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| Biff McGuire,, Brenda Vaccaro.. |
FATHER’S
DAY
[Comedy-Drama/Marriage/Women] A: Oliver Hailey; D: Donald Moffat; S/L: Jo
Mielziner; C: Ann Roth; P: Joseph Kipness and Lawrence Kasha; T: John Golden
Theatre; 3/16/71 (1)
Oliver Hailey’s Father’s
Day became a cause célèbre when it closed after a single
performance, even though most critics had found it worthwhile. Clive Barnes’s
negative review in the Times carried
so much punch that only five seats had been sold for the second performance,
thus convincing the producers to fold.
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| Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, Marian Seldes. |
The plot tells of three contrasting female neighbors,
all divorced, who invite their former spouses to a Father’s Day cocktail party.
Echoes of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters
are intentional, even in the staging. The promise of possible marital
reconciliations for these lonely divorcées is shown, but not fulfilled. The
cast, filled with name actors, included Brenda Vacarro, Jennifer Salt, and Marian
Seldes as the wives, and Ken Kercheval, Donald Moffat (who also directed), and
Biff McGuire as the husbands.
Barnes wrote that the ex-wives were “tiresome,” that
the play had no clear point of view, and that it was not “especially touching,
nor . . . particularly funny.” “If only [Hailey’s] characters had been a little
more interesting, or spoke less like cartoon captions, at their best, or tape
recordings, at their worst, the evening would have had more.” Martin Gottfried
was one of the very few who agreed. He derided the acting, direction, and sets,
labeled the play dishonest, and said it was “varnished with imitation Broadway
wisecracks.”
The majority, however, felt otherwise, finding the
work a definite winner. Richard Watts thought it “absorbing, intelligent and
steadily entertaining. It is also splendidly acted." Douglas Watt called it “a
toughminded little comedy.” “Once Father’s
Day . . . gets to you, you stay hooked.” T.E. Kalem wrote that “Here is an
evening . . . suffused with stinging, gut-aching laughter,” making it possibly “the
best American play of the season.” And Henry Hewes found that it was “consistently
entertaining and deals truthfully with its material.”
Ironically, two of its contributors, actress Marian
Seldes and designer Jo Mielziner, were nominated for Tony Awards, with Seldes
also garnering a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance.
