Wolfe - The theater of Terrence McNally: a critical study

Also by PETER WOLFE

Simon Gray Unbound: The Journey of a Dramatist (McFarland, 2011)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1258-4

2014 Peter Wolfe. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: Terrence McNally (photograph by Joseph Bachman); theater interior (iStockphoto/Thinkstock)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

With love
to my beautiful wife Retta,
an H.V.M. who doubled her fun
in Dunedin, Moscow and Cologne

I would like to thank those friends whose time and energies went into the preparation of this book: Blythe Denham Kieffer and Diana Bell, who chased down important scriptural details; Joseph Bachman, who kindly allowed me to use one of his photographs for the books cover; Laura Wellen and Richard Workman, who searched out important materials from the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas-Austin; J. Kimball King for indispensable bibliographical help; Raymond-Jean Frontain, the Dean of McNally Studies, for giving me copies of his brilliant studies of Mr. McNallys work; Tom Kirdahy, for providing important, helpful details of Mr. McNallys life and career; the great Indian scholar, C. R. Yaravintelimath, for explaining how Indian themes penetrate McNallys 1993 play, A Perfect Ganesh; and Kurt Schreyer, for sharing with me so generously his remarkable Shakespearean expertise. The combined help of the following people amounts to a major contribution: Jack Cardwell Hartmann, Jerry Horowitz, Harold Kapsinow, Jane L. Williamson. Wally Waite, Mary Fran Pasek, Karen Bartoni, Todd Brown, Mark Bernsen, and Eloise McClelland.

Bringing It Bringing It All Back Home

Bump And Things That Go Bump in the Night

CC Corpus Christi

Cleopatterer The Wibbly, Wobbly, Wiggly Dance That Cleopatterer Did

D Dedication Or the Stuff of Dreams

Door This Side of the Door

F&J Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune

FM The Full Monty

GA Golden Age

IOAP Its Only a Play

LT The Lisbon Traviata

LTTA Lips Together, Teeth Apart

LVC Love! Valour! Compassion!

MC Master Class

MNI A Man of No Importance

Nudity Full Frontal Nudity

PG A Perfect Ganesh

PL Prelude & Liebestod

RC The Roller Coaster

Ritz The Ritz

SM Some Men

SS The Stendhal Syndrome

TB Teachers Break

TF Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?

Special gifts bring special rewards to the theater, like plays both dramatically and psychologically astute. This happy blend has made Terrence McNally one of todays very few dramatists who can raise the emotional stakes of a play-script with a clear head. He does it by matching the scale of his brush strokes with the size and shape of the action developing on stage. What makes this presence of mind noteworthy is his ontologylargely because hed probably deny having one. Life to him is brutal, full of horror and violence. Were all oddballs, and we inhabit a perilous, unpredictable place. But this place also contains spots of goodness. Nor do these declare or impose themselves passively. As is seen in his striking diversity of tone and style, life happens in his work as if all boundaries had been washed away. Unfazed, he welcomes the task of treating this muddle honestly. The skill with which he invests dramatic warmth and cutting insight into scenarios both unframed and without edges supports Raymond-Jean Frontains belief that hes one of the most celebrated playwrights of his generation (A Preliminary Calendar 101). Whats more, he has dealt with this task over the past four decades. This Florida-born (in 1938) and Texas-reared dramatist has won, together with four Tonys, awards from the Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle, and the New York Drama Critics Circle. And thats only a partial list (see SS 168).

Worth citing here is the range of his wit. No one-note writer, he writes plays that can differ from each other in both atmosphere and emotional valence. He often reacts to this variety by enriching it. Unfolding at a tennis match, Deuce (2007) includes details of tennis history, strategy, and rule changes. Diligent research touched in with the same tact distinguishes Golden Age, a work that features vastly different speech rhythms and habits of perception. This 2010 (New York 2012) play, set in Pariss Thtre Italien, describes the European opera world of 1835 without breaking a sweat, as does Botticelli (1968) depict a combat zone in a Vietnamese jungle, A Perfect Ganesh (1993) Bombay, Jaipur, and Varanasi in India, and A Man of No Importance (2002) different sites in Dublin. More of Gods plenty? On the domestic front, McNally writes mostly about different neighborhoods in New York City, usually favoring that cluster of streets west of Fifth Avenue and south of Fourteenth Street often called the West Village.

This venue makes itself felt in unexpected ways. The Sunday Times (2009), with its cast of Manhattan Islanders, takes place in a well-appointed country house (The Sunday Times, Mark Armstrong and Sarah Brisman, eds., 24 by 24: The 24 Hour Play Anthology, 129). Unusual Acts of Devotion (2008) unfolds on the roof of a West Village tenement. Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (1987) varies the pattern again. Instead of using a handful of characters, its a two-hander set in a Clinton, or Hells Kitchen apartment, three miles uptown. A Dutchess County estate, north of Westchester County, sites Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994). Dedication (2004) unfolds in the small city where a Gotham couple have moved. Not so Some Men, which spans 80 years in different Manhattan settings, including Harlem and the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. These settings promote still another aspect of McNallys artits ability to astonish. His 2007 play includes dialogue between an adult father and son, both of whom are gay. But he keeps going. Hell also portray with the same easy grace the distaff side. Mothers and daughters spend extended time together on stage in both The Rink (1985) and Dedication, while much of Deuce records the talk of two older women. An on-stage murder occurs in The Lisbon Traviata (1989).

Though shocked by the murder, we also accept its suitability; McNally has the smarts to put whatever he wants on stage and get away with it. Hes more than a playwright, his immersion in theater covering a wide sweep of years and experiences. Besides interviewing Neil Simon, Edward Albee, and Frank Rich, he has also joined or led panel discussions of plays like West Side Story, Gypsy and Tea and Sympathy (see Otis Guernseys valuable Broadway Song and Story