BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THEATER

"The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without its being it being plainly stated."
                Stanley Kubrick

OSCAR LEVANT ON ACTING ON THE STAGE

“The only play I’m really available for would be a 
revival of The Cherry Orchard. I could play Firs, 
the old caretaker. At the end of the play they forget 
to remove him from the house and the house is locked. 
You can hear his lonely pounding as the curtain goes 
down. You can hear the workman with their hammering 
destroying the cherry orchard.
   “That’s the way it is around our house. I seldom 
leave the place, but when I do, for a visit with my 
analyst (the only reason I resumed analysis is because 
I can’t afford a subscription to Esquire), I am greeted 
by hordes of admirers who are let loose from the local 
house for the aged….”

Oscar Levant. Memoirs of an Amnesiac.
**
ON PERSONS WHO REVIEW PLAYS FOR A LIVING

"Only a swine would be a theatre critic. Think of it.
You show up at 7:30, you glug back a glass of pre-warmed 
shiraz, you slouch into the stalls with your unsmiling colleagues, you sit there blinking and staring through
90 minutes of laborious artifice (over which numerous 
gifted artists have sweated for many months) and when
it's over, instead of slinking home in a mood of 
wordless lamentation, you rush to a telephone and 
repeat your meanest thoughts to a copy taker for the
national press.To put it mildly, this is heartless
cruelty. The truth is worse. Most reviewers are
borderline psychotic."

Lloyd Evans, The Spectator's Theater critic in
The Spectator  (18 October 2003)

**

CURTAIN LINES

  In his introduction to the published
 version of the play The Damask Cheek by John Van Druten and Lloyd Morris, Mr. Van Druten recalled an earlier play whose title was The Easiest Way:
  “Watching the play performed, I have been somewhat surprised by the dimensions of the laugh that greets the first mention of The Easiest Way.  I had not thought that it would be so widely known and recognized by audiences of
 over thirty years later, even though most people seem to know its famous last line – and to know it wrong.  Several people who read my manuscript challenged my quotation thereof, assuring me that it ought to read ‘I’m going to Rector’s and afterwards to hell,’ and this I found was the caption underneath the photograph of the play in the magazines of the period, although the published version gives the lines as we have quoted it in The Damask Cheek.”
  I doubt that many theatre – goers
 today will have much memory of The Easiest Way and its shocking last – “I’m going to Rectors to make a hit – and to hell with the rest.”  There are, however, a new generation of curtain lines that are
 difficult to shake from the memory.
  Below are some final lines from classic American dramas.  How many plays can you identify from their final spoken words?
1. “Blow out your candles Laura – and so good-bye.”
2. “No!  I’m going to be baptized, damn it!”
3. “I remember that every “Saturday night Mama would sit down by the kitchen table and count out the money Papa had brought home in the little envelope.”
4. “Deep in December our hearts should remember and follow.”
5. “I…am…George…I…am…”
6. “Then let’s play poker.  (Sharply to the boys).  And watch your cigarettes, will you?  This is my house, not a pig sty.”
7. “Of course, the fireworks blew up, but that was Mr. De Penna’s fault, not yours.  We’ve all got our health and as far as anything else is concerned, we’ll leave it to you. 

Answers to curtain lines

 1. The Glass Menageriie
2.  Life with Father
3.  I remember Mama
4.  The Fantasticks
5.  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
6.  The Odd Couple
7.  You can’t Take it With Your

**

       STAGE NEWS FROM ALL OVER

       I am cast to play a part
       In the drama of my own life,
       But why am I
       Given only a walk-on role?
       Why have there been
       No rehearsals?


        Louis Phillips


**
ON GOING TO SEE A BROADWAY SHOW


NYC theater-goers know,
As do the Bengal Lancers:
“You pay your money
& you take your chances.

Louis Phillips