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WPCNR PHANTOM OF THE THEATRE. By John F. Bailey. March 5, 2005: For one week only, White Plains and Westchester can see the last great American character actor, the great Jack Klugman, giving a clinic on why you act, how to act, and what a professional is in The Value of Names.
THE SET of the new play on the White Plains Performing Arts Center block, launched in L.A.’s Matrix Theatre, a sellout in its Midwest run, a one night show in Manhattan. It boldly grapples with subjects we don’t like: age, old hurt and forgiveness, father-daughter understanding, hypocrisy, and unforgivable (perhaps) betrayal on the White Plains stage. Jack Klugman, Louis Zorich and Montclair State University graduate, Megan Muckelmann deliver a thought-provoking, amusing examination of the politics of forgiveness through March 13. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.
The last great American character actor is of course, the 83 year old Jack Klugman, television’s Oscar Madison and Quincy, M.E. His voice is raspy from his severe attack of cancer twelve years ago that cost him use of his voice for four years. Klugman brought back his voice and is now back on stage perhaps playing his greatest role at The White Plains Performing Arts Center. He is shown signing autographs after the Opening Night Performance. (Where else can you meet the actors after a show but the White Plains Performing Arts Center?) Photo by WPCNR StageCam
If the play had Neil Simon’s or Harold Pinter’s name on it, everyone would write how clever and moving it is, how deep and how many different levels it has, how vivid, painful, and exact its emotional expressions are, and how the laughs make the medicine go down.
The Value of Names though is written by Jeffrey Sweet, a playwright who has won awards, but no blockbuster hits yet, who writes productions for the Chicago theater renaissance and teaches on the faculty of Lehman College. He has written a sharp, stingingly humored work that showsintriguing facets of forgiveness and rehabilitation with a lively script that shows what grudges are made of.
The play does not have a lot of uproarious laughs in it, but it’s got enough. Rather, like so many Pinter/Simon plays and the Pinter imitation plays like Art, Sweet combines laughs with pathos, wisdom and a melancholy.
The laughs are bursts that take the edge off the keen knife of the play, while it slices up your preconceived notions of forgiveness.
It makes you think and feel the pain of Benny Silverman, the Blacklisted actor who has never gotten over the pain of not working. It uses a lot of four-letter words, has a lot of tough, off-color expressions.
Three on a Gauntlet.
Here are insightful, profound understandings and all-too-stirring portrayals of the depths of human hurt, including very real portrayal of the the heights and depths of father-daughter relationships. They are acted by three fine protagonists, Mr. Klugman, Megan Muckelmann and Louis Zorich to deliver the long one actor (about an hour and fifteen minutes with no scene breaks). They interact with precisely nuanced reactions delivering their hypocrisies, rationalizations and cold hollow hurts that do not go away.
Fortunately, Mr. Sweet, the playwright has the great Klugman.
Klugman, the master of wisecracking, outrage, sensitivity, nuance and sarcasm plays the embittered Mr. Silverman.
The play begins with an awkward reunion on a patio overlooking Malibu Beach with his actress daughter, played “just-young-enough, just-old-enough, just-sassy-enough-to-stand-up-to-Dad” by Ms. Muckelmann, followed by a lively, spellbinding confrontation with Zorich, as the director who betrayed him out to the House Unamerican Activities Committee in the 1950s.
Klugman plays the former actor Benny Silverman, whose daughter is unexpectedly about to act in a play directed by the man who cost Silverman those years of work.
Muckelmann plays Norma Silverman, who has come out to Los Angeles to explain her name change to her father, because she wants to be on her own, rather than rely on her father (a famous former sitcom actor). The play opens with Klugman painting on his Malibu terrace. Muckelmann narrates the scene-changes in the play, using the time-honored Our Town Stage Manager device. She did them a little too quickly in the Opening Night performance I felt. She orients the audience as the action takes place over several weeks. A little slowdown and she’ll be fine on those narration bits.
A Father-Daughter Relationship Dead Solid Perfect.
Muckelmann as daughter and Klugman as Dad, spar in just-dead-on father-daughter disputes at the top of the play.
Ms. M. and Mr. Klugman deliver sharp funny exchanges (the way Oscar and Felix used to do) on why she is changing her name. They argue over the script of the new play she has gotten a part for that has some good chuckles on audience reaction to that scene. A sample funny line: “You think the scene is about ideas and metaphors, it’ll be about tits.”
Klugman delivers his humorous lines in that classic Oscar Madison style we have always loved. He always gets the laugh, and can go from laugh to serious in an instant. It is a pleasure to watch a personality like Mr. Klugman’s who gives it all he has and nails every line and keeps you rivetted.
Ms Muckelmann is his worthy, attractive foil, and together the pair paint a typical father-daughter friendly antagonism of daughter seeking approval, dad seeking control that is all too familiar to any father of a daughter.
The pair then get into Norma’s unhappiness at learning about the problems her father had had with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee from TV Guide. This exchange between the two explores a lot of those family hypocrisy issues that every dad may very well face some day when discussing their behavior and their child’s need to know. It’s done in a humorous way, and defines the issues about to unfold.
It becomes clear through Muckelmann’s narration that after she has gotten the part, the director has fallen ill and has been replaced with Leo Greshen, played by Mr. Zorich.
When Zorich comes around to the beach house to convince Ms. Muckelmann to stay in the part, he and Benny meet for the first time since the 1950s. The play then takes on the character of Pinter’s Old Times with the two former friends, and sworn enemies thrashing out the unhealed wound of Greshen betraying Silverman to the House Committee that cost Silverman years of not acting, because it resulted in Silverman being placed on the Black List. But, this is not simply a Pinter knockoff, but rivals the humanity and reality of the Pinter hits.
The Old Protagonists go at it.
At first they are shocked to see each other, and the great lines we have heard so far between Klugman and Muckelmann, get even better as the master Klugman and his protagonist, Zorich begin the confrontation for the balance of the act.
The lines keep on coming: “Bring the Bastard a beer,” “You collect old injuries,” “You celebrate who died.” “ F—g critics are everywhere,” “the dirty ritual of public cleansings,” “The spirit of Blacklist Chic,” “We’re starting to die,” and my favorite, the most powerful in the play by Mr. Klugman, “You don’t understand a thing, not being allowed to be what you could.”
There are a lot of great lines in this play that strike the heart, especially Mr. Klugman’s last line of the play. It is worth hearing him deliver it.
The Best Bits.
Mr. Zorich has the best sequences: his description of how he made up with a former colleague; his recount and sendup of “The New Labor Players,” (Klugman’s old theatre group), his hilarious satire (with bite) of his trip to a New Hampshire college where he is asked about his committee testimony, and his rationalization of weakness.
The Zorich sequences are parried powerfully by Mr. Klugman’s refusals to “buy” the rationalizations. The Zorich rationalizations will be familiar to those with deeds they have done they would like not to have done or been strong enough not to have done them.
Zorich and Klugman circle each other and need each other and the tension and uneasiness gets a hold on the audience.
Zorich has the bombast and the giant stature to wilt Klugman’s four decades of bitterness. Will he? How much will be beg? How much will Klugman give? Who will Klugman give in to? Zorich? His daughter? Or both? The circling of the due the dynamics of the trio fascinate.
Megan Muckelman, a redheaded ingénue (what is it about the CitizeNetReporter and redheaded actresses?) with a BFA from Montclair State university, is versatile as the catalyst between the two volatile creative personalities. She mirrors the pain and anxiety on her face befitting her dilemma (to please her father or follow her own career), something many a daughter has to confront. She delivers her lines confidently, sensitively, and they are not lost in the male testosterone bombasting and strutting their hour on the stage. For an actress in what appears to be her first really big shot on a national tour, she’s well-cast, has her lines down with inflection, grit, and moxie and is coming into it. I liked her.
Zorich delivers high dudgeon director mystique (though some of his long sequences need a stronger polish to blend well), he delivers the haunting aura of the man who has moved on from a bad moment in his life, and cannot understand why anyone cannot understand why he did what he did when he did it.
Jack Klugman is just an inspiration to watch. He is of course the Jack Klugman with not as strong a voice, but it fits the part. He has a note in the program saying “Mr. Klugman would like you to know that it is not painful to speak. In fact, the more he talks, the stronger his voice becomes. After not being able to speak for several years, he considers it a privilege.”
Klugman’s range of emotion, expression and sense of timing have not faltered. He is flawless in punching up a laugh from a gagline, or in wringing a wince of pain in the viewer by a just-right delivery of a killer line.
The set by Evelyn Sakash evokes that end-of-life place great actors go to on the coast, where they paint, as Mr. Klugman as Benny Silverman is seen doing. The set evokes that “end-of-the-road” feeling and reserve that subtlely reflect the reserve that the Blacklist built into Mr. Silverman’s life.
The direction of James Glossman keeps the three-actor play using the set nicely, but the set is simply a showcase for the words and moods set by the play.
Mr. and Mrs. White Plains should not miss this chance to see the last great American character actor still acting at 83 and bringing out his best.
Thank you, Jack, for coming to White Plains. It’s great to see a new good play again.
The Value of Names plays the WPPAC through March 13. The box office number is 1-888-977-2250. The website is www.wppac.com.
