Sunday, December 13, 2020

410. PRESENT TENSE. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Lois Smith, Biff McGuire.
PRESENT TENSE [Comedy-Drama/One-Acts] A: Frank Gilroy; D: Curt Dempster; S/L: Charles Cosler; P: TDJ Productions, Inc.; T: Sheridan Square Playhouse (OB); 7/18/72-7/23/72 (8)

“Come Next Thursday” [Marriage]; “Twas Brillig” [Films]; “So Please Be Kind” [Sex]; “Present Tense” [Marriage]

Biff McGuire and Lois Smith, both A-list stage actors, appeared in each of these four Off-Broadway one-acters by Frank Gilroy, author of the hit play The Subject Was Roses. Supporting them were less well-known players Stanley Beck, Sarah Cunningham, and Gary Nebiol. “As entertainment,” concluded Clive Barnes, “the pulse [of these plays] is dim and distant.” The evening struck John Simon” as an almost complete, although completely likable, failure.”

“Come Next Thursday” is a black comedy about a wife (Smith) who manages to overlook her wayward husband’s (McGuire) faults. “Twas Brillig” deals with a Hollywood screenwriter (Beck) unable to compromise his principles to please his studio boss (McGuire). “So Please Be Kind,” considered the program’s strongest piece,” shows a pair of adulterous lovers in a hotel room who are unable to consummate their passion when they get sidetracked by an inability to remember the name of an actor they passed in the street. The final playlet is about a husband’s (McGuire) attempt to keep his wife (Smith) from learning of their son’s death in Vietnam.

Barnes thought the evening as a whole too wordy and only sporadically stageworthy. Simon commented, “Despite good acting, the work doesn’t belong in a theatre struggling for its life, which won’t be saved by amicably pseudo-serious trifles.” 

Until the pandemic hit, of course, Lois Smith, in her mid-90s, continued to reign as a beloved doyenne of the New York stage (not to mention other media). One hopes she will return in good health to provide more of her personal and artistic warmth when this thing is over.