Review - Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles? and Grace

I had to chuckle a bit while reading The Public Theater's Artistic Director Oskar Eustis' program notes for Adrienne Kennedy's Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles?, which described the play as "the most accessible" she's ever written.

Certainly this is lighter, more direct fare than her breakthrough 1964 Obie-winning Funnyhouse Of A Negro and other works Oskar describes as, "elliptical, poetic and dense." A collaborative effort with her son Adam P. Kennedy, ...Beatles? is a charming autobiographical almost-one-person play about a time in the 1960's when a hot, young playwright learned some harsh truths about the business of art.

I say almost-one-person because the only actor the audience sees is Brenda Pressley, who plays the maternal Kennedy telling the story to her adult son, an off-stage voice supplied by William Demeritt. The son's participation is minimal, chiming in with only occasional questions during the 65-minute piece, but it helps establish a relationship that propels the telling beyond the usual actor and audience communication of most one-person plays.

Cleverly preceded by that familiar opening chord of "Hard Day's Night," Kennedy's tale is that of a divorced, Obie-winning recipient of two major grants (with a third on the way) who has an idea to turn John Lennon's nonsense stories (She doesn't mention them by name but I assume she's referring to his collections In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works.) into a theatre piece. Well, it just so happens that the artistic director of the New York Theatre Company that wants to commission her to write it knows Lennon's publisher in London and though no promises are made the playwright is invited to stop by his office if she's ever in town. Naturally, Kennedy grabs her young son and grant money and flies out to obtain the theatre rights and perhaps meet a Beatle or two.

Though the Brits of the 60's seemed unaccustomed to being visited by black Americans ("People were very aware that you were not white.") a series of coincidences depicting an insular world of the arts where everyone seems to know someoNe You need to know not only puts the star struck Kennedy in touch with luminaries such as Sir Lawrence Olivier, Kenneth Tynan, James Earl Jones, Alex Haley and, yes, John Lennon, but puts her on the path to having her John Lennon play premiere at The Old Vic. But when theatre politics from the London big boys starts pulling the project away from the Bard of Greenwich Village, the playwright finds herself in a battle for her artistic rights.

Kennedy's writing is indeed accessible. It's also lively, energetic story telling. Brenda Pressley, even though she reads the play from behind a podium, is completely engaging and so natural in the role you'd think she was Adrienne Kennedy. Peter Dubois directs the bare bones production.

Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles? is the initial presentation of the Public Lab, a 7-play collaboration between the Public Theater and the LAByrinth Theater Company running through June (this piece concludes February 23rd). All tickets for the new works presented in the series are only $10. In this case, it's absolutely the best theatre bargain in town.

Photo of Brenda Pressley by Joan Marcus

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The thought of a celebrated actress such as Lynn Redgrave opening a play by wearing a contraption called a "God Helmet" may bring to mind those classical thespians who have at one time or another lent their extraordinary talents to schlocky sci-fi b-flicks, but Grace, Mick Gordon and A.C. Grayling's elegantly told domestic drama of ideals and ideas is anything but. Their ninety minute piece, in a smooth and detailed production directed by Joseph Hardy, not only provides Redgrave with the means for two moments of positively brilliant stage work - the kind of stuff so intimately real as to make you simultaneously overwhelmed and uncomfortable - but intrigues with the notion of a flexible church of no absolutes, where faith is open to interpretation, doubt and questioning.

The God Helmet is an experimental device meant to stimulate certain parts of the brain in order to artificially create the feeling one has when spiritually inspired. An instant religious experience, so to speak. Scenes with Redgrave wearing the helmet as part of a research team's experiment bookend the play. Science professor Grace Friedman calls herself a naturalist, shunning the term "atheist" as a label invented by those who aren't. Her lawyer son, Tom (nicely idealistic Oscar Isaac), has grown frustrated with his profession's goal of proof instead of truth and has decided to enter the priesthood.

Though her genial, secularly Jewish husband, Tony (Philip Goodwin is a pleasure), is a humorously calming influence ("Who's going to take a priest named Friedman seriously?"), Grace is livid that her son could choose to be part of a culture where, "An actor who reads the Bible would win the (presidential) election over a rocket scientist who does not."

"To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, ignorant and irresponsible. And merits the opposite of respect," declares Grace in Redgrave's most thrillingly passionate and commanding moment.

K.K. Moggie is also exceptional as Tom's lawyer girlfriend, a woman layered with anger and the fear that her possible future fiancé would choose God over her. In one of the play's many humorous moments, she indirectly lashes out at Grace through the poetry of Philip Larkin. (If you know Larkin, you know which one I mean and you're laughing already.)

Photo of Lynn Redgrave by Joan Marcus