The Cabaret Theater at the Temple of Music and Art is the perfect
venue for a play about Dorothy Parker.
Seats have been arranged around three sides of the “stage,” making
the space even more intimate than it already is. The front row of seats
is tucked behind small café tables lit with tiny candles, and
when the lights dim, you feel like you’re in a smoky New York bar,
awaiting the appearance of a celebrated performer.
And indeed you are: the ghost of Dorothy Parker both enlivens and
haunts Dorothy Parker’s Last Call, the debut production of the
Winding Road Theater Ensemble.
Not sure who Parker is? Then you’re in for a treat. One of the
pleasures of this one-woman show is getting the highlight reel of the
remarkable life of this famous writer of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. (She
died in 1967.)
As written and performed by Lesley Abrams, the recently departed
Parker begins her post-mortem monologue by a ticking off of the
husbands, lovers, suicide attempts and pets that she tallied in her
lifetime. Then she spends the rest of the evening coloring in the
details with celebrity name-dropping and humorous anecdotes.
The Algonquin Round Table? The screenplay for A Star Is Born? The Paris of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein? The creation of the
Writers Guild union in Hollywood?
It’s difficult to determine from this play to what degree Parker was
a maker of literary history or a passenger along for the ride, but it
is clear that she lived a life perfectly tailored to her talents as a
bon vivant of intellect and wit.
“Wit,” she says, “has truth in it; wisecracking is simply
calisthenics with words.”
In fact, Parker’s wit is the true star of the evening. The audience
is engaged not just by the facts of her remarkable life—she was a
theater critic, screenwriter, poet and contributor to the New
Yorker and other early literary magazines—but by the way she
describes them, by her language, her insights, her dry sense of
humor.
Abrams has liberally peppered the script with Parker’s verbal gems.
Some are still familiar, while others deserve to be resurrected. Clare
Boothe Luce once held open a door for Parker, declaring, “Age before
beauty.” Parker parried with, “And pearls before swine.”
When challenged by a friend to use “horticulture” in a sentence, she
responded, “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her
think.”
Last Call suggests that the sparkling one-liners also helped
Parker to mask her inner turmoil. Starting with the early death of her
mother, and up through her own failed marriages and unsuccessful
pregnancies, Parker carried a heavy load. Unfortunately, Last
Call uses Parker’s wit in the same defensive way.
It occasionally cracks the surface of her emotional pain, but never
dives too deeply before safely resurfacing with another anecdote.
This surface treatment is due in part to the show’s one great
weakness: It lacks drama. The starting point for both actor and
playwright is to ask, what does this character want? And, what must she
overcome to get it? The only thing Parker appears to want is a drink,
and her wish is magically granted early in the evening. Where does she
go from there? And why is Parker telling us about her life in the first
place? Is there anything moving us from event to event, other than the
passing of time? These questions linger through the evening.
This doesn’t mean that Last Call is dull—not by a long
shot. Parker’s life, writings and snarky remarks could enthrall an
audience for much longer than this play’s breezy 75 minutes.
What it does mean is that Abrams, as author, has created a problem
for herself, as performer. Not having an objective to achieve leaves
her with little to do beyond showing off her material. Showing off can
be entertaining, but it’s rarely compelling. Dorothy Parker’s life
story is rich enough to be both.
Abrams and director Glen Coffman occasionally use moments of
theatricality to reach deeper into Parker’s psyche. When Parker is
quoting the words of someone close to her, a recorded voice will echo
them back. At other times, lights shift and Parker is summoned upstage
to field questions from the recorded voices of unseen reporters. But
these moments are jarring, and never really coalesce into something
meaningful.
It’s telling that Abrams comes most alive in her performance when
she lays aside Parker’s sharp-witted persona. Several times, she steps
into characters from Parker’s short stories, and the result is a
revelation. As a young woman agonizing over why her boyfriend hasn’t
called, for example, Abrams lights up the stage. Here she has something
to act, and her performance is captivating.
Also thrilling are the moments of quiet conflict when Parker
struggles against alcohol. Time after time she circles the stage, but
inevitably comes back to a tea cart bearing alcohol in a cut glass
decanter. Initially she celebrates the joy of a good drink, but it
slowly becomes clear that she can’t control herself. The fleeting
moments of uncertainty in her eyes, as she struggles between having
another glass and feeling her pain, are the moving highlight of Abrams’
performance.
But Dorothy Parker would never allow herself to dwell on such a
vulnerable moment—at least not in public—and neither does
the play. As Parker once wrote:
“Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.”
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.