Book Reviews: Obscure Plays from the Lincoln Center Library

I decided to read a bunch of obscure plays from the Lincoln Center Library for Performing Arts. They range from British drawing-room comedies nobody produces anymore by high-toned authors like TS Eliot and Graham Greene to Broadway flops from Paul Zindel and Henry and Phoebe Ephron, the parents of Nora and Delia. It was fun imagining these productions from bygone days of plays that will probably never be done again.

The Secret Affairs of Margaret Wild by Paul Zindel: I was curious about this Broadway flop which starred Maureen Stapleton, Elizabeth Wilson, Florence Stanley and Doris Roberts. Following his Pulitzer Prize for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds which had a long run Off-Broadway and on the summer stock circuit (I saw Shelley Winters do it in at the Philadelphia Playhouse in the Park), Paul Zindel was a hot item. But his three Broadway shows flopped (And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, The Secret Affairs of Margaret Wild and Ladies at the Alamo). I can see why Stapleton was attracted to this sitcom-y play about a woman obsessed with movies who wins a contest just as her marriage and candy-store business are falling apart. She indulges in cinema-themed fantasies which would have been elaborate and fun, but the play is shallow, solving her problems too neatly like her Hollywood-inspired daydreams.

The Confidential Clerk by TS Eliot: TS Eliot's articulate, bizarre attempt at a drawing room comedy. Nobody knows who is whose long-lost illegitimate son or daughter or what occupation they should follow.

The Living Room by Graham Greene: Graham Greene's first play ran for two weeks on Broadway in 1953 and starred a young Barbara Bel Geddes. It's a hopelessly dated melodrama of a guilt-ridden Catholic family driving the youngest member to suicide because she's in love with a married man who happens to be an atheist psychologist. Horrors! Oh and the elderly relatives close up every room in the house where someone has died because they're all afraid of death. So they wind up sleeping in the living room. An interesting curio.

My Daughter, Your Son by Henry and Phoebe Ephron: A 1968 Broadway flop written by the parents of Nora and Delia Ephron. It's very dated and reads like an episode of The Mothers-in-Law. In spite of a cast that included Vivian Vance (I Love Lucy), Robert Alda (Guys and Dolls and Alan Alda's father), Dody Goodman (later of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman), and Bill McCutheon (Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and later Tony winner for Anything Goes) it only ran 47 performances. It's basically a tired, cliche-ridden comedy romp with two sets of parents being driven crazy by their off-spring's ever changing wedding plans. Lazy jokes about sex before marriage (the young couple have been living together and are only getting hitched because their lease is up and they want to save on rent), show biz (Vance played an actress and her husband Alda is a TV writer), and modern life in the late 60s. An unseen gay character named Bunny is the butt of numerous homophobic gags. He's baking a cake so naturally he's queer.

Love-Lies-Bleeding by Don DeLillo: Don DeLillo's novels are cold but this play is warm. The sons and two wives of a dying artist struggle with euthanasia. Moving and real. I loved the details as the artist recalls seeing his first dead person on a NYC subway when he was a child. His father was reading a newspaper and the artist tried to remember the name of his dad's favorite sports columnist. That little detail made the memory so striking.