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| Dolores Sutton, Elsa Raven, James Naughton. (Photo: Friedmn-Abeles.) |
Actress Dolores
Sutton, who wrote this novel-to-play adaptation, also played one of its leading roles, Esther Jack, based on famed stage designer Aline Bernstein. George Webber, based on Bernstein’s lover, Thomas Wolfe, who wrote the original novel, was
played by James Naughton. The play describes the tempestuous relationship of
the struggling, neurotic young writer from North Carolina and the respected
Jewish artist, 20 years his senior. Sutton’s play tells the story episodically,
opening at George’s funeral, flashing back to the Webber and Jack affair, and
closing with the funeral.
The adaptation was
talky, heavy-handed, and dull. “It plays like a Disney cartoon of a Strindberg
drama,” quipped Michael Feingold. There was nothing of Wolfe’s ability to
capture a “sense of time, place and atmosphere," thought Clive Barnes, though
the attempt was “interesting and worthwhile.” To Edith Oliver the effect was “like
a tedious television show,” with what were, to John Simon, “embarrassing, . . .
giggle-provoking” lines. “The Wolfe had been kept at the door.”
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unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of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: Wedding Band.
