In the Theatre Row complex, the KEEN Company is presenting the first-ever New York revival of Paddy
Chayefsky’s Middle of the
Night. It was originally
billed as a comedy, I guess to assure audiences that the ending isn’t a downer
(that would make it a comedy in its most academic, classic sense, but I don’t
think comedy as a potentially low-laugh designation has been colloquially valid
for centuries), but it’s really another one of the author’s examination of the
quiet desperation of lonely people. In this case, the two in front-and-center
focus are a 26-year-old woman (Nicole Lowrence) who wants to leave an oppressive marriage to a man who barely speaks
to her except for admittedly good sex, which no longer substitutes for
emotional contact; and a middle aged widower (Jonathan Hadary) who prefers the ache of loneliness to fix-ups with
depressingly desperate women of his own age and merely-physical relationships
with women he can’t bring himself to love. It’s not hard for them to find each
other: she’s a secretary who works for his company, and one day he shows up at
her mother’s apartment (where she is taking refuge from hubby) to pick up some
receipts she was holding from the office…and they start talking, really
talking, making a connection they never planned to make…and thus begins the
May-December romance that must fight to survive despite flummoxed and
disapproving families.
In
the harsher light of not-quite-60 years after its debut, Middle of the Night is far tamer fare than it might have seemed in the
50s (first on Broadway with Edward G. Robinson and Gena Rowlands; then on
television with E.G. Marshall and Eva Marie Saint; finally on film with
Frederic March and Kim Novak) but it’s far more candid and psychologically
enlightened than you might expect for its era; and the dialogue, while rarely overtly
clever, has the soft wit of well-observed authenticity.
The
direction by Jonathan Silverman is
decent but tonally inconsistent, veering from the verité of nuanced human
behavior to the broader strokes of archetype, but much of that has to do with a
(budget-minded?) double casting scheme. Except for the two leads, who are
pitch-perfect, their respective families-and-friends are played by the same
actors. They’re unable to differentiate without asserting some kind of stark
contrast, they’re usually better suited to one role than the other, and in a
naturalistic setting it draws attention to itself more than it works.
Still,
near-miraculously, his regard for the material is such that the play somehow
survives the unsubtle misstep, and Mr. Chayesfsky is well, if not brilliantly,
served.
Go to David Spencer's Profile
Return to Home Page