Note: No photos available.
The last in a series of four one-week productions launched
by the NEC as a “Season-Within-A-Season.” It was judged “the most original and
the strongest of the lot” by Edith Oliver. Written by actor “Sonny Jim” Gaines,
this family drama told an Enoch Arden-like tale of Buddy (Gary Bolling), a GI
who is reported missing in action in Vietnam, but, after 10 years, returns home
unexpectedly to his young wife, Norma Jean (Michele Shay). There, as per the formula, he discovers that she’s in love with a guy named Bert (Louis Morenzie).
Norma Jean feels a link to her husband, long thought dead, so
strong she cannot break it to leave him and marry the other man. She and Buddy have
never been absent from each other’s thoughts all through the years. During his
long period of hiding in a cave, she appeared to him nightly. Oliver described
this marital connection as one of a powerful “possession.” The husband’s
parents figure in much of the action, but the focus is on Buddy, his wife, and
the other man.
Mel Gussow said the play ended “inconclusively,” had an
aimless feeling, and unsteady language, but he added that some of it was “liltingly
authentic.” He wanted it to receive more work to give it “definition and
concentration,” an opinion shared by Oliver, for whom, despite its strengths,
it was “still in the works.” It seems
never to have been given another chance locally, though.
