Monday, June 8, 2020

145. ECHOES. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

David Selby, Lynn Milgrim.
For background on this series and a list of previous entries, click here.

ECHOES [Drama/Hospital/Mental Illness] A: N. Richard Nash; D: Melvin Bernhardt; S: Ed Wittstein; C: Sara Brook; L: Martin Aronstein; P: Orin Lehman; T: Bijou Theatre (OB); 3/26/73 (1)

A distressingly muddy, tiresome, symbolic drama about a pair of schizoid mental patients, Tilda (Lynn Milgrim) and Sam (David Selby), living in the hell of an insane asylum where they pass their time decorating an imaginary Christmas tree, among other ways of fantasizing. A third character, presumably the resident shrink (Paul Tripp), a God-like being called the Person, appears now and then to converse soundlessly with Sam. Sam makes some progress and departs, leaving Tilda behind, which is about all the dramatic movement the play offers.

There was little commiseration for either the playwright (author of The Rainmaker) or performers. Clive Barnes renounced the work as “dense” and “murky,” saying that the writing “meanders along like a bereft pedestrian with a fantasy that he is really a Rolls-Royce.” Richard Watts called the play “hopelessly enigmatic,” and Douglas Watt sympathized with an audience that had to sit through “this exercise in mumbo-jumbo.” Such suffering, fortunately, lasted only a single night.