Theater Review: A.R. Gurney’s ‘Love Letters,’ at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre

A cynic would explain the many productions of Love Letters as the result of its low production costs: only an actor and actress, wearing comfortable everyday clothes, sitting at a table with scripts in front of them— no large casts, musicians, costumes, special effects or even prompters. But that explanation, though not without merit, fails to account for the cleverness and heart that playwright A.R. Gurney invests in this comedy-drama about the complicated half-century relationship of two prep-school friends.

The production going on now at Broadway’s Brooks Atkinson Theatre is directed by one man, Gregory Mosher, but in a real sense, audiences will be seeing a different play each time a cast member changes. The Wednesday matinee I caught was one of the last three performances by Mia Farrow, who was succeeded this week by Carol Burnett. (Between now and February 1, actors will last between 30 and 40 performances, with the current male lead, Brian Dennehy, being succeeded by Alan Alda, Stacy Keach and Martin Sheen, and Ms. Burnett followed by Candice Bergen, Diana Rigg and Anjelica Huston.)

I’m sure Ms. Burnett, one of the great comic actors of our time, will mine every nanosecond of humor from the role of artist Melissa Gardner, a rebellious daughter of the East Coast elite. But Broadway appearances by Ms. Farrow are rare (aside from a one-night benefit reading of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 10 years ago, her last time on stage on the Great White Way was back in 1980, in Bernard Slade’s Romantic Comedy). Given her intense humanitarian efforts, it could be quite a long while before we see her back, so I jumped at the chance to see her.

I was not disappointed. It wasn’t a reading that Ms. Farrow gave so much as a total inhabitation of her character. She might be turning 70 next year, but the years seemed to melt away as she summoned the girlish cadences of Melissa wondering about her birthday gift from fellow grade-schooler Andrew Makepeace Ladd III (“I don't believe what you wrote. I think my mother told your mother to get that book.”) She pouts, grimaces, giggles, shivers, curls up in pain—in fitting contrast to Mr. Dennehy, playing Andy as rock-solid and enduring.

Melissa disdains letters so much that she hates reading them, let alone writing them. In contrast, Andy—more strait-laced, if stuffy, than his friend—finds in letter-writing a corrective to the frequent silly rules and personal wounds inflicted by their upbringing. His rationale is so eloquently expressed that is difficult not to regard Andy (if only on this point) as a stand-in for his creator:

“They gave us an out in the Land of Oz. They made us write. They didn't make us write particularly well. And they didn't always give us important things to write about. But they did make us sit down, and organize our thoughts, and convey those thoughts on paper as clearly as we could to another person. Thank God for that. That saved us. Or at least it saved me. So I have to keep writing letters. If I can't write them to you, I have to write them to someone else. I don't think I could ever stop writing completely.”

Yet, as much as this two-hander deals in words, it also finds a world of meaning in silence and the WASP code of decorum and reticence. Several times, when either Andy or Melissa crosses a boundary, the response from the other is silence. Tight-lipped responses also inevitably reverberate throughout the play. Andy writes that he is returning to the United States without the Japanese woman he wed while stationed abroad with the Navy, and that will be the only thing he will ever express on the subject. More devastatingly, just as her emotional conflicts begin in earnest, Melissa discloses that her stepfather, Hooper McPhail, ''was a jerk and a pill, and he used to bother me in bed, if you must know.''

If this were a conventional romantic comedy, Andy and Melissa, despite differences in temperament and class (she comes from Old Money, he must climb his way into The Establishment), would carry all before them. But their deep-seated feelings for each other only come out indirectly, and the time, more often than not, is out of joint for them.

The running time of the play is only an hour and a half, without intermission, but it feels like everything essential about the lives of two characters over 50 years has been said. Their correspondence, as interpreted by two magnificent actors, constitutes a collective book of laughter and regretting.

(By the way, there is a very fine profile of Dennehy by Joseph Amodio in the Fall 2014 issue of Promenade Magazine, featuring wonderful photos by my college classmate Ari Mintz that capture the actor in all his warmth and charm.)

Lawyers, Guns and Woody: A Family and Film Post-Mortem

Nancy (played by Sheila Sullivan): “My lawyer will call your lawyer.”

Allan Felix (played by Woody Allen): “I don't have a lawyer. Have him call my doctor.”—Woody Allen, Play It Again, Sam (1969)

Earlier this week marked the 45^th anniversary of the premiere of Play It Again, Sam, which represented Woody Allen’s only appearance as an actor on a Broadway stage. I thought that the lines in the comedy that established the template of his character on film in the early 1970s—inept, timid, helpless with women, and all the more endearing for all of that—would appear ironic in light of his more recent rocky love life. But I never thought that a line on the law might become newly relevant. As it happens, neither a lawyer nor a doctor can cure what ails him now.

Warren Zevon fans know the line that follows the reprise of his 1970s gonzo song, “Lawyers, Guns and Money”:  “The shit has hit the fan.” For Allen, no other line captures the true nature of his wrangling with former lover Mia Farrow. 

In the early 1990s, a one-word tabloid headline—inevitably, “BANANAS”—was perfectly adequate in summarizing how Allen was discovered to have taken naked photos of Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn; how Allen, who had never married Farrow, went on to wed Soon-Yi; and how, amid the resulting suit and countersuit over custody of children Dylan and Satchel (later Ronan), child-molestation accusations were hurled against the filmmaker.

The latest upheaval, however, is of an entirely different magnitude. Just a few months before a musical adaptation of his 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway appears on the Great White Way, only three weeks after a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes presented by frequent co-star Diane Keaton, Allen now faced something different: a party not heard from two decades ago. Adopted daughter Dylan Farrow alleged, in an open letter to The New York Times (published by family friend and that paper’s columnist, Nicholas Kristof), the nature of the abuse suffered at his hands when she was seven years old.

That wasn’t the only aspect of the situation that was new. This time, the child, now grown, put on the spot those who had gone on to work with Allen more recently. It made many people mighty uncomfortable.

Cate Blanchette, by all accounts a lovely person, looked distinctly pained when asked about being called out on her working relationship with Allen, and, as you might expect, spoke of the family’s “long and painful situation.”

Alec Baldwin, also true to form, was more vitriolic, in a tweet to a fan pressing him for a response: “What the f@% is wrong w u that u think we all need to b commenting on this family’s personal struggle? You are mistaken if you think there is a place for me, or any outsider, in this family’s issue.  USA is supposed to be THE place where you get a fair trial. Can a fair trial be conducted w everyone’s tired opinions on the internet? Americans have fallen victim to a sanctimony about things they know little about. You don’t ‘defend’ either party. You defend due process.”

Despite the difference in tone, the Blue Jasmine co-stars shared a subtext: Leave me alone, okay? This is a family matter. This is way too complicated for me, an actor, to make judgments.  As if reading their minds, an artful flack at Sony Pictures Classics, the distributor of Allen’s recent well-received films Blue Jasmine and Midnight in Paris, noted in a press release: “This is a very complicated situation and a tragedy for everyone involved.”

“Complicated.” Hmmm…for all their undoubted intelligence, these individuals, like so many of their other brothers and sisters in the profession, simply don’t understand that the word “complicated” does not apply to Allen’s situation. Nor do a couple of other “C” words. Really, there is only one that, indisputably, works.

But let’s consider first why “complicated” doesn’t apply. Complicated is onetime Los Angeles Dodger great Steve Garvey getting two women pregnant while marrying a third. (It's also irresponsibly stupid, but that's another matter.) In the case of many people who are getting divorced, complicated might involve two people, already with families, engaging in an extramarital affair. In terms that the Woodman might understand, taking up with a sister-in-law—as Michael Caine’s character did, in Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters—is very complicated. (I bet he would agree that the same description might apply to Mia Farrow’s close relationship with ex Frank Sinatra, which—judging from her recent Vanity Fair admission that son Ronan might “possibly” have been the singer’s offspring—crossed the line into intimacy, nearly two decades after their divorce.)   

Crass doesn’t even describe the actor-hyphenate’s relationship with the Farrows. That adjective best applies to a one-liner in his nightclub days about Harlene Rosen, whom he had divorced: “My first wife lives on the Upper West Side and I read in the paper the other day that she was violated on her way home—knowing my first wife, it was not a moving violation.”

Even the word criminal, used by both Allen’s allies and critics, isn’t relevant—at least, not now. Even if Allen did molest Dylan Farrow two decades ago, the statute of limitations has expired, so he currently faces no criminal liability from that act or any others of a similar nature occurring before it.

No, I’m afraid that the appropriate word for Allen’s predicament--his conduct, really--is creepy. I’m not even talking here strictly about the age difference between Ali, 57 years old at the time, and Soon-Yi (somewhere between 19 and 21), when their relationship was disclosed. (Among movie moguls and captains of industry, a much younger woman attached to an older woman is known as a “trophy wife.”) 

No, Allen had an affair with, then married, the adopted daughter of his longtime lover and mother of two other children he had adopted with Farrow. Even Los Angeles Times writer Robin Abcarian, who several weeks ago cautioned against a rush to public judgment about the case, also exactly summarized what Allen had done in this instance: “That is moral, if not legal, incest.”

(Or, as Phil Hartman’s Frank Sinatra told Dana Carvey’s Woody Allen, in a great Saturday Night Live skit about the affair at the time:  "Listen here, Wood-man: I know how it feels to want to trade up, but you gotta keep your hands off the kinder!")

Allen, famously in psychoanalysis for 30 years, stopped going after his marriage to Soon-Yi. Evidently, all that time on the couch never made him aware that sleeping with (and wedding) the adopted daughter of your lover is, as the judge deciding the custody battle between Allen and Farrow wrote, “grossly inappropriate.”

All Allen seems to have learned is a statement he issued when news of the affair broke: “The heart wants what it wants.” It is, of course (a phrase used by the filmmaker, in his open letter to the New York Times last week denying Dylan Farrow’s accusations), not his heart that was primarily responsible for the unresisted impulse to sleep with a woman who, by age and relationship, could not have been less appropriate for him.

In Allen’s 1988 Bergmanesque drama, Another Woman, the cardiologist Ken responds to a wife’s accusations of adultery on two separate occasions using the exact same, almost practiced speech: “I realize that you’ve been hurt, and if I’ve done anything wrong I’m sorry. I accept your condemnation.”

Screenwriter Allen condemns Ken as self-involved and heartless. In fact, whatever the truth about Allen and Dylan, his own role in tearing apart the Farrow family is not less so. Count the casualties: Soon-Yi, cut off from her family; brother Moses, who has taken Woody's side in the fracas; Ronan, no longer speaking to the man he regards (correctly) as his father and brother-in-law; and Dylan, either a pawn in a lover's quarrel (Allen's version) or a victim of horrible abuse (Dylan's and Mia's). In fact, Allen doesn’t accept any responsibility for the turmoil and hurt his lack of impulse control has caused over two decades. 

Two years ago, asked during a round of interviews for Midnight in Paris about his past notoriety, he responded, “What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, married her. We have been married for almost 15 years now. There was no scandal, but people refer to it all the time as a scandal and I kind of like that in a way because when I go I would like to say I had one real juicy scandal in my life."

In a way, it is understandable that so many people have continued to work with Allen over the past two decades. They can say, truthfully, that he was never charged with molesting Dylan (though the district attorney in the case has stated that this was due at the time to the massive difficulties involved with having the child testify). It is also the case that one would never work on a film or play again if one found objectionable any of the following as co-workers: not just child molesters, but also wife- and husband-stealers, raging drunks, drug peddlers, bodyguards and private investigators who act like organized-crime associates, financial chiselers, producers whose self-importance exceeds their duties, and bullying directors, any one of whom is likely to be associated with a production of any size. In fact, the only thing that might make people treat you like a disease carrier in Hollywood is if you make movies that lose a ton of money--a fate that Allen has avoided.

But Dylan Farrow, in effect, has not only called out all those who have worked with Allen, but all those (including myself) who have continued to watch his films. We may have been troubled, even shocked, at the time, but nothing was ever proven, all the facts in the case seemed to fade away, and, like a Presidential scandal of that decade, many regarded this as a "personal" matter from which everyone would be better off if all would just "move on." 

Now the allegations have been given greater force. Some fans who continued to patronize his films might snub his work completely from now on. Others will be more reluctant to part with their cash on such a man.

Possibly two of the darkest works in Allen's considerable filmography, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point, involve men who seemingly get away with their offenses--not just in the eyes of the law, but even from a god whose existence they cannot recognize. They are left, in the end, with a private emptiness. Perhaps, despite the late-life acclaim and public denials of anything wrong, Allen feels the same moral vacuum. 

You wish, at the final credits, that it could all be resolved with "I've Heard That Song Before," the bouncy entry from the Great American Songbook that he used in Hannah and Her Sisters. But I'm afraid that, for the duration, we'll be left with the storm und drang of Zevon, in the cacophony of tweets, journalists, critics, publicists, and lawyers. 

This Day in Television History (“Peyton Place” Premieres)

September 15, 1964—America’s first wildly successful primetime soap opera—the mother of Dallas, Knots Landing, Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and their ilk—Peyton Place, premiered on ABC, giving the struggling network a jolt in the arm.

In the 1960s, it seemed like, whenever ABC had a monster hit, the network’s rule of thumb for replicating the success was: let’s put the show on more than once a week!

All this did was get people sick of the series. It happened to my favorite show as a kid, Batman, and to my mom’s favorite, Peyton Place. The latter started out on a twice-weekly schedule—itself a major departure for primetime—then, when its doings about the pious, hypocritical denizens of the series’ titular small town became all the national rage, three times weekly.

This short-circuited the synapses of viewers, who tuned out to such a point that, when the network tried to recover with its original schedule, it didn’t work. Departures of major cast members didn’t help.

When Dr. Michael Rossi peered out in shock from behind a clanging jailhouse door on June 2, 1969, my mom was shocked. So was I.

What happened to him? Was he executed? Proven innocent? Escape and run for governor of South Carolina? We never found out—it was the last episode!

In one of the extraordinary feats of the show, it broadcast year-round—no repeats. Its 514 episodes place it second only to Gunsmoke among dramatic primetime series.

None of this could be enjoyed by the woman who started it all, Grace Metalious, whose 1956 novel got turned into a 1957 film. Not only had she died, at age 39, before the show aired, but, because she had signed away the rights, her estate didn’t earn a penny from the $62 million it made for ABC during its five-year run (the TV equivalent, of course, of forever).

The series was the biggest source of employment for actors of Irish descent outside of the Abbey Theatre or John Ford Westerns. Consider the surnames of major cast member: Mia Farrow, Ryan O’Neal, Christopher Connelly, Dorothy Malone, and Tim O’Connor.

(Though let me tell you: if any of the doings of Peyton Place began happening in the tiny farm community from which my dad hailed, you can bet the locals would be scratching their heads, wondering if something might have gotten into the cows’ milk with everyone acting so queer and all.)

O’Neal’s character, Rodney Harrington, was described onscreen as a “real, healthy, all-American, small-town” boy, the same way the figure Ronald Reagan played, Drake McHugh, in Kings Row (1942) could have been, or as Kyle Maclachlan’s Jeffrey Beaumont could have been in Blue Velvet (1986).

The moral of these stories—and any other you care to name that treated provincial America not satirically, like Sinclair Lewis, but trashily—would be this: If you ever have a hankering for the simple life, run for your life! There are nothing but wife-stealers, wife-beaters, drug addicts, sadists, perverts of every description, even murderers out there!

(One area the show did not explore was the incest of one of the characters from the book and 1957 film. Evidently, in primetime in the Sixties, the theme was still taboo—or, as Phil Hartman’s Frank Sinatra told Dana Carvey’s Woody Allen in an immortal 1992 Saturday Night Live routine: “You gotta keep your mitts off the kinder!”)

(By the way, think of the passage of time that we baby boomers have experienced: O’Neal playing a teenager in Peyton Place, then, a couple of years ago, appearing as Lynette’s father in Desperate Housewives. In Peyton Place, his character ended up in a tree, metaphorically, episode after episode; in Desperate Housewives, he coaxed his grandsons—boys so rambunctious they defeated their corporate-shark mom time and time again—down from a tree, metaphorically--actually, the roof of their house--in one memorable scene.)

For the three young cast members in the love triangle at the heart of Peyton Place, the half-hour series served as intense preparation for the future course of their careers—or even lives:

* Ryan O’Neal won his only Oscar nomination for a film about another tragic love affair, Love Story, then starred in his own multi-year tempestuous off-screen romance with Farrar Fawcett (whom he stole from friend Lee Majors)—and, in a replay of Peyton Place’s theme of the generation gap (so Sixties!), tangled with children Tatum and Redmond.

* Mia Farrow divorced Frank Sinatra, stole musician Andre Previn from dear friend Dory, then saw longtime companion Woody Allen betray her in a bananas affair with adopted daughter Soon-Yi.

* By comparison with these two, Barbara Parkins’ off-screen life has been comparatively quiet. But the jealousy and cunning of the bad girl she played, Betty Anderson, must have rubbed off on her in some ways. Only three years after Farrow’s character had a close encounter with Satan in Rosemary’s Baby, Parkins employed the witchery she’d developed on Peyton Place to lure good-guy Alan Alda away from good-girl Jacqueline Bisset in her horror flick, The Mephisto Waltz.

I haven’t seen Peyton Place since its last episode, on June 2, 1969, when Dr. Rossi was tossed in jail on a murder charge, but I swear I can still hum its theme song. Don’t get me started if you want to save your ears!

After all this time, the powers that be have finally gotten around to releasing episodes from Season 1 of Peyton Place on DVD. I’m sure, despite the reunions and “Next Generation”-style spinoffs in the intervening years, that many fans of the series will regard the characters as the return of long-lost friends.