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| Michael Tolan, Lou Jacobi. (Photos: Henry Grossman.) |
“Defender of the
Faith” [Military]; “Epstein” [Family/Illness]; “Eli, the Fanatic” [Religion]
 |
| Anna Berger, Dori Brenner, Lou Jacobi. |
Director-adaptor
Larry Arrick, a strong proponent of the Story Theatre techniques of Paul Sills,
used them to turn three 1950s Philip Roth short stories into one-act plays. The
method allows the non-dialogue portions of the original to be presented as
straightforward narrative by the actors, who sometimes refer to the behavior of
their characters in the third person.
 |
| Rose Arrick, Lou Jacobi. |
Many thought
his approach intrusive and only occasionally workable for material that had the
substance for what Walter Kerr called “full-bodied drama.” These one-acts
failed to thoroughly embody the originals in theatrical terms, and remained, on the
whole, too literary in conception. This was the chief objection to a production
that, while it pleased several influential reviewers, failed to draw audiences
and closed in three weeks.
 |
| Lou Jacobi, Alvin Kupperman. |
“Defender of the
Faith” tells of a conniving young Jewish soldier (Jon Korkes) in an Army
training camp who uses his Jewishness to pry special treatment from his
good-natured Jewish sergeant (David Ackroyd). After a while, the sergeant
catches on to the soldier’s conman craftiness and insincerity.
“Epstein,”
practically a monologue, concerns an aging Jewish man, a paper bag manufacturer (Lou
Jacobi), bothered by domestic problems. Essentially virtuous, he lets himself
have an extramarital fling, develops a crotch rash, is thought by his shocked
family to have venereal disease, and ultimately succumbs to a heart attack from
all the excitement.
“Eli, the Fanatic,”
the most substantial piece, recounts the tale of an encounter between a
successful young Jewish lawyer (Michael Tolan), who has lost touch with his
Judaic roots, and Mr. Tsuref (Lou Jacobi), the head of a yeshiva for immigrant
children that has opened in the largely Protestant suburb where the lawyer
lives with other assimilated Jewish families. The local Jews have been
embarrassed by a bearded, kaftan-garbed Jew (David Ackroyd) who has been hired by
the school to do odd jobs. They have asked Eli to convince the schoolmaster to
either move his school or get the bearded man to change his mode of dress. In
the end, after discussing the matter with Mr. Tzuref, and getting the bearded
man to wear Eli’s own suit, the guilt-ridden Eli himself dons the man’s religious
apparel, beats his chest in lamentation, and acknowledges his ancestral faith.
Clive Barnes loved
the “authenticity” of Roth’s treatments, the “often very funny” material, and
the evening’s “oddity, charm, . . . literate wit and . . . sense of style,
place and period.” These were “beautiful stories,” thought Julius Novick, that
tended to lose their punch on stage, “but at the same time . . . become more
vivid, more intense, and funnier.” However, he laughed too infrequently to
praise Jones’s “not overly abundant” use of wit.
In his comments, Harold
Clurman described the sorry state of Broadway at the time, citing how difficult
it was to break a profit when it cost upward of $75,000 to produce a straight
play (this was 1971, remember), $300,000 to do a musical, tickets cost $8 to
$15 plus, and unemployment for actors sky-high. (As someone once said, the more
things change, the more they remain the same.) He then noted how the unnamed Times critic (Clive Barnes) was prone to
try helping the situation by overhyping shows he reviewed. “Wherever there is
the least trace of merit, the slightest possibility of praise, he takes pains
to emphasize it.” Finally, before he gets to his own review of Unlikely Heroes, he notes that one major
symptom of exhaustion revealing Broadway’s desperation in seeking remedies for
the slump in profitable productions is how, as in the present case, “much that
is now offered is not original theatre material but adaptations and dramatizations.”
Clurman declares that it should
not be necessary to extol as masterpieces plays that are “pleasant” but not “truly
valuable.” “That such a notice is required to rouse people to see a play is
itself evidence of a morbid condition.” In his own modestly positive review, he
declares, “Unlikely Heroes is a nice
evening in the theatre,” “amusing, well
written and intelligent, . . . well acted and suitably staged.” Of “Eli, the
Fanatic,” which earned his warmest remarks, he concludes: “It is a fine
concept; the story as story is a brilliant allegory. Though its meaning still
remains inescapable, reaching beyond its specific ethnic framework, it becomes
rather too concrete, and therefore not altogether credible and less poignant
than it should be, when it is translated in realistic terms to the stage.”
Cast members included Tom Rosqui, Josh Mostel, Alvin Kupperman, George Bartenieff, Dori Brenner, Anna Berger, Rose Arrick, Lee Wallace, and others.
Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know,
since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog
has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off
and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished
manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of
the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of
every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood
Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.
Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s
Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012
through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate
volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The
2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was
72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New
York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can
find these collections on Amazon.com by
clicking here.
Next up: Walk Together, Children