All American Century Theater seasons present a special challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to fill a full theatrical season with 20th Century American plays that most of our fellow theaters wouldn’t dare touch with a ten-foot pole, and yet entertain, enlighten, and engage audiences without losing our shirts.
The opportunity is to explore new nooks and crannies in TACT’s unique mission of mining the past for the best of American stage works, and perhaps discovering a masterpiece that through our efforts will reestablish itself as an essential part of the canon.
Finding a great play by one of the acknowledged masters is usually the easiest part of the task, and when Steven Scott Mazzola suggested that he would like to direct The Country Girl by Clifford Odets, that spot was locked up.
Few playwrights from any era wrote characters and dialogue more skillfully than Odets, and having already produced his most problematic play (Paradise Lost), it seemed fitting to put on arguably his best. Like many of our shows, The Country Girl has been overshadowed by its film version, which featured an Academy Award- nominated performance by Bing Crosby as the comebacking stage star, still battling alcoholism, and an Oscar-winning performance by Grace Kelly as his long-suffering wife, Georgie Elgin. The play is better because Odets was writing about the theater; the story is made for the stage. It is the perfect beginning to the season, and will open on September 9th.
Comedies are always hard to find, because their expiration date is often short: what makes us laugh today will often elicit shrugs and yawns in 20 years.
But one the American Century Theater’s goals in pursuing its mission is to honor unique voices and talents from the past, and one of the most perceptive wits ever to stalk the American scene has been fading from memory when perhaps we need him most: cartoonist/satirist/writer Jules Feiffer, still with us at 82, but mostly retired. His dark 1967 comedy Little Murders could almost be a template for an American Century Theater show.
Little Murders tells the story of Patsy, a frighteningly self-assured young over-achiever, who brings home her boyfriend Alfred…a man so passive that he allows himself to be mugged -for hours! – without complaining. The family is a nightmare: Dad is a homophobic Neanderthal (in part out shame that he was named “Carol”); Mom is a religious fanatic, and brother Kenny has more psychological problems that his parents combined. Adding Alfred to this already toxic mix gives Feiffer material to score more satirical points about American neuroses in an evening than was previously believed possible.
The American Century Theater's Artistic Director Jack Marshall.
The comedy lasted only seven performances in its initial Broadway run, but an Off-Broadway revival by Circle in the Square two years later was a sensation (and what a cast: Elliot Gould, Linda Lavin, Vincent Gardenia, Donald Sutherland, and David Steinberg.) That production ran for 400 performances, and won Feiffer an Obie Award.
Now the play is again obscure, and America is crazy once more. Clearly, it was time to bring back Little Murders. Ellen Dempsey will be the director.
It opens January 13, 2012.
As union battles loomed (and later materialized) around the nation, I learned that the stage version of the iconic union film, On the Waterfront, might be available. Budd Schulberg, who wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplay, had turned the movie into a stage play that never managed to be produced the way he wanted it to be. The script includes plot turns that the film director Elia Kazan forced Shulberg to change, so the play presents an exciting opportunity for fans of the film to see what might have been. I like the Schulberg version, and fortunately, so does Director Kathleen Akerley, who agreed to take on the project. On the Waterfront is a contender for the TACT 2012 season’s most exciting production, and it opens March 30th.
The role of religion in American life is fueling a controversy that may reach the boiling point during next fall’s elections, and the part of TACT’s mission that seeks to examine how current issues were treated in the past was matched by the realization that we had never featured work by another prolific 20th Century playwright, Christopher Durang! What a perfect time to re-introduce the funny, frightening and provocative nun of Durang’s creation, Sister Mary Ignatius, to area audiences in his 1979 hit, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You - especially since Helen Hayes Award winning Director Joe Banno wanted to lead the production, and actress Cam McGee wanted to play Sister Mary. As it did with the recent production of Native Son, TACT will pair the comedy – which was the last play to be banned in Boston – with a nightly moderated open forum on the issues, often with theologians, activists and other guests participating.
Sister Mary… returns June 8.
For the season’s grand finale, I felt TACT was overdue for one of its company-imperiling high-wire acts, taking on a production – like Moby Dick Rehearsed, The Cradle Will Rock, or Lady in the Dark - that by its very nature would be dangerous, exciting, and if successful, unforgettable. That meant that I had to get back into the wars myself, and the perfect show revealed itself, of all places, in an obituary, when June Havoc, the movie star sister of Gypsy Rose Lee, died. The original ‘Baby June’had written and directed one play (in 1963) for a limited run on Broadway, and it was acclaimed by critics while breaking all the rules. Titled Marathon ’33, the uncategorizable show recreated her experiences eking out a living as a dance marathon competitor during the Great Depression. With music, songs, vaudeville acts, interlocking plots and, of course, dancing, this nightmarish live reality show is harrowing, shocking and true.
Best of all, it gives me a chance to work with a huge cast, and to turn Gunston’s audiences into the sadistic, voyeuristic onlookers who helped cheer on starving and desperate people as they dances for their lives.
We’re already hard at work on this one. Come see what the result is on July 27th.
The upcoming season of American Century Theater takes some important steps towards several aspects of our mission: brilliant but seldom performed playwrights, social and political perspective from the past, an unearthed stage version of a movie classic, and in Marathon ’33, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a play that defines the term ‘ambitious.’
I’m happy with it. As for audiences and critics – well, we’ll see, won’t we?
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