584. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Jane Sanford, Gabriel Dell, Kenneth McMillan, Jake Dengel. (Photo: Friedman-Abeles.)

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? [Comedy/Homosexuality/Marriage/Transvestitism] A: John Ford Noonan; D: David Margulies; S/C: Robert Yodice; L: Roger Morgan; M: Kirk Nurock; P: New York Shakespeare Festival; T: Public Theater/Estelle R. Newman Theatre (OB); 10/5/74-11/3/74 (36)

A zany farce set in Boston about a local drag queen named Johann Sebastian Fabiani (Jake Dengel), formerly a successful ad man; his straight, disk jockey roommate, Remo Weinberger (Gabriel Dell), who dons female dress to attend a costume ball; a skirt-wearing Irish cop, Cornelius T. O’Shea (Kenneth McMillan), who is waging a personal war against homophobic molesters; a girl, Winifred Winowski (Jane Sanford), who seeks revenge on the man who killed her gay brother; a threatening weirdo named Zorro, who seeks to wipe out the city’s gay population by the most brutal methods; and Heather (Ann Shaler), Remo’s wife, who wants her husband to come home.

Instead of a plot, the play offers a “fantasticated series of revue shticks, one-liners, insult jokes and vaudeville gags,” resulting in a farcical hodgepodge that was “neither seriously funny or even funnily serious” to Clive Barnes.

It was “terribly untidy,” Barnes declared, and Edith Oliver called it a “disheveled, noisy, and garbled” attempt that ended as “a shambles, though a sporadically entertaining shambles.” The vulgar language and action were cited, as were the efforts of the hard-working, ultimately defeated actors. Oh. Did I mention that Danny DeVito, playing someone called Whimsey, was one of them?

Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know, since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.

Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012 through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The 2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was 72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can find these collections on Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Next up: Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?

583. WHEN YOU COMIN' BACK, RED RYDER? From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

James Kiernan, Robyn Goodman, Bradford Dourif, Elizabeth Sturges, Joe Jamrog, Kristen Van Buren, Addison Powell, Kevin Conway (front). (Photos: R.E. Wasserman.)

WHEN YOU COMIN’ BACK, RED RYDER? [Drama/Crime/Drugs/Restaurant] A: Mark Medoff; D: Kenneth Frankel; S: Bill Stabile; C: Penny Davis; L: Cheryl Thacker; P: Elliott Martin in the Circle Repertory Theatre Production; T: Eastside Playhouse (OB); 11/04/73-11/25/73 (26); 12/6/73-8/25/74 (302): total: 328

Kevin Conway, Kristen Van Buren.

Following a successful month’s run at the Circle Rep, Mark Medoff’s melodrama moved elsewhere for a commercial production where, with the same cast, it ran for the better part of a year. Reminiscent of Robert E. Sherwood’s Depression-era The Petrified Forest, the play is set in a New Mexico diner on a Sunday morning where the customers and employees are interrupted by a violent, longhaired, young dope runner and college dropout named Teddy (Kevin Conway). With his girlfriend Cheryl (Kristen Van Buren) has to remain there until his car, packed with drugs, is repaired at the adjoining service station.

Bradford Dourif, Kevin Conway.

Before long, this hippie hoodlum is bullying and plaguing everyone (both physically and with his dark sense of humor), stripping them of their illusions, often at the point of his handgun. The others include Stephen (Bradford [Brad] Dourif), a skinny, tattooed employee nicknamed “Red Ryder,” who swaggers about but is really a coward; a limping, old, garage owner, Lyle (Addison Powell); a married couple of New Yorkers, Clarice (Robyn Goodman) and Richard (James Kiernan); and Angel (Elizabeth Sturges), the fat countergirl who pines for Stephen.

The theme concerns the attempts of Teddy to strip bare the deceptive façades of America’s middle-class, symbolizing what Harold Clurman called “the disenchanted young who spit out their education and take their extravagant adventures to the point of crime.” Despite quibbles over Medoff’s purposes, the critics were in thrall to the intense, beautifully acted and designed drama. “[Y]our attention is held throughout,” observed John Simon, who was gripped by the truthfulness of the characters. Clive Barnes thought it “a fascinating and commanding play. . . . Mr. Medoff writes superbly. . . . [The play] suggests a chilling picture of a lonely, lost America. . . . [I]t has all the genuine suspense of the thrillers it is in effect echoing.”

Walter Kerr was less enthused because to him the work was “an uneasy and often irritating blur of the quasi-symbolic and the unfinished case history.” He did not believe the character of Teddy and found the dramatist guilty of “creating arbitrary suspense.”

Kenneth Frankel’s tight, atmospheric staging was abetted by an ensemble of terrific performances, Kevin Conway, for example, giving “the role of Teddy all the brash, steely, disconcerting shrewdness it demands,” as Edith Oliver described it. (At one point in the run, playwright Medoff himself briefly replaced Conway.)

When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? won an OBIE for Distinguished Play, Medoff was recognized by the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Playwright, Conway and Sturges earned their own OBIEs for Distinguished Performance, while also snaring Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Performance.

A film version, directed by Milton Katselas, appeared in 1979.

Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know, since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.

Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012 through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The 2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was 72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can find these collections on Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Next up: Where Do We Go from Here?

582. WHAT'S A NICE COUNTRY LIKE YOU DOING IN A STATE LIKE THIS? From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Priscilla Lopez, Barry Michlin, Sam Freed, Mary Nealie, Bill LaVallee. (Photo: Bert Andrews.)

WHAT’S A NICE COUNTRY LIKE YOU DOING IN A STATE LIKE THIS? [Musical Revue/Politics] CN: Ira Gasman, Cary Hoffman, and Bernie Travis; M: Cary Hoffman; LY: Ira Gasman; D/CH: Miriam Ford; S: Billy Puzo; C: Danny Morgan; L: Richard Delehanty; P: Budd Friedman; T: Upstage at Jimmy’s (OB): 4/19/73-5/12/74 (543)

A long-running Off-Broadway cabaret revue made up largely of political satire. It moved from Off-Off to Off Broadway and opened to good reviews. Political satire being relatively rare in New York theatre, the critics welcomed it despite its failure to slice as deeply into its subjects as many would have desired.

The well-staged show, with its talent-laden cast, poked at a number of topics, not all overtly political, like fem lib, massage parlors, mayoral races, the commie “menace,” Henry Kissinger, street crime, and theatregoing. The New York company included Sam Freed, Bill La Vallee, Barry Michlin, and—get this—Priscilla Lopez and Betty [Lynn] Buckley, the latter succeeded by Mary Nealie. Several other productions opened elsewhere in the U.S.A. and Canada, with such budding comic stars as Andrea Martin and Martin Short onboard.

Despite its being “too bland” and a “not . . . unduly brilliant example” of the genre, Clive Barnes got a kick out of most of it, while John Simon thought “almost all the laughter . . . , meaningful, therapeutic, even heuristic” (heuristic: enabling someone to discover or learn something for themselves). In Edith Oliver’s opinion, it was “fresh, acute, spirited, and without any second-hand Brechtian bitterness or depression.”

Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know, since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.

Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012 through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The 2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was 72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can find these collections on Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Next up: When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?

581. WHAT THE WINE-SELLERS BUY. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Glynn Turma, Dick Anthony Williams, Loretta Greene, Marilyn B. Coleman. (Photos: Friedman-Abeles.)

WHAT THE WINE-SELLERS BUY [Drama/Drugs/Family/Prostitution/Race] A: Ron Milner; D: Michael Schultz; S: Santo Loquasto; C: Judy Dearing; L: Martin Aronstein; P: New York Shakespeare Festival Lincoln Center; T: Vivian Beaumont Theatre; 2/14/74-3/17/74 (37)

The first Black play to be produced at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, What the Wine-Sellers Buy was originally done Off Broadway and then in Los Angeles. It was given under Joseph Papp’s problematic management during his maiden season at Lincoln Center, during which he tried to bring his socially- conscious producing style to the elites that made up Lincoln Center’s audience base.

An episodic work of “elementary design,” according to Walter Kerr, this was a sentimental, conventional morality tale of good versus evil, set in a Detroit ghetto, telling of the good boy, Steve (Glynn Turman), sidetracked by temptation as represented by the cool, Mephistophelian hustler Rico (Dick Anthony Williams). Steve, needing money for his mother, considers becoming a drug dealer, even being willing to make his adoring girlfriend, Mae (Loretta Greene), a prostitute. Eventually, the significance of his behavior dawns on him and he is able to resist Rico’s ministrations.

Lack of originality was a weak spot noted by Clive Barnes, but he was impressed by the playwright’s lifelike representation of the ghetto milieu, his language, and his characterizations. Milner’s simplistic, righteous, schematic moralizing disturbed Kerr: “A debating society regularity haunts the play.” John Simon and others criticized the effort for its having “only its blackness to set it off from a thousand other such” attempts.

An able company of 23, including Garrett Morris, Marilyn B. Coleman, and Sonny Jim Gaines, smoothly directed by Michael Schultz in a Tony-nominated Santo Loquasto setting, was led by the flashy capering of the dynamic Dick Anthony Williams as the satanic pimp. Williams landed a Tony nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Play, as well as a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance.

Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know, since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.

Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012 through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The 2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was 72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can find these collections on Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Next up: What’s a Nice Country Like You Doing in a State Like This?

580. WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Grayson Hall, Fran Brill, Ronald Drake, Michael Goodwin. (Photo: Martha Swope.)

WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS [Dramatic Revival] A: James M. Barrie; D: Gene Feist; S: Holmes Easley; C: Charles Gelatt; L: Ian Calderon; M: Philip Campanella; P: Roundabout Theatre Company; T: Roundabout Theatre (OB); 5/28/75-7/27/75 (75)

There were few critical voices protesting this revival of British author James M. Barrie’s (Peter Pan) sentimental 1908 play about a wonderfully shrewd though plain young Scotswoman, Maggie Wylie (Fran Brill). Maggie keeps to the background, yet, in her quiet, giving way, controls the destiny of the penniless man she agrees to marry, the politically ambitious but fatuous John Shand (Michael Goodwin). The comedy demonstrated an intrinsic charm that even a less-than-inspiring performance failed to dim.

Clive Barnes, describing he work as “a prime example of the bad well-made play,” nevertheless claimed its craftsmanship was “very respectable.” It was the work’s vapidity that irked him to the point of pronouncing it “stillborn as a modern classic.” John Simon, however, loved its canny contrivances, sweetness “laced with bitter cognizance,” and timely viewpoint.

Gene Feist’s direction—rarely appreciated—was straightforward and unimaginative, but it allowed the play to emerge on its own terms, without intrusive frills. Edith Oliver said the period feeling was intact in the simple, direct mounting. The sets and costumes were attractive, but the acting was a bit bumpy, particularly when it came to the required Scotch burrs. 

Fran Brill was too pretty and charming for the dowdy, charmless Maggie—a charge that could be leveled at other stars in the role, like Maude Adams and Helen Hayes—but her performance was superior to those of her supporting company. Those thespians included Jeff Rubin, Jack Bittner, Ron Frazier, Susan Tabor, Ronald Drake, and, perhaps the best known, Grayson Hall.

Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know, since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.

Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012 through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The 2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was 72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can find these collections on Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Next up: What the Wine-Sellers Buy.

579. WELCOME TO BLACK RIVER. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

WELCOME TO BLACK RIVER [Drama/Alcoholism/Family/Race] A: Samm Willams; D: Dean Irby; P: Negro Ensemble Company; T: St. Marks Playhouse (OB); 5/20/75-5/25/75 (8)

NOTE: no photos are available for this production.

The final production in the month-long Negro Ensemble Company’s “A Season-Within-a-Season” new play festival, written by one of the company’s best young actors, Samm Williams (a.k.a. Samm-Art Williams), was probably the best of the series It seemed to have been “wrenched from the playwright’s hear . . . and experience,” wrote Mel Gussow.

Despite being marred by excessive melodrama, it packed a wallop in its portrayal of a 1958 North Carolina sharecropper family—father (Clayton Corbin), mother (Lea Scott), and two sons (Taurean Blacque and Frankie Faison). The sons are contrasting types, one a bitter, n’er-do-well alcoholic, the other on the dim side. Williams depicts the family crisis centering on the father and his cynical son while creating a threatening world around them involving jujus, hurricanes, and floods.

“Honest emotion and moral fervor,” wrote Gussow, made the play appear worthy of further development.

Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know, since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.

Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012 through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The 2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was 72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can find these collections on Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Next up: What Every Woman Knows.

578. "WELCOME TO ANDROMEDA" and "VARIETY OBIT." From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Andrea Marcovicci, Ronnie Cox. (Photo: Friedman-Abeles.)

"WELCOME TO ANDROMEDA" and "VARIETY OBIT" [One-Acts] A: Ron Whyte; D: Tom Moore; S: Peter Harvey; C: Bruce Harrow; L: Roger Morgan; P: Ruth Kalkstein and Patricia Grey; T: Cherry Lane Theatre (OB); 2/12/73-3/4/73 (24)

“Welcome to Andromeda” [Drama/Invalidism/Two Characters]; “Variety Obit” [Musical/Death/Family/Show Business] M: Mel Marvin; LY: Ron Whyte and Bob Satuloff.

A likable pair of promising one-acts, the first a straight play, the second a musical. “Welcome to Andromeda” presents a cynical, pain-ridden, 21-year-old paraplegic (David Clennon) confined to bed where he is cared for by a nurse (Bella Jarrett). His domineering mother has gone shopping for a birthday cake and champagne. During her absence he uses his witty verbal skills to convince the brainless, alcoholic, middle-aged nurse to have some liquor and give him a shot that will finish him off.

The situation is mildly reminiscent of Whose Life Is It, Anyway?, a hit play that came later in the decade. Intelligent dialogue and effective characterizations marked the play, which Clive Barnes said has “a real force to it.” But there was also a sense of overwriting, what Walter Kerr deemed a lack of “tension” and insufficient exposition, while Edith Oliver pointed to a lack of “fascination and suspense.”

The ten-minute “Variety Obit” traces in mini-musical fashion the history of the Jeffersons, a family of second-rate vaudevillians whose “dynasty,” dating back to the 17th century, makes them the nation’s oldest. It now has come to an end with the death of the last survivor and his obituary in Variety. Bits of narrated biography are introduced with songs (performed by Andrea Marcovicci and Richard Cox).

Barnes thought the interesting idea remained unrealized, though the play had “very pleasant” tunes and a good production. Oliver agreed, suggesting that its major problem was a lack of focus.

Summing up, Barnes reported: "I enjoyed the evening. “Andromeda” is impressive and “Variety Obit” is sweet but half‐baked. Even so, Mr. Whyte's talents, combined with his casts and his stagings, offer one of the most stimulating Off Broadway evenings of the season."

Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know, since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.

Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012 through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The 2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was 72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can find these collections on Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Next up: Welcome to Black River.