Rage and Profanity on the Upper West Side

Seminar at the John Golden Theater

            The new play Seminar, written by Theresa Rebeck, is the work of a creative angry with the process.  In the course of the production writers are called “feral cats” and “talented nobodies” and the process of writing a novel is generally scorned and bemoaned.  However, it’s also the work of a writer who truly admires her fellow writers and what they go through every day, and who looks at the process of writing as more than putting words on a page, but as the shaping of a language into something profound and beautiful, something even the feral cats can be proud of.

            Beyond the written word of the script, though, the play belongs to Alan Rickman, the internationally-renowned actor who is perhaps best known for portraying Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series, and whose low, gravelly, and extremely British voice has him eternally typecast as the misunderstood villain.  In person Rickman is more powerful than imaginable on the screen.  The lines spill from his mouth with great fluidity of motion and spirit, and when in the midst of a rant (as his character, private writing teacher Leonard, usually is), he leans forward as if he must put extra strength behind the delivery for it to hit home.  We don’t need it, though, as we’re already in thrall of the ability we see on the stage.     

            Writing, as many such behind-the-scenes stories have told us, is depressing, and the four young adults who’ve signed up for Leonard’s class are no exception to the writers’ rule.  Kate (Lily Rabe), a bespectacled twenty-something who’s been working on the same Jane Austen homage for six years, is the patron of the ten weekly meetings in her massive apartment her parents rent to her for eight hundred dollars a month and can’t handle Leonard spewing abuse at her mediocre work.  Martin (Hamish Linklater) is a cowardly and poor deadbeat living in Queens who can’t bear for anyone to see his work, let alone his teachers.  Izzy (Hetienne Park) is the pathetic Martin’s love interest and a proponent of Asian eroticism in writing to get ahead.  She’s provocative enough to first sleep with Leonard and then Martin after he tells her she could do much better than Rickman’s character.  Finally, there’s the effeminately dressed Douglas (Jerry O’Connell, who played quarterback Frank Cushman in Jerry Maguire), whose father’s name is so familiar in literary circles he can get his work published in The New Yorker even if it is, in Leonard’s words, “whorish.” The individual whirlwind depressions of the four collide explosively under Leonard’s tutelage as they struggle not to insult each other’s work and to keep their own from Leonard’s critical eyes.

            Leonard has his own problems.  He’s gone through the novelist’s paces (he describes writing your second novel as “the ninth circle of Hell”) before his career trailed off and he ended up teaching university creative writing classes and then being accused of plagiarism by one of his students.  He was then forced to take on editing and private teaching jobs and found himself to be good at them.  Unfortunately for his private pupils, though, his style can be a little intense, and it’s not long in the six-room apartment before tensions arise and all present are forced to address them.

            Though a little pretentious and including nudity and expletives for their own sake in places, the script is perfectly acceptable, and anyway it’s not the words you’re thinking of but the thought behind them.  The actors deliver the lines like writers, walk like writers, and act like writers.  It’s a writers’ play that can only be called great because of the actors.  In this way it’s almost like a meeting in the middle, a compromise between the cast and creators to achieve something that is fully worth seeing.

Up in the Air

Boeing-Boeing at the Paper Mill Playhouse

 

            The classic 1960 French farce Boeing-Boeing, written by Marc Camoletti and the most performed French play in the world, is playing through February 12 at the Paper Mill Playhouse, where it is rightly well-received.  The play, which played on the West End for seven years and was revived twice on Broadway, follows an American-turned-Parisian architect whose blissful lifestyle depends on the timetables of the three major airlines.  He’s got it all figured out, as he explains to his houseguest, an old college friend—polygamy.  But polygamy on a schedule; that is to say, polygamy with three flight attendants, one of whom is always up, one of whom is always down, and one of whom is always pending.

            Said playboy, Bernard (Matt Walton in this production, but famously played in the 1965 film by Tony Curtis), is simultaneously engaged to independent American hostess Gloria (Heather Parcells), possessive Italian Gabriella (Brynn O’Malley) and forceful and fiercely patriotic German Gretchen (Anne Horak).  He juggles them constantly and throws their nationalities around like he’s referring to his car collection “My German/My Italian/My American.”  Each day the menu and decorations change with the help of his overworked housekeeper Berthe (Beth Leavel), whose heavily French-accented catchphrase is “It isn’t easy, you know.”  Things go perfectly smoothly, as Bernard is all too happy to show off to his Wisconsinite college buddy Robert (John Scherer).  But as the schedule is torn to pieces by the four Rolls-Royce engines of the Super Boeing, which goes fast enough to land all three fiancés in his Paris apartment at once, Bernard, Berthe, and a reluctant Robert are forced to drive themselves crazy arranging it so that the wives-to-be never meet.         

            Boeing-Boeing is fast-paced, exciting, and hysterically funny.  Robert is new to this world of immorality, as he constantly complains, comparing and contrasting his apparent new lifestyle to that of his Midwestern home, and the audience is drawn in, too, but in a different way—with interest.  We legitimately want to see what happens.  It’s not painful comedy like Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the spectator feels so uncomfortable with the main character’s problems that they’re tempted to cover their eyes and curl up in the fetal position.  It’s more similar to the easygoing but still entertaining comedy of the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera or, especially, Room Service.  We feel empathetic towards Robert and Bernard as their timetables fall to pieces, but not so much so that we wish it would end.  In fact, we wish it would go on much, much longer.

            The cast works so well together that they resemble a well-oiled machine.  When one attendant walks out, another walks in, and the imperative for Bernard’s operation is that none enter a room at the same time.  This makes for some odd strategies interpreted by the foreign air hostesses to be a symptom of Americanism, and for Gloria a symptom of the disease that is the unwelcome guest.  Robert must immediately claim rooms occupied by competing fiancés, such as the room where Bernard and his current female companion usually sleep, or must cut in line for the bathroom when the American is taking a bath and the Italian wants one herself. 

            The comedy in some ways resembles slapstick.  When Berthe first realizes that all three attendants are in the flat together, she screams and collapses, causing Bernard and Robert to collapse themselves into stress-induced tears.  In this campaign even Robert is overworked, and it shows.  While he’s trying to warn Bernard to leave for the country with the Italian before Bernard has realized their new problem, his face turns red and his hair flops wildly around as he jumps and makes what may seem to be ridiculous insistences.  But at the end of it all, faces return to normal color, Berthe is happy with her new 30% raise (long story), and the two men relax on the couch and open a bottle of champagne each.  They’re happy it’s over, but we’re happy we were there to enjoy the ride.