an authentic,
instantaneous sense of drama, character and language, which is sustained
without lapses almost to the very end of the play, a play stuffed with plot,
people and palaver.” He added, “The production is the best Joe Papp’s Public
Theater has given us since . . . Hair
in its original version.” Harold Clurman wrote, “The thesis may be valid, but
it is presented too late, too simplistically . . . , and coming after the
elaborate exposition of the hospital’s abuses, it creates the impression of an
edifying postscript.”
In the cast were such noteworthy names as Ronny Cox, Charles Durning, Bette Henritze, and the then unknown Jason Miller (before he starred in The Exorcist).
In the cast were such noteworthy names as Ronny Cox, Charles Durning, Bette Henritze, and the then unknown Jason Miller (before he starred in The Exorcist).