Review - A Light Lunch: Pre-Mortem

A couple of years ago I went to The Flea Theater and had a fun time with A.R. Gurney's then newest play, Post Mortem.  It was a clever little piece taking place in the future about a college student writing his thesis on a long-forgotten playwright named A.R. Gurney, and was filled with self-referential zingers based on his reputation for writing "middle class comedies of manners" that made him popular with WASP theatergoers.

Since that time - in between writing drafts of good stuff like Crazy Mary and Buffalo Gal, I would presume - it seems Gurney has thought up few more self-referential zingers and has wrapped his new play, A Light Lunch, around them.

This one is also set in the future, though during the author's lifetime, at a meeting between Gary (Tom Lipinski) Gurney's young, financially struggling agent at William Morris and Beth (Beth Hoyt) a low-ranking lawyer for a firm representing a mysterious Texan who is willing to fork over a lot of money for exclusive open-ended rights to produce his new, unfinished play about George W. Bush.  The point being - and I'm not giving anything away here that isn't too obvious too quickly - that somebody wants to make sure this one is never seen.

"Try Googling Gurney some time. You'll see that many of his plays, because of their simple sets, and small casts, and tame ideas, are done by schools and colleges and amateur groups all across the country," explains Beth as her client's reason for wanting the Bush play silenced.

Gary eventually counters with, "Were you aware all along that you were using sly and dishonest means to stifle the legitimate utterances of a senior American playwright whose best works may well be behind him?"

While these lines may be titter-worthy, they're also too reminiscent of exchanges from his earlier, much funnier, piece.  A quick reference to Jim Simpson, The Flea's artistic director and the director of this production, seems downright fresh by comparison.

While Gary and Beth debate art and politics, their nosey waitress/actress Viola (Havilah Brewster with a thick outer boroughs accent) smells a potential gig and treats the serving of their lunch as an audition.  While the set-up is amusing enough and there is a decent amount of effective humor, the 70-minute play runs out of steam long before Viola's drama teacher boyfriend, Marshall (John Russo), assumes the role of deus ex machina.  (He actually enters the scene and calls himself a deus ex machina.)

While the actors and director work admirably with the thin text, set designer John McDermott actually delivers the cleverest work of the night by setting the play in a restaurant that seems a cross between Joe Allen and Sardi's, with the latter's framed caricatures (by Paul Howard) mounted on the former's exposed brick wall.  The twist is that the caricatures are of Elizabeth Swados, Osker Eustis, Ellen Stewart and other notables of Off-Broadway.

Photo by Richard Termine:  Havilah Brewster, John Russo, Tom Lipinksi and Beth Hoyt

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I have come to the conclusion that laws must be passed to prohibit anyone under 25 from singing "Surabaya Johnny" in a piano bar. You can appeal by providing sworn testimony from three guys saying they all screwed you over sufficiently enough that you understand the lyric.

 

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