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Biography: Manhattan Theatre
Club,
March 16, 1980
New York Times, March 17, 1980
Stage: 30's 'Biography' By Behrman
Is Revived
By WALTER KERR
Ellen Terry once complained to George Bernard
Shaw that a part he'd written for her simply didn't
suit her, whereupon Shaw — in righteous wrath —
responded that he might not be a great playwright
but that he was an excellent ladies' tailor. S. N.
Behrman was also a very good ladies' tailor when he
chose to be, and, in the course of a long, busy and
consistently graceful career, he provided Ina Claire
with several svelte, snugly fitting vehicles that
did the immaculate actress no harm at all.
"Biography," which the Manhattan Theater Club has
taken off the rack in the closet for the first time
in 47 years, is the most memorable of these, and I
am still mourning the fact that I didn't see it on
his first trip around. (The Great Depression was at
its worst in 1933, and even the price of a
second-balcony seat — 85 cents — was hard to come
by.)
* *
*
Thus I made my way to the current revival on East
73d Street with two things in mind. Having no
memories to haunt me and no idle comparisons to
make, I simply wanted to see what that normally
challenging actress, Piper Laurie, might do with a
part that had once been draped about an indelible
star. And I wanted to see what "Biography" might be
like in its own silken maneuverings. I must now
confess to disappointment, if not distress, in both
quests.
The Manhattan Theater Club is a workshop where all
performers are theoretical equals, and director
Lynne Meadow has scrupulously avoided pinning a
"star" label on Miss Laurie, though Miss Laurie —
with her various Emmy and Oscar nominations — is
obviously the company's best-known performer. Her
name does not appear above the title; it merely
turns up on the cast list in the routine "order of
appearance." There's been no special promotion to
say that her dropping by is any sort of event.
* *
*
At the same time Miss Meadow is aware that the
play is a vehicle, and so has carefully arranged for
a "star" entrance. After three members of the
supporting company have exchanged desultory and/or
impatient conversation while waiting for the lady's
overview arrival, the upstage center door is flung
open to reveal the purple-and-violet object of all
desire, caught flinging a scarf about her throat and
shoulder, then freezing into a
first-prize-at-the-fair posture that will trigger
sustained applause. Gertrude Lawrence used to do
that, I don't know about Ina Claire.
There's just one thing askew here: no applause. The
spectators out front don't applaud — leaving Miss
Laurie with a lot of dead air around her — because
they haven't been told what to expect. Even as they
watch the ostentatious moment, they can't be certain
of its intended tone. Is the production mocking the
old-fashioned business of giving the condescending
star a prolonged welcome? Or is it putting on a bit
of a show for the benefit of the other characters?
We honestly don't know, and — early as it is the
evening's difficulties begin right here.
* *
*
But first a word about the apparition we're
looking at. Miss Laurie is ravishing, her skin
translucent alongside her auburn marcel wave (we're
in the early 30's, remember), her profile right off
the drawing board of James Montgomery Flagg (and you
hope that no pen-stroke will ever mar that exquisite
nose). When she moves, she moves in a peach-tinted
glow, rather as though a follow-spot were keeping
her helpful company; but there isn't any
follow-spot, the glow is built in (perhaps amplified
a bit by Pat Collins's overhead lighting). Visually,
she's a stunner, roughly two to three times as
striking as she was the last time you saw her on
television or film. Wherever you're sitting, you've
got a seat with a view.
She does move and speak, however, and as she does
some mysterious things happen. Her light, hurried
voice begins to do roller-coaster dips and turns on
each and every speech, and you notice that she's
listening to her own vocal arabesques rather than
focusing her attention on her various lovers. (She's
a painter, and her romantic life has been "casual,
but not evil.") Shortly, her hands leap into action
like so many uncaged birds, matching her busy vocal
rhythms exactly. You feel that she is doing
semaphore, or possibly diagraming her own sentences.
* *
*
Puzzling, since we know that the actress can act.
Not quite so puzzling, though, as we attend to new
arrivals: a film actor with whom she's had an affair
(this chap seems all of 12 years old, though big for
his age); a would-be senator with whom she's also
had an affair (he thinks he'd like to be painted
with an American flag propped up on his right hand);
the politician's new fiancée (massive Southern
accent, though Diane Warren makes the girl likable)
and the fiancée’s father (who might be interested in
an affair himself).
One and all, together with the socially angry young
man who is trying to persuade Miss Laurie to write
the story of her life and liaisons, are patently
uncertain of the style they are expected to adopt.
What sort of play is "Biography"? Actually, it's
drawing-room comedy, even if the young rebel insists
that "Life is not a drawing room" and even if the
comings and goings take place in a skylighted studio
infested with Japanese umbrellas and the requisite
amount of 1930's fringe.
* *
*
The language, when you can get through to it, is
polished, easy, unpretentiously civilized. When the
politician protests that he loves his fiancée with
every fiber of his being, Miss Laurie comments
admiringly, "Every fiber! How thorough!" And when
the young man departs after having extracted a
promise that the painter will begin work on her
memoirs, Miss Laurie suddenly calls out "You can't
go away and leave me like this — alone with my
life!" No strain there. Just nice.
But, except for Stefan Schnabel as an aging,
impoverished musician and Barbara Lester as Miss
Laurie's understanding housekeeper, no one will play
the piece with an unpressurized urbanity. Almost
everyone goes at it hammer and tongs, lower jaws
jutting forward, arms thrashing as though in
possession of a lethal baseball bat. You can see
that the play could be successfully gentled when Mr.
Schnabel draws Miss Laurie onto a sofa beside him,
and simply talks to her. The conversation now
becomes conversation, and is attractive. But most of
the time "Biography" is being attacked as hopelessly
contrived farce, and I'm afraid "attacked" is the
operative word.
Has director Meadow feared that without a
considerable hype the nearly 50-year-old play would
dissolve into dust? Win or lose, I think she should
have trusted it more.
Biography: Manhattan Theatre
Club,
March 16, 1980 |
