565. VERONICA'S ROOM. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Arthur Kennedy, Eileen Heckart. (Photos: Martha Swope.)

VERONICA’S ROOM [Drama/Crime/Death/Mystery] A: Ira Levin; D: Ellis Rabb; S: Douglas W. Schmidt; C: Nancy Potts; L: John Gleason; P: Morton Gottlieb; T: The Music Box; 10/25/73-12/29/73 (73)

Note: Because of a mix-up in the manuscript, the alphabetical order followed by this series was disrupted when I skipped the V section and jumped to the W’s instead. Today’s entry returns to the V’s and will get to the rest of the W’s, not to mention the Y’s (there are no X’s and Z’s) in due time.

Arthur Kennedy, Eileen Heckart, Regina Baff, Kipp Osborne. 

A young woman named Susan (Regina Baff), out at restaurant with a new boyfriend (Kipp Osborne), meets an elderly servant couple (Arthur Kennedy and Eileen Heckart). Susan is convinced by them to come to their home near Boston, where their senile old employer, a woman, is dying, and to impersonate her long-dead sister, Veronica, whom Susan closely resembles. Susan goes along, dresses in Veronica’s 1930s clothes, and prepares to meet the old lady, but finds instead that she is locked in her room, that the servants are Veronica’s parents, that the boyfriend is a psychiatrist of sorts, that everyone behaves as if it were 1935 instead of 1973, and that she cannot convince them of the contrary. Finally, beaten and stripped naked, she is carried away by the young man for some unnamed, but clearly foul, purpose.

Implausibility, poor construction, timeworn dramatic devices, and vague motivations were among the charges leveled at the play, written by one of the most successful mystery writers of the era (Rosemary’s Baby, Deathtrap). An appropriately spooky Gothic design scheme and four capable performers—two with significant name recognition and professional respect—could not rescue this unthrilling thriller from such barbs as Jack Kroll’s: “It is laughably mechanical and as embarrassing as a sunken-eyed, foul-breathed English professor confiding his sado-masochistic dreams in the college cafeteria. . . . Levin mucks up; such pristine ingredients as incest, insanity, ritual murder and necrophilia.”

A program note requested that theatregoers not disclose the plot. Clive Barnes responded, “Their secret will be safe with me. There were times when it looked pretty much safe with the playwright.”

Barnes said of the acting, “As Susan or Veronica, Regina Baff was most impressive. She beat against fate like a spunky little sparrow, and her mixture of frenzy, and reason was nicely judged. Eileen Heckert and Arthur Kennedy are very polished as her friends and tormentors. Miss Heckert is malicious in her modulation, throwing away asides with acidulated panache, and Mr. Kennedy, more bluff and blustering, provides her with a subtle contrast. Kipp Osborne as the young man in Susan's life, perhaps goes too far at the end. But then so did the young man.”

Regina Baff was Tony-nominated as Best Supporting Actress, Play, and Douglas W. Schmidt won a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Scenic Designer.

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. 

 

565. WE BOMBED IN NEW HAVEN. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

John Wardwell, Steven Keats, Raina Barrett, J.R. Marks, James Doerr. (Photo: Bert Andrews.)

WE BOMBED IN NEW HAVEN [Dramatic Revival] A: Joseph Heller; D: Peter John Bailey; S: Robert U. Taylor; L: Thomas Skelton; P: The Bomb Haven Co.; T: Circle in the Square (OB); 9/14/72 (1)

An idiosyncratic revival of Joseph Heller’s respected but unsuccessful 1968 satire about the toll of human life taken by war, and the difficulty of media-viewing audiences in recognizing the tragic dimensions of what they routinely see on their screens.

Taking its hint from the author’s Pirandellian equation of the stage of drama with the stage of life, this production went overboard in pointing up the metaphorical connection and offered “a grievous insult to the play,” growled Clive Barnes. Heavily stylized, lacking in Heller’s parodic tone, poorly acted, and consistently emphasizing rather than disguising the play’s weaknesses, the show bombed in Greenwich Village, closing in one night, and seems never to have been revived locally again.

Among the 14 names in the cast were James Doerr, Richard Kline, Gary Springer, J.R Marks, and Raina Barrett, the latter perhaps the best known because of her being in the original cast of Oh! Calcutta!

Note: Because of a problem with the original manuscript, the alphabetical sequence of entries was disrupted and the titles jumped from the U’s to the W’s, omitting the V’s. The correct alphabetical sequence will resume with the next entry.

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: Veronica’s Room.

 

564. THE WAY OF THE WORLD. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

John Woodvine.

THE WAY OF THE WORLD [Dramatic Revival] A: William Congreve; D: David William; S: Karen Mills; L: Howard Eldridge; CH: Geraldine Stephenson; P: Brooklyn Academy of Music i/a/w Brooklyn College in the Actors Company Production; T: Brooklyn Academy of Music (OB); 2/13/74-2/24/74 (5)

This quintessential example of Restoration comedy, one of the wittiest, if most complexly plotted, of the genre, was produced during a four-play repertory season offered by England’s Acting Company at BAM. Several actors who would go on to fine careers were involved, with an especially brilliant future in store for Ian McKellen. Interestingly, this being a repertory company where the star of one production could be cast in a throwaway role in another, McKellen's character here was Lady Wishfort's footman.

David Williams’s production moved the time frame up to turn-of-the-century England. He staged it as it were a Wildean, rather than Congrevian, comedy. Edwardian manners replaced Restoration ones, cutaways and top hats took over from breeches and waistcoats, and telephone book stood in for a function once served by a messenger. Other anachronisms included a gramophone, a chauffeur, cigarettes, and even a few contemporary references. Some critics carped that these changes were gratuitous.

Overall, it was played broadly, often bordering on farce, which pleased some critics who thought it great fun, if sometimes over the top. Mel Gussow blamed the excesses on the actors, and Douglas Watt on the director, but both leaned toward forgiveness. Not so Edith Oliver, who found much of the dialogue inaudible and was vexed by the production’s “hokum.” “What Congreve would have made of it I cannot imagine. . . . All in all, a depressing evening.”

Oliver did admire several performances, among them Robin Ellis’s Fainall, Edward Petherbridge’s Mirrabel, and Caroline Blakiston’s Millamant, and John Woodvine's Sir Wilful Witwoud. John Simon was less enthralled, disliking the acting, direction, and design.

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: We Bombed in New Haven

563. THE WATER HEN. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Joey Fitter, Wil Albert, James Cahill. (Photos: Alan B. Tepper.)

THE WATER HEN [Comedy/Family/Polish] A: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz; TR: Daniel C. Gerould; D: Carl Weber; S: Fred Kouloch; C: Theodora Skipitares; L: Richard M. Devin; M: William Bolcom; P: Chelsea Theatre Center of Brooklyn; T: Chelsea Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music (OB); 5/9/72-5/28/72 (211)

Paul Sparer, Garn Stephens. 

Never before produced in New York, The Water Hen, a 1921 comedy by Polish avant-garde painter-writer Stanislaw Witkiewicz, who killed himself in 1939, is a surrealistic farce written in a potently imagistic style that preceded many of the theatricalist experiments of later years. Called “one of the maddest, yet oddly likable, plays ever penned,” by Clive Barnes, this offbeat, funny work was effectively staged by Carl Weber for Brooklyn’s Chelsea Theatre Center.

Dealing with dreams, revolution, and the theme of the disintegration of the old order in the face of the new, The Water Hen plays freely with time and space in a non-rational, nonlinear, plot about  an eternally fascinating, ever-younger woman named Elizabeth Gutzie-Virgeling (Garn Stephens), known as the Water Hen, who continued to bewitch a family over a period of three generations. While often humorous, its “tortuous” structure and “almost willfully careless” writing annoyed Barnes.

Paul Sparer, Joseph Leon, and Patricia Elliott were among the cast members.

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: The Way of the World.

562. THE WARS OF THE ROSES. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

THE WARS OF THE ROSES [Dramatic Revival] [See my earlier entries for The Chronicle of Henry VI and Richard III (1) for production details and photos]

Joseph Papp inaugurated the 15th season of free Shakespeare in Central Park by producing four Shakespeare chronical plays on alternating evenings with the series covered by the single title, The Wars of the Roses. The plays were compressed into three, with Henry VI, Parts I and II fused to form The Chronicle of King Henry VI, Part I; Henry VI, Parts II and III blended to create The Chronicle of King Henry VI, Part II; and Richard III performed essentially intact. A similar concept (with Richard III) had been successful in John Barton and Peter Hall’s English adaptation in 1964.

To publicize the financially strapped program, Papp had all three dramas produced in a single marathon performance on opening night, June 23, 1970. The 12-hour production lasted until 6:45 a.m. and nearly 90 percent of the reported 3,000 people remained throughout, although it’s not clear how that many people could even have squeezed into the Delacorte’s 1,800 seats, despite damp air and temperatures in the mid-50s. Sleeping bags, blankets, and picnic provisions were everywhere to be seen. At one point, a character got a laugh when he spoke a line about it being 4:00 a.m. and the audience’s watches read 4:03. The production concluded with a visit from the cast of the long-running musical, Hair, singing (do I have to say it?), “Let the Sun Shine In.”

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: The Water Hen.

 

561. WARP I: MY BATTLEFIELD, MY BODY. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Andre De Shields.

WARP I: MY BATTLEFIELD, MY BODY [Comedy-Drama/Fantasy/Science-Fiction] A: Bury St. Edmund and Stuart Gordon; D: Stuart Gordon; S: Robert Guerra; C: Laura Crow, Cookie Gluck; L: Jane Reisman; M: William J. Norris, Richard Fire; P: Anthony D’Amato i/a/w the Organic Theatre Company; T: Ambassador Theatre; 2/14/73-2/18/73 (7)

A sci-fi, high-camp fantasy brought to New York by Chicago’s Organic Theatre Company and promised as the first of a trilogy. The latter two parts, though, never saw the lights of Broadway after Warp I died. This well-done, multimedia creation offered Broadway “a serious parody of all the space-fiction, super-hero comic books of the Pow-Zap-Wow school,” reported Clive Barnes. Its vivid melodramatic comic-book style was not enough to draw the type of audience needed to survive on the Main Stem.

The play performed by this acrobatic, athletic, and attractive young troupe was about David Carson (John Heard), a schizoid bank teller whose other self is Lord Cumulus, a heroic fifth-dimension warrior who strives to conquer the super arch-villain Prince Chaos (Tom Towles). In his fantasy world his girlfriend on earth, Mary Louise (Carolyn Gordon), becomes the evil seductress Valaria, whom he must vanquish before tackling Prince Chaos. Lord Cumulus fights his enemies by the force of his concentrated brain power.

Costumes, sound effects, settings (arrangements of ramps and platforms), and spectacular lighting made the experience technically dazzling, providing an accurate impression of the comic-book style that it also gently mocked. “[P]rojections, puffs of smoke, flashes of fire, a whining electric organ and electronic roars and crashes,” as Douglas Watt observed, created a lot of sound and fury that most critics felt signified nothing. Barnes declared, “We life in a junk world and this is junk art. Beautifully cooked—but junk.”

Among the cast members was Andre De Shields in the role of Desi Arnez.

Laura Crow and Cookie Gluck were honored with Drama Desk Awards as Most Promising Costume Designers.

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: The Wars of the Roses.

560. WANTED. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

June Gable, Frank Coppola. (Photo: Friedman-Abeles.)

WANTED [Musical/Crime] B: David Epstein; M/LY: Al Carmines; D: Laurence Kornfeld; S: Paul Zalon; C: Linda Giese; L: Roger Morgan; P: Arthur D. Zinberg; T: Cherry Lane Theatre (OB); 1/19/72-3/26/72 (79)

Al Carmines, the prolific minister-composer-lyricist-performer, had been writing tuneful, energetic, campy musicals for the Off-Off Broadway Judson Poets Theatre for years and had developed a devoted following. Now and then one of his shows would move to a commercial Off-Broadway venue, such being the case with Wanted, originally seen at Carmines’s home base in September 1971.

This satire on American right-wing politics centered on the figures of such iconographic Robin Hood-like outlaws as Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Ma Barker, and John Dillinger. In Wanted their pursuit by gay FBI chief Jacob Hooper (get it?) glorifies them as heroes for their stand “against poor law and indifferent order,” wrote Clive Barnes. He loved the show for its many laughs and stimulating thesis, but also for Carmines’s lyrics, which “move with a lopsided grace and simple dexterity.” As usual, Carmines’s music was wildly eclectic. “It restores the art of the musical to the Off Broadway theatre,” Barnes concluded.

Walter Kerr advised, “I do believe you’ll like it.” Not everyone felt that way, however. John Simon (as so often) dissented, describing the music as “thinner than ever,” the lyrics as “genuine dumbness,” the book as “condignly effete,” and the “informing spirit . . . simplistic and flaccid.”

The cast included Andra Akers, Reathel Bean, Jerry Clark, Cecilia Clark, Frank Coppola, June Gable, Merwin Goldsmith, Lee Guilliatt, John Kuhner, Peter Lombard, Stuart Silver, and Gretchen van Aken.

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: Warp I: My Battlefield, My Body