The
Show-Off might have been the title of one of the comedies
that put George Kelly atop Broadway
for a time in the 1920s, but it certainly did not describe either his writing
style or his approach to media. That might account at this point for why he is
not as well-known as two other Irish-American dramatists who started around the
same time, Eugene O’Neill and Philip Barry.
Today, because he brooked neither outside
interference in producing his work nor outside intrusion into his complicated personal
life, he is all but forgotten to the general public. If recalled at all, it is
because perhaps his greatest success, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Craig’s
Wife, was adapted into the 1950 Joan Crawford film, Harriet Craig (he abominated both the star and the production),
and because you might have heard of a niece who credited him with encouraging her to pursue an acting career: Grace Kelly.
What to make of this enigma? I found answers, at
both professional and personal levels, at a matinee performance in September of
his 1931 dramedy Philip Goes Forth, which
closed last weekend at the Off-Broadway Mint Theater. I figured that if any
theater troupe could re-awaken interest in his work, it was the Mint: A few
years ago, they had turned in sterling work on another play by another largely
forgotten figure, the Anglo-Irish playwright Lennox Robinson, in the comedy Is Life Worth Living? (See my 2009 review of the latter.)
Philip
Goes Forth is infinitely trickier stuff, part of the reason
why it flopped on Broadway at its premiere in 1931. The critical reaction was
so discouraging that Kelly swore off the Great White Way and decamped for
Tinseltown for several years.
The action of the title—“going forth”—occurs after
recent college grad Philip argues with his father on
his writing ambitions, and leaves for New York in a huff, choosing the Joycean
course of trying himself “against the powers of the world.” In vain does his
kindly Aunt Marion (played marvelously by Cynthia Toy Johnson), concerned that
he hasn’t even written anything yet, warn about the chance of “wasted years.”
It soon becomes apparent that Philip has far more
affinity for the business world he flees than for the artistic world he hopes
to join. He collaborates with a poseur with the Dickensian surname Shronk on a
“Chinese fantasy”—Kelly’s satiric vision of avant-garde. All of this is
happening at a time when the stakes couldn’t be higher: Philip’s father has
warned him not to come crawling back to his old job, and the worsening Great
Depression is reducing many to despair (including a musician in Philip’s
boardinghouse). The play’s swipes at artists manque
flooding New York did not sit well with critics, but Kelly did not care: Playwriting,
like the other arts, was almost a kind of priesthood, he felt, requiring not just
commitment but talent, and anyone without these should find other callings immediately.
The Mint production was the first time that Philip Goes Forth was mounted in New
York since its original Broadway run, but adept direction by Jerry Ruiz, with
the help of an uncommonly well-cast troupe of actors, will go a long way
towards assuring that this and other Kelly plays will receive serious
consideration in the future. In addition to Ms. Johnson, particularly
noteworthy were Jennifer Harmon as Philip’s kindly but realistic landlady,
Cliff Bemis as his father, and Natalie Kuhn as his love interest.
In a fascinating post-show “Talk Back” discussion
with the audience, Professor Fulton Hirsch of Brooklyn College spoke of his visit in the early 1970s to the 84-year-old
Kelly, in what might have been the last interview given by the long-retired
playwright. The interview, though long (four hours) and civil enough, was also
a mite peculiar: not once did Kelly offer the young academic even a glass of
water! In fact, Hirsch came away with the impression that he had inadvertently
invaded Kelly’s space
What has become increasingly apparent over time is
that Kelly loathed publicity because he wanted to avoid questions about his personal
life. His valet-companion of more than 50 years, William E. Weagly, was, in all
likelihood, his lover. Kelly’s family (brother John was an Olympic sculling
champion and Philadelphia construction magnate) made Weagly eat in the
servants’ quarters when they visited, and they did not invite him to George’s
funeral in 1974.
Hirsch acknowledged Kelly’s extreme reticence about
his private life, his quirkiness as a theater professional (directing his own
work, he used a metronome to make actors time words to each second), his
snobbery, even his rumored anti-Semitism. Yet Hirsch also agreed with Mary
McCarthy’s assessment: "It is difficult to describe a George Kelly
play...simply because it is not like anything else while on the surface it
resembles every play one has ever been to."
Kelly’s astringent moral sense, let alone his
snobbery, may be difficult for a more libertarian age to accept. But his
abundant wit and his abiding concern for dramatic structure (a counterpart to
his early training as a draftsman) offer distinct possibilities for posthumous
rediscovery, a process surely hastened by this fine Mint Theater revival.
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