Indian Blood: Shuffling Off

You know what you're in for as soon as Charles Socarides, playing 16-year-old Eddie, turns from his chair to deliver the play's opening line to the audience.  He doesn't even have to tell us, "This is a play about me when I was growing up in the city of Buffalo, New York."  No, we know exactly what kind of play this will be once we see the argyle sweater vest he's wearing.  Nothing says, "a young boy's coming of age story" like one of those argyle sweater vests.  Am I right?  You know what comes next… the controlling matriarch, the humorous and charming older relative, the strained relationship between mom and dad…all revolving around an adolescent experience that was a sure sign that life would never ever be the same.

But familiarity isn't a flaw when done right and A.R. Gurney's Indian Blood, based on his own 1940's Buffalo youth, is both a charming piece of nostalgia and a sharp commentary on the shrinking significance of the community that raised him.

"It's my Indian blood!" Eddie explains whenever trying to justify his minor rebellions against his upper middle class WASP family.  It's an excuse that exudes chuckles from the audience and stern looks from his elders, but to Eddie this is serious business.  Especially when his Latin teacher (Matthew Arkin) gets hold of an artistically impressive but sexually crude drawing by the boy depicting Mark Twain's Injun Joe burying his hatchet with L. Frank Baum's Glinda, the Good Witch.  It was Eddie's cousin, Lambert (Jeremy Blackman), who finked on him and our young narrator explains that the two of them have never gotten along because each have distant relatives from warring Indian nations.

Eddie's uptight father, Harvey (Jack Gilpin), openly favors Lambert, who comes from a poorer side of the family.  His mother, the more humorous and open minded Jane (Rebecca Luker – yes, she does sing), is struggling with her position as the number two women in Harvey's life, as his own mother (Pamela Payton-Wright) keeps the family under her loving, but firm, thumb.  ("She's lived through two world wars and four elections of Franklin D. Roosevelt.") 

 
The scene stealing John McMartin plays Eddie's vibrant grandfather, a pioneering banker who made his way by purchasing valuable farmland along the Erie Canal and selling it to build steel factories.  But as the years have past, Buffalo is no longer the important city it once was and its insular WASP population can't ignore the influx of new immigrants who have made their way of life become less of the community's norm.  A family Christmas dinner is where matters of class, marriage and pornographic artwork come to a head.

Eddie refers to Our Town during his narration and, as in the Thornton Wilder play, John Arnone's set consists mainly of chairs.  John Gromada's excellent sound design, combined with synchronized miming by the cast, helps us imagine the visuals and Howell Binkley's lights are gorgeously moody.  "Crowd scenes belong in Hollywood movies, not plays," Eddie offers as the reason some Christmas guests appear only in our mind's eye.  There are no actors playing Lambert's mother or the Jewish college professor, and though they are a part of the dinner conversation, their insignificance to the host family is clear.

What Gurney and Lamos do so well in the play's ninety minutes is create a sense of warmth from a family dynamic that seems on the surface to be cold and detached.  The play's only passionate moments come from the animosity between Eddie and Lambert, a "foreign" emotion that those of their station learn to control.  Gilpin is especially effective as the stern disciplinarian who shows love for his son by expecting nothing less than perfection, while being one of the guys paling around with his underachieving brother (Arkin).  Luker lands her sarcastic barbs, a defense against the traditions her character married into, and gives an exquisite interpretation of a Cole Porter song that has a special significant in the story.

Socarides is delightful as Eddie and though Lambert is a bit of a jerk, Blackman gives us reasons to sympathize with this less privileged child who only wants to be seen as the same as everyone else.  The trouble is that in 1940's Buffalo, those who are "the same" are quickly becoming those who are different.

Photos by James Leynse: Top: Pamela Payton-Wright and Charles Socarides

Bottom: (front) Charles Socarides, Pamela Payton-Wright and John McMartin;(rear)  Katherine McGrath, Rebecca Luker, Jock Gilpin, Matthew Arkin and Jeremy  Blackman