review of *Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune*

performed at Interplayers Professional Theater through Oct. 3

An apartment. Very dim light. Loud, guttural yelps of orgasmic delight. Laughter. "I wish I still smoked," she says.
Well, they're certainly having a good time tonight.
Too bad the mood isn't maintained in Interplayers' production of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (through Oct. 3).
The problem's in the acting. For most of the first act, line-deliveries didn't match emotions described in the script; beats were lost, significant moments rushed through and undervalued.
As Johnny -- the short-order cook who's lonely and curious, but determined to improve his emotional lot in life -- John Henry Whitaker portrays a motormouth who doesn't speak quickly. He's a passionate guy who displays no passion.
Whitaker doesn't enact lines, he recites them. He's supposed to stare at Frankie (Karen Kalensky) intently and doesn't; he's supposed to be playful (during a close-your-eyes-and-sit-on-the-floor game) and isn't. Later, when he's supposed to express shock at witnessing an act of violence over in another apartment, he's about as surprised as when you find something that was supposed to be filed under M filed instead under N.
A carpe diem outburst, delivered while kneeling, seems more creepy than full of any lust for life. The "open your robe" sequence -- Johnny just wants to admire her naked body, just for 15 seconds -- doesn't work as well as in the movie, in which Al Pacino expresses puppy-dog appreciation while Michelle Pfeiffer chatters about this and that, nervously. Here it's more like a gynecological examination with an irritated patient.
Kalensky's character, meanwhile, is insecure and lacking in self-confidence: She's not so sure she wants this fancy-talkin' fella making goo-goo eyes at her, coming on way too strong. But Kalensky's manner is more festive (let's party!) and frantic (who is this guy who I've invited into my bedroom?!) than insecure. Again and again, she pulls her robe around herself, indicating her defensiveness. But Frankie's tattered self-esteem doesn't become evident until much later, and by then it's too late.


For much of the second act, Frankie and Johnny (played in this production by real-life spouses) act like a long-married couple, negotiating just how much they can tolerate in the other. They've lost out on their dreams; they have plenty of regrets; they're feeling older.
Director Jonn Jorgensen doesn't coax much passion out of Whitaker. In a couple of moments calling for tenderness and physical intimacy, Jorgensen has Whitaker planted over by the kitchen counter, all the way across the stage from Kalensky. (A promise never to hit a woman is more credible if you're actually within range of hitting her when you say it.)
The first-act misinterpretations are unfortunate, because Terrence McNally's script has many good observations and touching moments, and because the acting becomes simpler and more heartfelt in both of the hopeful act-ending sequences.
Kalensky has a wonderful monologue when Frankie recalls her high school prom -- illuminated by the sunrise just outside her window, her face glows with pleasing nostalgia.
And Kalensky doesn't make a big deal of Frankie's having the munchies: Her literal hunger implies her emotional hunger and loneliness, but Kalensky suggests the point simply, without indicating her character's neediness.
A lovely final sequence, rendered simply both in the acting and the directing, has Frankie and Johnny bathed in soft light and Debussy's music, yet with the romance undercut -- realistically, amusingly -- by some playful bickering.
So the evening's not a total loss. But McNally's script is much better than the performance it's receiving here.
[photos: playwright Terrence McNally, from the La Jolla Playhouse; Kalensky and Whitaker watching TV, from the Interplayers production; by Young Kwak]

*Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune*

by Terrence McNally
at Interplayers Professional Theater, Sept. 17-Oct. 3 (artistic director: Reed McColm)
directed by Jonn Jorgensen
starring Karen Kalensky and her real-life husband, John Henry Whitaker
The cook has a crush on the waitress. Can they turn a one-night stand into something more?
1987 play starred Kathy Bates, who wanted the movie role, which went instead to Michelle Pfeiffer (with Al Pacino, Nathan Lane, and Kate Nelligan)
McNally will turn 70 on Nov. 3.




[photos by Young Kwak for The Inlander]

*Waiting for Godot* review

at Interplayers through April 11

Bleak despairing God the anguish can't bear the Beckett anguish searching joy despondent hopeless escape self can't wait won't bear all the sadness give us instead a musical comedy.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: Two tramps on a trash heap talk-talk-talk for two hours. About nothing, nothing at all. (Bleak despairing God the anguish.)

That's the excuse for not going, anyway: It's dreary, nothing happens, we just want to see something that will make us happy.

But Godot, at several junctures, offers a qualified kind of happiness. (Perhaps, during your sojourn here on Earth, you were expecting happiness of the absolute and unqualified kind?)

At Interplayers (through April 11), you'll still be amused, for example, by Reed McColm's look of bliss while munching on a carrot. (He's Estragon or "Gogo," the whinier and more despairing of the two tramps.)

Beckett’s sad clowns enact vaudeville routines that would be funny anywhere: a rapid-fire hat exchange, four men rolling around on the ground and unable to get up, an agreement about hanging themselves followed by an argument over who should hang himself first.

But the jokes are only meant to fend off despair. Yes, we understand, you don’t feel any despair. You don’t have to, because you believe in God.

But what if you’re wrong? What if salvation isn’t coming? (Just suppose, for the sake of argument.) Then how would you act? You’d tell jokes to pass the time. You’d try to keep yourself entertained.

The problem is that director Karen Kalensky's production of Godot, as if straining too hard to find the comedy in a bleak play, hams up the jokes. Somebody refers to having an erection, and there's a lot of comic mugging; or they pause to cogitate deeply, so deeply, and the chins beneath the frowns are propped up by index fingers.

As Vladimir (“Didi”), the more philosophical and resilient of the pair, Jonn Jorgensen forms a pair of sad clowns with McColm. They hug, then break off the hug, smile, hug again, then cry.
But hugs aren't enough when you're facing life's emptiness, and the duo’s exchanges lack vaudeville frenzy. Godot needs to be played fast and faster, to set up the silences.

Fortunately, the second act offers more: more forgetfulness, more fighting off boredom, more slapstick, more direct address to the audience.

In the play’s conclusion, Jorgensen — who did a half-dozen shows here in the mid-'90s, and glad to see him back — achieves the kind of tragic status he could have been hinting at more all along. Riffing on Pozzo's famous description of life's brevity ("They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more"), Jorgensen settled into haunting sadness for Vladimir's final monologue: "Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.”

As Lucky, the white-haired, bent-backed slave who jumps to every one of Pozzo's commands, Michael Maher groans and grumbles, seething with resentment — and it's funny, at least in the non-verbal sequences. The famous stream-of-consciousness monologue, however — it arrives when Pozzo issues the command to "think, pig" — is disappointing. Maher stumbled and went slow, swallowing his consonants and failing to highlight a rambling speech’s few discernible themes (God is impersonal, human reason is limited).

As Pozzo the grandiose slave master, Damon Abdallah delivers the evening's finest multi-dimensional performance. His voice, deepened, teeters between haughty and insecure. He's sadistic, but he also lets us in on how it's all an act. His angular rodent movements could be assertive, could be paranoid.

Abdallah has a beautiful speech about the beauty of twilight ("this veil of gentleness and peace") that's matched by the subtlety of (Dan Polzin's -- XX) Justin Schmidt's lighting scheme, with the light gradually turning from pink to rose to — this being Beckett — the sudden onset of night's blackness. ("That's how it is on this bitch of an earth," mutters Pozzo.)

None of them know why they're here. They feel powerless to go on, they don't know whether to split up or stick it out together. (Bleak despairing God the anguish.) Didi and Gogo, in other words, are a lot like us. We are the ones who are waiting for Godot, and misery loves company, and a production of Beckett's play, even one as uneven as this, has its consolations.

[ photo: Samuel Beckett, Hebden Bridge Arts Festival in the U.K. ]