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| Jean Bruno, Max Gulack. |
A short-lived, three-act play set in a New York Irish tavern and dealing with a conventional assortment of barroom types. It had the kind of realistic set, whispered one critic to another, that could have served as well for Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life or Gordone’s No Place to Be Somebody. Clive Barnes suggested that the set would have been better used to serve the audience drinks than to have this play acted in it.
Each character has their eccentricities, ranging
from the bartender, Norman (Max Gulack), to Gracie (Jean Bruno), an obese widow
who talks about her late husband, to Cecil (Colin Hamilton), a gay Texan whose
one-legged lover has just walked out on him (so to speak). Barnes thought the
best part was that of Momo (William Robertson), a fellow who sits in a corner
and says nothing.
The play and production
were so uninteresting that Barnes could only yawn at what he said “almost
glittered with boredom.” “Unquestionably the evening took a turn for the worse
when the actors started to talk. But they did talk—interminably, garrulously
and leisurely. The dialogue had all the sparkle of the small talk of sparrows.”
Dick Brukenfeld ranked it “less a play than a parade of red herrings.”
