Nice Tallulah zingers here and there, but they could have left out the rest of the play and just forwarded the zingers in email.

Valerie Harper mangles the Tallulah style.  She plays her all drunk and vulgar.  If you go to YouTube and check out a few clips of the real Tallulah, you’ll see the real woman may have been drunk, and may have had some salty things on her mind, but she was a very graceful, classy presence.  Which is exactly why – hellooo! – she could pull off being loose and addicted and still be interesting.  Somehow that little gem of characterization got lost on this team.

But that isn’t the worst of it.  The worst is that, for no reason except that it may apparently be a gay fantasy, Act 2 of the play melts into a squishy meatloaf thick scene of gay confessions of gay repression to Tallulah.  Well isn’t that just every gay man’s fantasy: If you were in the closet, to be able to come out strong to a loving and caring Tallulah Bankhead??

I thought I was coming to see a play about Tallulah Bankhead, her times, the issues she dealt with… Instead I get yet another play about a guy who wants to come out.  Why?  Tallulah wasn’t interesting enough?  Is a play not a play anymore if a guy doesn’t reveal he’s gay?

Maybe this play does, in fact answer my question, “if there were no taboos, would theatre exist?”  Apparently,  yes.  This is now the longest running comedy on Broadway, and it doesn’t try to expose any taboo at all.

It’s a wonderfully clever stage version of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie by the same name.  Only four actors play dozens of roles, and they manage, with brilliant use of lighting, props, and lightning fast costume changes, to take the audience along on every scene/setting that was in the movie:  lonely apartment, music hall, overnight train, Scottish highlands, farmer’s house, castle, moores, bridges, car chase — really terrific stuff.  I found myself gasping that I actually believed I was watching a man jump off a bridge in Scotland. 

But I didn’t really care too much if he survived.  The only device the play has that I think might get one hooked is this:  an innocent man is declared wanted for murder by the police, and he must prove himself innocent by finding the criminals himself, or else be unjustly imprisoned or worse.

I suppose that’s it; the well known plot device:  falsely accused, must prove oneself innocent against all odds.

It’s a great device for building tension, great for creating a fast paced rythm.  But it doesn’t address any polemic.  These issues are pretty much settled, in principle, in nations presenting themselves as democratic:  innocent until proven guilty, false imprisonment is a terrible mistake.

Anyways, for a fun evening out that won’t make anyone uncomfortable, you can’t go wrong with this one.

Really a great play – and one of the cheapest on Broadway this season.

Coward also has some terrific, witty, observations on relationships, marriage, jealousy, etc.  All very fun and fast paced.

You can’t help but leave, though, with the thought that you just laughed and went along with the expressions of a confirmed misogynist.  The play ends, after all, with the lead having just managed to shake off the nagging, bickering ghosts of his first and second wives (the ghost of the first having killed the living 2nd – it’s complicated, it’s comedy) and happily leaving his house and all memories of marriage behind, going off somewhere where he will never be bothered again by these two women, and, one well imagines, any other women, ever.

Makes you wonder why so many women like the old revival theater, when so many of its plays are written by gay men who, when you get past the wit, are not saying such nice things about women.

I wonder also, if there were no taboos, would theater exist at all?

Blithe Spirit’s taboo is “I’m not allowed to say this, but I’m really gay and I just married you because that’s what everybody does these days.”

The American Plan’s taboo was a variation on this:  ”I’m gay but maybe I can be married so I can still feel normal.”  That play (written in the late 80s/early 90s, set in the 1950s, didn’t think such an arrangement was necessary or possible anymore.

Reason’s To be Pretty:  ”We’re dating but I’m not that into you, it’s just very pleasant.”  Surprise, a taboo not involving homosexuality makes it into the theatre.  This situation is apparently very offensive to that half of the couple that is truly in love.

Why Torture Is Wrong, And The People Who Love Them:  going to see that this week, looking forward to finding out what taboo the play is based on.  hmm, maybe that torture really is justifiable?