11. ALL OVER TOWN. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

The following precedes each entry,

"In Lieu of Reviews"

Around 40 years ago, I began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume covering a decade. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to start with the 1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing a typed manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it would be best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put aside as I produced volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those concluded, Greenwood decided it was all too expensive and not sufficiently profitable, so the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries in limbo.

To compensate, I used the research I’d done on the 1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a postretirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so I’ve posted nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having first appeared on other websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.

Now, however, with the New York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, is probably the perfect time to post as many as possible of the entries I prepared for the never-published 1970-1975 book. The entries that follow are in alphabetical order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when credited; the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer (C), the lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of the run, and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also contained the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.

I will try to post at least one entry daily. When time allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript exists on fading, fragile paper and, because no digital files exist, must be retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health situation we’re all enduring will abate before I get too far into posting these entries but, for the time being, devoted theatre lovers may find reading these materials informative. 

Pamela Payton-Wright, Cleavon Little, Barnard Hughes.

ALL OVER TOWN [Comedy/Family/Homosexuality/Race/Sex] A: Murray Schisgal; D: Dustin Hoffman; S: Oliver Smith; C:Albert Wolsky; L: John Gleason; P: Adela Holzer; T: Booth Theatre; 12/29/74-7/20/75 (233)

Movie star Dustin Hoffman made his professional directing debut with this crazy farce in which 18 zany characters were kept whizzing in and out of 11 doors as the complications and hilarity kept dizzily accelerating. Murray Schisgal’s most successful comedy since the 1963 Luv was set in the East Side duplex of Dr. Lionel Morris (Barnard Hughes), a psychiatrist who believes that the criminal mentality can be altered by exposing the wrongdoer to a more congenial environment than he is used to.

Zane Lasky, Cleavon Little.

To prove his point, he arranges to house and then analyze tor two weeks an oversexed, jobless young man named Louis (Zane Lasky), who has been inconsiderate enough to father nine children with five women, putting them all on welfare. When a black hipster named Lewis (Cleavon Little) arrives to deliver a pair of shoes, he is mistaken for the prolific father (who is white). Delighted with the perquisites about to come his way, Lewis decides to lay along with the scheme.

When the real Louis arrives, Lewis has his hands full keeping him occupied and out of the way. Louis turns out to be a totally unprepossessing guy, who simply has an unerring way with the opposite sex, a number of whom fall into his clutches in the Morris household.

Cleavon Little, Barnard Hughes.

The basic situation is compounded by an army of outrageous types and subplots, including the doctor’s daughter (Jill Eikenberry), his adulterous wife (Carol Teitel), the wife’s Army officer lover (William LeMassena), his wheelchair-bound wife (Polly Holliday), a randy Swedish maid (Pamela Payton-Wright), a swishy black gay (Every Hayes), a Jewish Yogi (Michael Gorrin), and others.

This “cross between a sex farce and a satire on middle-class liberals” (Martin Gottfried) tickled many critical funny bones, Flaws, however, were apparent, including insufficient character development (Gottfried), implausibility (Clive Barnes), and problems of plotting, focus, and “schoolboyish” jokes (Douglas Watt). All Over Town was likened to a Feydeau farce, a form in which the implied criticism of contemporary social foibles is far outranked in importance by the need to stimulate riotous laughter. As Barnes summed it up: “Profound it isn’t. Fun it is.”

Polly Holliday, Barnard Hughes, Cleavon Little.

There were sidesplitting performances by all the principals (notably Little and Hughes), but Hoffman’s agile and well-timed direction was noted as the major animating force behind the show’s success.

Previous entries:

Abelard and Heloise

Absurd Person Singular

AC/DC

“Acrobats” and “Line”

The Advertisement

Aesop’s Fables

Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death

Alice in Wonderland

All God’s Chillun Got Wings

All My Sons

All Over

10. ALL OVER. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

The following precedes each entry,

"In Lieu of Reviews"

Around 40 years ago, I began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume covering a decade. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to start with the 1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing a typed manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it would be best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put aside as I produced volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those concluded, Greenwood decided it was all too expensive and not sufficiently profitable, so the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries in limbo.

To compensate, I used the research I’d done on the 1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a postretirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so I’ve posted nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having first appeared on other websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.

Now, however, with the New York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, is probably the perfect time to post as many as possible of the entries I prepared for the never-published 1970-1975 book. The entries that follow are in alphabetical order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when credited; the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer (C), the lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of the run, and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also contained the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.

I will try to post at least one entry daily. When time allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript exists on fading, fragile paper and, because no digital files exist, must be retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health situation we’re all enduring will abate before I get too far into posting these entries but, for the time being, devoted theatre lovers may find reading these materials informative.

George Voskovec, Colleen Dewhurst, Jessica Tandy.

ALL OVER [Drama/Family/Death] A: Edward Albee; D: John Gielgud; S/C: Rouben Ter-Arutunian; L: Richard Nelson; P: Theatre 1971; T: Martin Beck Theatre; 3/28/71-5/1/71 (42)

Despite its star-spangled production, Edward Albee’s 11th play and his first full-length original since 1966’s A Delicate Balance was a crushing Broadway flop. As with most of his recent outings, it met with a good deal of critical hostility. Clive Barnes was at least 85 percent on the play’s side but enough bitter opposition came from the remaining critics for the play to have difficulty at the box office. Had it not received support from the Theatre Development Fund, and from actors, producers, and theatre managers willing to take an 80 percent pay cut, it would have closed in a week.

Madeleine Sherwood.

All Over is about a family given the allegorical, depersonalized names of the Wife (Jessica Tandy), the Mistress (Colleen Dewhurst), the Daughter (Madeleine Sherwood), the Doctor (Neil Fitzgerald), the Son (James Ray), the Best Friend (George Voskovec), and the Nurse (Betty Field), who wait in a living room for a famous man (never seen), dying in the next room, to pass away. The characters talk of him and of their role in his life.

As Harold Clurman explained it, “Albee is saying that, despite all the hasty bickering, the fierce hostility and the mutual understandings which separate us, we need one another. We cry out in agony when we are cut off.”

The ambitious drama, staged expertly by the great British actor-director, Sir John Gielgud, was acted in a superbly stark, symbolic set created by Rouben Ter-Arutunian. The performances of the high-powered company were applauded by all. The play itself, though, was seen as self-conscious, overwritten, pompous, vacuous, dry, abstract, and too literary. “The language [is] a stilted, priggish, pedantic . . . Victorian lingo never heard on land or sea,” nagged Jack Kroll. Walter Kerr was alienated by the play’s “extraordinarily remote, detached, noncomittal” atmosphere.

The action was viewed as insufficiently dramatized, and the characters were “thin and sketchy” (T.E. Kalem), “painted dummies” (Kroll), and “bloodless, unreal people” (Douglas Watt). Martin Gottfried yawned along with many others at how “unbelievably boring” it all was.

Jessica Tandy, Betty Field.

Still, All Over’s defenders, such as Barnes, appreciated its “lean, nervy and high-flown” style. He described it as a “lovely, poignant and deeply felt play,” and as a demanding one at that. Henry Hewes stated it was “a realistic and honest effort,” and Clurman called it “the best American play of several seasons.” Colleen Dewhurst and Jessica Tandy were exceedingly good, the former receiving a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance, the latter a Tony nomination for Best Actress.

The play had multiple revivals regionally and abroad, including one directed in 1975 by Peter Hall for London’s Royal Shakespeare Company starring Peggy Ashcroft and Angela Lansbury as, respectively, the Wife and Mistress. Its sole New York revival to date was Princeton's McCarter Theatre production, directed by Emily Mann, presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company, which opened at Off Broadway's Gramercy Theatre in June 2002, starring Michael Learned as the Mistress and Rosemary Harris as the Wife. 

Previous entries:

Abelard and Heloise

Absurd Person Singular

AC/DC

“Acrobats” and “Line”

The Advertisement

Aesop’s Fables

Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death

Alice in Wonderland

All God’s Chillun Got Wings

All My Sons

JOHN LEE BEATTY: PORTRAIT OF THE DESIGNER AS A YOUNG MAN, Part 4

This is Part 4 of a 15-part series based on a recently rediscovered, previously unpublished, 1980 interview I did with the great set designer, John Lee Beatty, when he was 32 but already a leaderin his field. It can be found by clicking on THEATER PIZZAZZ.

9. ALL MY SONS. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

The following precedes each entry,

"In Lieu of Reviews"

  

Around 40 years ago, I began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume covering a decade. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to start with the 1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing a typed manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it would be best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put aside as I produced volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those concluded, Greenwood decided it was all too expensive and not sufficiently profitable, so the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries in limbo.

To compensate, I used the research I’d done on the 1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a postretirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so I’ve posted nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having first appeared on other websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.

Now, however, with the New York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, is probably the perfect time to post as many as possible of the entries I prepared for the never-published 1970-1975 book. The entries that follow are in alphabetical order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when credited; the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer (C), the lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of the run, and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also contained the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.

I will try to post at least one entry daily. When time allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript exists on fading, fragile paper and, because no digital files exist, must be retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health situation we’re all enduring will abate before I get too far into posting these entries but, for the time being, devoted theatre lovers may find reading these materials informative. 

 

Janet Sarno, Kenneth Kimmins, Catherine Byers, Tom Keena, Hugh Marlowe, Beatrice Straight.

ALL MY SONS [Dramatic Revival] A: Arthur Miller; D: Gene Feist; S: Holmes Easley; C: Susan Benson; L: Clarke Dunham; M: Philip Campanella; P: Roundabout Theatre Company; T: Roundabout Theatre (OB); 9/27/74-11/17/74 (60) 

The first production at the Roundabout’s new home in the spacious, reconstructed RKO Cinema on W. 23rd Street was All My Sons, Arthur Miller’s first Broadway success, produced in 1947 and given that season’s Drama Critics Circle Award. Although it’s remained a frequently revived standard, it seemed in this production to have faded considerably in impact over the 27 years since its premiere and seemed “almost stiff with morality and didacticism,” with its smug “air of self-righteousness,” according to Clive Barnes.

Drew Snyder, Beatrice Straight, Catherine Byers, Hugh Marlowe.

This drama, about how a businessman who profited from the sale of faulty airplane parts to the armed forces in World War II learns to accept responsibility for his actions, still possessed the power to entertain, however, despite its dated flavor, Barnes admitted. This “well-done revival” had a good deal to do with the play’s effect. Barnes liked the way Gene Feist’s direction emphasized the play’s melodrama. The acting, he said, had “a kind of Warner Brothers conviction to it.” On the other hand, Edith Oliver, who agreed with Barnes about the play’s flaws, thought them exacerbated by what she called Feist’s “clumpy high-school production” and the feeling that the actors had never met before.

The best-known player was Beatrice Straight, as Mrs. Keller, but to Oliver even she could “not raise the general level to professionalism.” The only others likely to have some name recognition today were Hugh Marlowe, who played Joe Keller, and Drew Snyder, who portrayed Chris Keller.

Previous entries:

Abelard and Heloise

Absurd Person Singular

AC/DC

“Acrobats” and “Line”

The Advertisement

Aesop’s Fables

Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death

Alice in Wonderland

All God’s Chillun Got Wings

9. ALL GOD'S CHILLUN GOT WINGS. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

The following precedes each entry,

"In Lieu of Reviews"

 

Around 40 years ago, I began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume covering a decade. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to start with the 1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing a typed manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it would be best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put aside as I produced volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those concluded, Greenwood decided it was all too expensive and not sufficiently profitable, so the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries in limbo.

To compensate, I used the research I’d done on the 1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a postretirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so I’ve posted nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having first appeared on other websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.

Add caption

Now, however, with the New York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, is probably the perfect time to post as many as possible of the entries I prepared for the never-published 1970-1975 book. The entries that follow are in alphabetical order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when credited; the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer (C), the lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of the run, and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also contained the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.

I will try to post at least one entry daily. When time allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript exists on fading, fragile paper and, because no digital files exist, must be retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health situation we’re all enduring will abate before I get too far into posting these entries but, for the time being, devoted theatre lovers may find reading these materials informative.

Trish Van Devere, Robert Christian.

ALL GOD’S CHILLUN GOT WINGS [Dramatic Revival] A: Eugene O’Neill; D: George C. Scott; S: Ming Cho Lee; C: Patricia Zipprodt; L: Thomas Skelton; P: Circle in the Square; T: Circle in the Square Joseph E. Levine Theatre; 3/20/75-5/4/75 (53)

In 1924, Eugene O’Neill’s tragic view of a racially mixed marriage (a metaphor for the doomed liaison between his own mother and father—both white, of course—whose names the couple bear—was a work of shocking proportions, especially when its white heroine kissed the hand of its black hero. O’Neill’s treatment of miscegenation had little pertinence remaining, however, other than its historical importance, when given this first New York revival at the city’s leading O’Neill theatre, 51 years later.

The dramatist’s depiction of blacks was awkward and poorly observed, and his characters seemed more like “labels instead of characters,” said Douglas Watt. Watt blamed the play for its “crude outline and clumsy . . . speech,” and Clive Barnes cringed at its datedness, “patronizing” tone, and “bad writing.” Martin Gottfried saw no reason for bringing back this “curiosity,” and John Simon spurned it as “abysmal claptrap.”

Robert Christian, Trish Van Devere.

Just as bad was the production, with star actor George C. Scott, making his directorial debut, at the helm. “Why must this absorbing actor insist on becoming a dreary director,” queried Simon. Scott’s then wife, Trish Van Devere, in her Broadway debut, was embarrassingly ineffectual as Ella, while Robert Christian’s Jim was merely adequate. (Scott had planned an earlier version, in the late 60s, with James Earl Jones in the lead but it went nowhere.) 

David Sheward, in his Scott biography, Rage and Glory, reports that Scott and Devere "brought their offstage conflicts into their professional lives." He quotes Van Devere's understudy, Judith Barcroft:

I thought she was very difficult to direct. He wanted her to use the maternal side of herself. There was a scene where Ella is supposed to hold a straw doll. He wanted her to hold the doll and rock it. But she didn't want to go near it.

They had a tremendous fight just before opening and she left the theatre. So I had to go on. I didn't have any rehearsals and I'd never even been backstage before. The hairdresser led me around. But my husband was a stage manager and he had told me an understudy should always be prepared. I went on and got bravos.

The remainder of the cast, aside from Vickie Thomas as Hattie, the hero’s sister, was even less appreciated than the leads. On the other hand, the lighting was good enough to land Thomas Skelton a Tony nomination.

Previous entries:

Abelard and Heloise

Absurd Person Singular

AC/DC

“Acrobats” and “Line”

The Advertisement

Aesop’s Fables

Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death

Alice in Wonderland

8. ALICE IN WONDERLAND. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

The following precedes each entry,

"In Lieu of Reviews" 

Around 40 years ago, I began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume covering a decade. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to start with the 1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing a typed manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it would be best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put aside as I produced volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those concluded, Greenwood decided it was all too expensive and not sufficiently profitable, so the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries in limbo.

To compensate, I used the research I’d done on the 1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a postretirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so I’ve posted nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having first appeared on other websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.

Now, however, with the New York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, is probably the perfect time to post as many as possible of the entries I prepared for the never-published 1970-1975 book. The entries that follow are in alphabetical order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when credited; the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer (C), the lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of the run, and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also contained the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.

I will try to post at least one entry daily. When time allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript exists on fading, fragile paper and, because no digital files exist, must be retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health situation we’re all enduring will abate before I get too far into posting these entries but, for the time being, devoted theatre lovers may find reading these materials informative.

 

Tom Costello, Angela Pietropinto.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND [Comedy-Drama/Childhood/Fantasy] AD: The Manhattan Project; SC: Lewis Carroll’s novels, Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass; D:Andre Gregory; DS: Eugene Lee and Franne Newman; P: Lyn Austin and Oliver Smith in the Manhattan Theatre Project Production; T: The Extension (OB): 10/8/70-5/2/71 (122; weekends only)

One of the most controversial products of the Off-Off Broadway avant garde movement of the late 60s and early 70s, Alice in Wonderland grew out of two years of intensive development by a small company of New York University department graduates working with experimental director Andre Gregory. It had played elsewhere, even developing a cult of followers, before its formal New York opening (an unofficial New York presentation and already won the company and OBIE). Working collaboratively, the group evolved a highly idiosyncratic approach to Carroll’s Alice books, bringing forth in the process a work redolent of psychological and political implications.

Alice was staged in the mode of environmental theatre, with the space designed to resemble a rabbit hole into which the audience as presumed to tumble. Each actor, except for Alice (Angela Pietropinto), played many roles. Using theatricalist techniques reminiscent of the work of Poland’s Jerzy Grotowski, France’s Antonin Artaud, and New York’s the Open Theatre, the company portrayed the tale in disconnected, nonlinear, fragmentary style, using unusual sound and voice effects, mime and acrobatics, and attention to Carroll’s original words.

Saskia Noordhock Hegt, Tom Costello, Angela Pietropinto, Gerry Bamman, Larry Pine (kneeling), Jerry Mayer.

The result was an almost hallucinatory effect that evoked various “states of being,” one scene in particular providing “one of the closest approximations to going insane that has ever been rendered on a public stage,” wrote T.E. Kalem. Another exciting sequence came during Alice’s interview with the hookah-smoking caterpillar. Four actors formed a mushroom shape by bending over, one of them raising a hand and finger to be smoked by a fifth who sat atop them.

There were ecstatic appraisals from critics such as Kalem, John Lahr, and Clive Barnes. Typical was Lahr’s comment: “Nothing on our conventional stage can approach the density and brilliance of this kind of performance.” However, some, like Jack Kroll, felt that there was not enough genius present to transmute the literary classic into good theatre; instead, the effect was largely shapeless, without focus, and incoherent. Several complained that only someone familiar with the source could follow the production.

Alice returned to New York on March 1, 1972, following a world tour. It played at Off-Off’s Performing Garage for another 50 performances. Some cast changes had been made, as well as revisions in the script. “The entire show is now one of the most polished I have ever seen,” noted Barnes.

Alice in Wonderland snared Drama Desk Awards for Gregory as director, and scene design for Lee and Norman. Of the cast members, Larry Pine and Gerry Bamman remained very active in the New York theatre.

The following precedes each entry,

"In Lieu of Reviews"

Around 40 years ago, I began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume covering a decade. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to start with the 1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing a typed manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it would be best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put aside as I produced volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those concluded, Greenwood decided it was all too expensive and not sufficiently profitable, so the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries in limbo.

To compensate, I used the research I’d done on the 1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a postretirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so I’ve posted nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having first appeared on other websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.

Now, however, with the New York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, is probably the perfect time to post as many as possible of the entries I prepared for the never-published 1970-1975 book. The entries that follow are in alphabetical order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when credited; the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer (C), the lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of the run, and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also contained the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.

I will try to post at least one entry daily. When time allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript exists on fading, fragile paper and, because no digital files exist, must be retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health situation we’re all enduring will abate before I get too far into posting these entries but, for the time being, devoted theatre lovers may find reading these materials informative.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND [Comedy-Drama/Childhood/Fantasy] AD: The Manhattan Project; SC: Lewis Carroll’s novels, Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass; D:Andre Gregory; DS: Eugene Lee and Franne Newman; P: Lyn Austin and Oliver Smith in the Manhattan Theatre Project Production; T: The Extension (OB): 10/8/70-5/2/71 (122; weekends only)

One of the most controversial products of the Off-Off Broadway avant garde movement of the late 60s and early 70s, Alice in Wonderland grew out of two years of intensive development by a small company of New York University department graduates working with experimental director Andre Gregory. It had played elsewhere, even developing a cult of followers, before its formal New York opening (an unofficial New York presentation and already won the company and OBIE). Working collaboratively, the group evolved a highly idiosyncratic approach to Carroll’s Alice books, bringing forth in the process a work redolent of psychological and political implications.

Alice was staged in the mode of environmental theatre, with the space designed to resemble a rabbit hole into which the audience as presumed to tumble. Each actor, except for Alice (Angela Pietropinto), played many roles. Using theatricalist techniques reminiscent of the work of Poland’s Jerzy Grotowski, France’s Antonin Artaud, and New York’s the Open Theatre, the company portrayed the tale in disconnected, nonlinear, fragmentary style, using unusual sound and voice effects, mime and acrobatics, and attention to Carroll’s original words.

The result was an almost hallucinatory effect that evoked various “states of being,” one scene in particular providing “one of the closest approximations to going insane that has ever been rendered on a public stage,” wrote T.E. Kalem. Another exciting sequence came during Alice’s interview with the hookah-smoking caterpillar. Four actors formed a mushroom shape by bending over, one of them raising a hand and finger to be smoked by a fifth who sat atop them.

There were ecstatic appraisals from critics such as Kalem, John Lahr, and Clive Barnes. Typical was Lahr’s comment: “Nothing on our conventional stage can approach the density and brilliance of this kind of performance.” However, some, like Jack Kroll, felt that there was not enough genius present to transmute the literary classic into good theatre; instead, the effect was largely shapeless, without focus, and incoherent. Several complained that only someone familiar with the source could follow the production.

Alice returned to New York on March 1, 1972, following a world tour. It played at Off-Off’s Performing Garage for another 50 performances. Some cast changes had been made, as well as revisions in the script. “The entire show is now one of the most polished I have ever seen,” noted Barnes.

Alice in Wonderland snared Drama Desk Awards for Gregory as director, and scene design for Lee and Norman.

Previous entries:

Abelard and Heloise

Absurd Person Singular

AC/DC

“Acrobats” and “Line”

The Advertisement

Aesop’s Fables

Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death

7. AIN'T SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH--TUNES FROM BLACKNESS: From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

The following precedes each entry,

"In Lieu of Reviews"

Around 40 years ago, I began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume covering a decade. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to start with the 1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing a typed manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it would be best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put aside as I produced volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those concluded, Greenwood decided it was all too expensive and not sufficiently profitable, so the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries in limbo.

To compensate, I used the research I’d done on the 1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a postretirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so I’ve posted nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having first appeared on other websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.

Now, however, with the New York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, is probably the perfect time to post as many as possible of the entries I prepared for the never-published 1970-1975 book. The entries that follow are in alphabetical order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when credited; the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer (C), the lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of the run, and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also contained the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.

I will try to post at least one entry daily. When time allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript exists on fading, fragile paper and, because no digital files exist, must be retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health situation we’re all enduring will abate before I get too far into posting these entries but, for the time being, devoted theatre lovers may find reading these materials informative. 

Clebert Ford, Sati Jamal,Toney Brealond.

AIN’T SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH—TUNES FROM BLACKNESS [Musical/Revue/Race/Topical] B/M/L: Melvin Van Peebles; D: Gilbert Moses; S: Kert Lundell; C: Bernard Johnson; L: Martin Aronstein; P: Eugene V. Wolsk, Charles Blackwell, Emanuel Azenberg, and Robert Malina; T: Ethel Barrymore Theatre; 10/20/71-7/30/72 (328)

The critics were split down the middle over this musical exposé of the brutality of existence in a Harlem-like neighborhood, written and composed by the multi-talented Melvin Van Peebles. Before coming to New York, the show had been produced at Sacramento State College and was recorded on an album for which Van Peebles himself did all the voices.

Madge Wells, Carl Gordon, Barbara Alston.

A plotless, bookless series of 19 vignettes about the life and people of the black ghetto, Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death employed a musical background throughout. Instead of songs, it had the performers do their numbers in a recitative style, described by Clive Barnes as “something like blues-shouting, but not much. The word patters form their own musical outline and are supported by the musical phrases and pulses.” John Simon, who disliked the show intensely, wrote: “Never before has tunelessness sound so utterly untuneful. . . . The lyrics are worse.”

The vignettes involved whores, pimps, male and female homosexuals, cruel cops, jailed murderers, panhandlers, and so on. One scene showed a blind beggar trying to get a boy to describe a girl whose scent the man has caught; the girl turns out to be a transvestite. A scene several critics liked was Garrett Morris’s (best known for “Saturday Night Live”) enactment of a a convict recalling the sexy dancing of the girl he killed. A final number, performed by Minnie Gentry, “Put a Curse on You,” put a curse on all society for having brought poor blacks to so low an estate. This is perhaps the show’s best-known number.

 

Albert Hall.

Because it was an angry, bitter work, critics like Simon thought it was a “Get Whitey” show and disparaged it accordingly. Others, like Harold Clurman, found it crude but exalting in its powerful emotional expressiveness. There were raves from many, including Martin Gottfried, who noted that Van Peebles “has taken the color, the accents, the very spirit of urban black ghetto existence and thrown it upon the stage” in a “magnificent,” “virtually flawless” presentation that was a “terribly accurate and honest statement.”

The show was vilified, however, by just as many, among them Julius Novick, who rejected it as “a tired collection of old complaints and out-of-context melodrama, notably deficient in power, pathos, wit, humor, imagination, intelligence and charm”

Marilyn B. Coleman, Jimmy Hayeson.

Van Peebles received Tony nominations for his book and score, and a Drama Desk Award for “Most Promising Book Writer.” Other Tony nominations went to Beatrice Winde for Best Supporting Actress (she won a Theatre World Award), Gilbert Moses for Best Director, and Martin Aronstein for Best Lighting Designer. Moses received a Drama Desk Award as Most Promising Director, and Kurt Lundell won both a Joseph Maharam Foundation Award and a Drama Desk Award for Scene Design.

Previous Entries:

Abelard and Heloise
Absurd Person Singular

AC/DC
"Acrobats" and "Line"
The Advertisement

Aesop’s Fables