AISLE SAY New York

PROBLEM PLAYS ABOUT PROBLEM COUPLES

Reviewed by David Spencer

This cross-pollenates an end-of-last-season entry with a start-of-the-new-season entry, but I think in a way there's thematic connection between these two plays…anyway, I think of them as an unofficial set sometimes, because they bring with them some core problems that threaten your suspension of disbelief by gradually/suddenly making you aware that there's a writer at work manipulating the characters down an unlikely path. And what saves these plays, when they are saved, which is usually, is the most careful balance of tonal elements, direction and casting. Which are always, of course, crucial, but if your thesis is that a deeply problematic relationship can lead to a happy ending—if only you embrace its core craziness—they're especially so. Anyway, you'll see whaty I mean. I hope.

I always remember Burn This as a play I have trouble with, though as I check my older reviews about Lanford Wilson’s play—dramatizing an unlikely attraction between a NYC dancer-choreographer and a bull-in-a-china-shop restauranteur from New Jersey—it seems that it gave me the most trouble way back upon its 1987 Broadway debut, and then largely because I found its original star, John Malkovich, so disturbing. Since then, I’ve seen more recognizably human guys in the role—Scott Glenn as the first Broadway replacement and, a decade or so later, Edward Norton in an off-Broadway revival—and I always have the experience of reconsidering the piece. But, with the current Broadway revival being my fourth go, I wonder what actually keeps me boomeranging back to square one and having to be cajoled all over again.

            And I think it’s that Wilson upends the usual-satisfaction formula. In most romantic comedies where a woman’s focus is split between two men, there’s the guy she patently should not be with and the guy we know she should be with. What distinguishes them can be any number of factors, depending upon characterization and character chemistry, but one thing is unequivocal: the wrong guy feels wrong to us, and the right guy feels right.

            But in Wilson’s play, the most sensible guy for Anna (Keri Russell) to be with is up-and-coming, stable screenwriter Burton (David Furr). Even her gay roommate Larry (Brandon Uranowitz) knows this. The insane idea is for her to choose Pale (Adam Driver) who is not violent, but volatile, married, foul-mouthed and overbearing. (His connection to her is that he's the brother of her recently-deceased artistic partner and his polar type opposite: a gay, male ballet dancer and choreographer.)

            However, Wilson’s play isn’t about the semi-logic of love; rather, it’s about giving over to animal-mixed-with-emotional passion. He would never hurt her, and somehow she knows how to wrangle him, and thus they bumpily navigate each other. And the ending is not necessarily happily ever after; it’s more this is who we are and it is what it is for now…

            And that can be unsettling. And there’s only one thing that saves it. And I think it’s what has saved it each time.

            Pale simply has to be funny. He has to be so funny in his gruffness that we see what makes him vulnerable, and laughter in this context trumps common sense.

            And in this production, Pale is spectacularly funny. Not in the sense of laboring the humor, but in terms of landing joke after joke, Adam Driver is a pile driver. So much so that, not in a selfish way, but an inevitable way, because director Michael Mayer has allowed it thus, he shifts the balance of any scene that he’s in toward himself. The others, in particular Ms. Russell, stay out of his way and expertly provide the "feed."

            And as an audience member, you give over to the comedy. And then, speaking for myself, there’s the aftermath. I write the review, surprised to have had a better time than I thought; and I may well forget that in time, because humor has taken me to a weird place, and even with new realization, I wonder if memory will let that weird accommodation stick. Otherwise back I'll go to the next revival, years from now, expecting not to like it again, because Burn This isn’t a comfortable play…

            …and on some level, I think that’s the effect Wilson intended.

For different reasons, the exact same boomeranging happens to me with Terrance McNally’s two-hander, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. I went to look up what I thought would be my review of the previous revival…and as it happens, I didn’t write that one. I'd forgotten that I farmed it out to a colleague and friend named Richard Gleaves, and probably did so because I was apprehensive of an old prejudice kicking in, and I wanted the review to come from someone with a clean perspective. Also a gay perspective, for reasons that will become clear.

            This is excerpted from Richard’s 2002 review of the previous Broadway revival that starred Stanley Tucci and Edie Falco. When he refers to his companion for the evening…that was me:

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, currently playing at the Belasco Theater is an exceedingly attractive production of an exceedingly slight play. HBO's Carmela Soprano Edie Falco stars as Frankie, the Hell's Kitchen waitress of playwright Terrance McNally's modern romantic fantasy. Co-star Stanley Tucci is Johnny -- the short order cook who seemingly berates Frankie into loving him.

The pair are terrific together, and well worth seeing. They both bring to their roles a certain star quality that nevertheless avoids upstaging the characters they play; and besides being extremely attractive in the roles, they're also extremely attractive when 'rolling' -- the sex scenes and nudity are nicely understated and intimate. Ms. Falco and Ms. Tucci have a great chemistry together, perhaps explained by their common artistic roots as students of George Morrison at SUNY Purchase. Bravo to both.

The 'Clair de Lune' of the title is Debussy's famous piano piece, unnamed in the text, which plays on the radio twice and seems to represent the longing of the lovers for beauty in their lives. The play's title specifies that Frankie and Johnny are in the 'Clair de Lune' -- a curious choice of words and perhaps a bit of wishful thinking on the part of the playwright. These damaged characters may long to be floating inside the world of those serene notes, but ultimately they remain outside as flawed and unfulfilled observers.

Let me explain.

Frankie, the immovable object, has met Johnny, the irresistible force. The play begins by revealing the two enjoying passionate sex on the night of their first date. Afterwards, Johnny refuses to leave Frankie's apartment without first wresting from her some permanent connection. The text progresses from post-coital small talk to badgering and ultimately to romantic imagery and love, but Frankie is always on defense, Johnny is always on offence. The effect is somewhat like watching a persistent office worker harangue his boss into giving him a raise. One feels as though Frankie ultimately surrenders out of exhaustion, or because her will cannot compete with Johnny's greater conviction.

There are also odd undertones of misogyny and homosexual wish-fulfillment in the text (my companion found them to be largely mitigated by the performances in this revival as compared to the original production, in which he thought they were extremely distracting). 'Frankie and Johnny' is a fantasy about the ultimate one-night stand -- in which the partners 'connect' in such a grand way that love is the inevitable result of the few hours they've spent together. But while the pair do seem as if they would be good couple given time, the author's urgency to make everything happen in one night adds a whiff of pathology to the proceedings. Johnny seems a little scary. The misogynistic undertone stems from multiple references in the text to men battering women, Frankie's admission of having been a battering victim herself, and from the sense that -- when all is said and done -- Frankie has been battered into loving submission by Johnny. It all just feels a little too dysfunctional to be taken seriously as a happy story of modern lovers.

The direction (Joe Mantello) and production values of this revival are excellent. The evocative set by John Lee Beatty is beautifully lit by 2002 Tony Winner Brian MacDevitt. By all accounts, this is an ideal revival of this play.

But the play itself falls short of its desires. It wants to sanctify, glorify and transcend its raw material -- the waitress, the cook, their lives, their pasts. But however much we may also want to believe the fantasy, however much our hearts may also want to float serenely within the most beautiful music ever written, our heads can't help but remind us: when the music stops, Frankie and Johnny will be left with each other, and real life. Outside the Claire de Lune.

So…now we come to the current revival. Here’s what I don’t feel: Again, I did not get the vibe of “homosexual wish fulfillment,” but I did recognize where the play had originally triggered that impression (when I saw the original off-Broadway production with replacement performers Carol Kane and Bruce Weitz, both then hot off Taxi and Hill Street Blues). And I didn’t exactly feel as if Frankie was being psychologically pummeled into submission, but I sure did feel that she had very little chance to hold her own, and was grabbing at the ground she had; but perhaps that’s McNally’s intention.

            Nonetheless, I also felt as if maybe, this time, the romance had more of a chance of surviving, and that there were interesting ideas about togetherness, partnership and the meaning of intimacy beyond sex; ideas with which I never remember having come away from the play before. Why do I find it newer and fresher in this way?

            Older and wiser and surviving in a very long-term relationship plays a part. Stuff resonates differently.

            Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon bringing different values to it than I’d seen before; their Frankie and Johnny seem both smarter about life and more defeated by it, and the struggle to find balance just seems hotter, realer.

            But finally, also…this is the first time the play has been directed in a mainstream NYC production by a woman, Arin Arbus. That alone has to have fed into the new values being explored—and maybe that’s why Frankie has more “teeth”…and Johnny seems ultimately sweeter than scary; ultimately “only” insistent but never (or rarely, and never on purpose) crossing the line into creepy.

            My one caveat is a small one. At the beginning, after Frankie and Johnny rise from the bed, Ms. Arbus has Frankie walk into the bathroom and sit on the commode, implicitly to have a pee. Good. Realistic. Nice touch.

            And then, with that reality established, Johnny never has a pee himself. All that bedroom activity; then they share a meal, drinking milk, then eventually they go back to bed, then intermission, then the second act begins with him getting out of bed embarrassed and frustrated that he couldn’t get hard “on demand” this time around—

            —Under those circumstances, any man would be impotent if he hadn’t had a whizz for almost four hours. And not a little bit in pain. As an observer, that’s not something I want to be thinking about.

            If you’re going to play it real, as in all other aspects the two actors and director so admirably do…little dishonesties like that threaten verisimilitude; especially in a play so tricky as this one. And getting such a detail right would be…well, it would be a relief…           

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