TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/86/86capbst.5

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Theater

Bawdy Laughter, Beckoning Doom

January 5, 1987

WILD HONEY
by Michael Frayn, from a play by Anton Chekhov

There is no such thing, alas, as a new play by Anton Chekhov, and
certainly not one written in English rather than his native RUssian.
But Adapter Michael Frayn has achieved the satisfying illusion of one
in Wild Honey, a dizzyingly funny romantic farce culled from
Chekhov's untitled, and by more estimated unproducible, first extant
play.  Frayn is best known in the U.S. as the playwright of Noises
Off, a slapstick send-up of British sex comedy, and Benefactors, a
regretful recollection of the relations between two young
professional couples.  Wild Honey marries the wry and the rowdy
strains in Frayn's writing and at the same time prefigures Chekhov's
later plays, notably The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull.
The joys this collaboration offers, however, are as much visceral as
literary.  In chronicling the tomfoolery of a village intellectual,
half charmer, half malcontent, Wild Honey provides nonstop bawdy
laughter followed by a silencing leap into the abyss.

When Chekhov, then 21, finished the play, he brought it to an
actress.  After the play was rejected, perhaps because its diffuse
narrative would take six to seven hours to stage, he destroyed his
manuscript. Another copy, found after his death, has given rise to
several adaptations.  Frayn's, which lasts 2 1/2 hours, shifts the
focus from the leading lady to a man, the schoolteacher Platonov, and
provides a wondrous star turn for Ian McKellen, who won a 1981 Tony
Award for his portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus.

As the beau ideal of a dusty country town, McKellen is all boisterous
affection and puckish candor.  From the moment he capers onto the
stage, he seems infinitely more alive than everyone around him.  No
matter how thwarted or downcast, he never loses his vision of life as
adventure rather than mere existence.  But as his admirers gradually
realize, the very boyish traits that make Platonov so appealing also
render him irresponsible:  unlike the safe and predictable dullards
around him, he has simply never grown up.  In the funniest yet most
poignant scene, he feverishly debates whether to stay faithful to his
wife (Kate Burton) or sneak off to join a handsome widow who has
urged a liaison (Kathryn Walker), when who should appear on his
doorstep but an old flame (Kim Cattrall), now his best friend's new
bride, to whom he impulsively proposed elopement in a stupor after
lunch.  Doors slam; people hop out from bushes and then back behind
them; Platonov carries on simultaneous conversations, and the wrong
people hear him.  This might be French bedroom farce, except that
lives are at stake.  Whatever Platonov decides, his little world will
not reach equilibrium again.

Wild Honey originated at Britain's National Theater.  This staging
reunites much of the same creative team, including Director
Christopher Morahan (TV's The Jewel in the Crown) and Set Designer
John Gunter, who delightfully fills the stage with fireworks, birch
forests, rustic homes and railroad cars--the last achieved with
special effects cheerily akin to "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" at Disney
World.  The one vital element not imported was the cast surrounding
McKellen.  Fortunately, the unevenness of the American replacements
barely affects the savor of Wild Honey.

--By William A. Henry III

---------------------------------------------------------
BEST OF '86

BIG DEAL  Bob Fosse's sinuous choreography and inspired staging of
classic songs--including a sardonic, syncopated chain-gang rendering
of Ain't We Got Fun--highlighted a witty, rueful and all too short-
lived musical about bumbling burglars and reluctant romance in
Depression-era Chicago.

BROADWAY BOUND  Jokemeister Neil Simon has proved himself an artist
in the trilogy that began with Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi
Blues.  He reaches a pinnacle in this comic yet unflinching
reflection on his parents' troubled marriage and the psychic origins
of his own career.

EMILY  Stephen Metcalfe's farce at San Diego's Old Globe Theater
slyly sent up contemporary mores and materialism.  Madolyn Smith's
beguiling performance gave the self-absorbed yuppie title character
an unlikely likability.

FENCES  In Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, August Wilson launched a cycle
about black life in each decade of the century.  His new work,
mounted by the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, Chicago and
Seattle and scheduled for Broadway in March, depicts a baseball
player turned sanitation worker in the 1950s.  James Earl Jones has
his most exciting role since The Great White Hope.

FIGARO GETS A DIVORCE  Odon von Horvath's 1937 satire about an ousted
dictator got a dazzling U.S. premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse near
San Diego.  Director Robert Woodruff interpolated sly references to
the Marcos and Somoza clans, and his expressionistic staging throbbed
with energy.

THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES  John Guare's zany yet compassionate
portrait of losers who live in awe of celebrities is having an
impeccable Broadway revival.  Swoosie Kurtz's mad housewife was the
performance of the year.

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT  Jonathan Miller's swift, funny
rendering of an often lugubrious work was not so much a revival as a
rediscovery.  It proved that O'Neill's lyric family tragedy can work
as gritty naturalism.

ME AND MY GIRL  Effervescent, corny and completely irresistible, this
1937 British musical about a Cockney turned lord has conquered
Broadway.  Robert Lindsay's seemingly matchless star turn is
gloriously rivaled by his once and future successor, Jim Dale.

RUM AND COKE  Keith Reddin, who was four years old during the Bay of
Pigs invasion, sensitively evoked its tragicomic excesses and
catastrophic outcome for Cuban exiles and American scions of
privilege and for the Government they both served.

WILD HONEY  Chekhov's first play, shrewdly revamped by Michael Frayn.