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| Barbara Barrie, Ralph Waite. |
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| Ralph Waite, Barbara Barrie, and company, with George Voscovec, standing right. |
In The Killdeer, Ted (Ralph Waite) is a salesman, living
in a typical suburban house, with his typically suburban family. High strung
and bitter, bigoted and profane, he is suffering from numerous problems of
middle age, including an excessive fondness for drinking.
The play, taking place one evening after he has returned
from work, charts his gradual psychological disintegration. Along the way,
Sparky (Barbara Barrie), his wife of 18 years; sons Huck (Timothy Nissen) and
Spike (Michael-Raymond O’Keefe); several neighbors (including one played by George Voscovec); and Ted’s boss (William
Bogert) are brought on. Some jokes, dirty and ethnic, are told; Sparky has an
engrossing deadpan speech about her housewifely routine; and the actors often
talk directly the audience in the otherwise naturalistic action.
The Killdeer was
exceptionally well played, with Barrie—who won an OBIE for Distinguished
Performance—garnering highest honors as the wife, but there was little interest
in what Clive Barnes called the “slick mediocrity” of what was considered a
banal and unenlightening look at contemporary suburbanites. “[T]he terrible
plainness of it all” irked Walter Kerr, while John Simon, noting that “Broad
writes like the star pupil in a prototypical playwriting course,” went on to
cite all the playwright’s particularly obvious choices. He concluded that the
problem lay in there being “no surprises whatever.” All the people, situations,
and dialogue were overly familiar and not provided with any new insights.