When a revival doesn’t work, people often say it’s because
the show has outlived its time. Well, we
no longer live in a time when the marriage of a Jew and a gentile would be a
scandal, when men wear hats to work and women put on shirtwaist dresses to play
canasta at afternoon card parties or when working class people could afford
large apartments on the Upper West Side. And yet, the Keen Company’s new production
of Middle of the Night, which opened this week in The Clurman space on Theatre
Row, is just as affecting as the original production was when it premiered back
in 1956 and ran for over a year.
A large part of the credit for its continuing success goes to the play’s
author, the great Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote scores of scripts during the
Golden Age of Television, including the teleplay for “Marty,” which he later
turned into an Academy Award-winning movie, and the screenplay for “Network,” which
picked up four Oscars of its own.
Today's top writers celebrate the antihero, like those on the TV shows "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men" but Chayefsky specialized in the lives of ordinary
men and women, the kind of people he knew when he grew up in the Bronx during
the ‘30s. He turned their New Yawkese into poetry, their yearnings for love and
dignity into drama.
Middle of the Night tracks the unlikely romance between a
53-year-old Jewish widower named Jerry and the 23 year-old gentile receptionist
Betty who works at the factory he owns. Her mother and recently estranged
husband (a jazz musician who’s always on the road) want the affair to end. His grown daughter and over-protective sister
aren’t crazy about the relationship either.
The audience needs to be won over as well. Which it is by this small-scale but
big-hearted production. And a large part of the credit for that goes to the
sensitive direction of Keen’s artistic director Jonathan Silverstein and a
moving performance by Jonathan Hadary in the leading role originated by Edward G.
Robinson.
The rest of the Keen cast is uneven. Although to be fair,
they may have been hindered by having to double in roles (even the set does double duty with only the lowering and raising of a chandelier signalling a change in apartments). At one point, I found myself wondering what Jerry’s
sister was doing in curlers at the apartment that Betty shares with her mother
and younger sister.
I also would like to have seen a little more chemistry
between Hadary and Nicole Lowrance, who steps into the Betty role that a young Gena
Rowlands played in the original production. But Hadary and Lowrance still manage to be sweet and oddly touching as two lonely people awed to
discover that they might have found a soul mate.
Anyone who has watched “Network” knows that Chayefsky had a
knack for being ahead of his time and Middle of the Night is surprisingly frank
about sex, be it Jerry’s fear that he won’t be able to satisfy a woman so much
younger or Betty’s dismay that lovemaking is the only thing that worked in her
marriage to the jazzman.
Such open talk probably raised eyebrows back in the
‘50s but it makes this old-fashioned play seem comfortably contemporary,
despite the pointy bras and stiff crinoline slips the women wear. Its unabashed
sincerity also helps Middle of the Night transcend time.
2 comments:
This look so good, I think I will have to look for some theatre tickets for this most certainly! Thanks for the great blogs -- its really useful
Hi Bob. Thanks for the kind words and for taking the time to leave them. I hope you get a chance to see the show and would love to know what you think of it if you go. Cheers, jan
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