Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday! This week, I’m offering the latest post in our “potpourri” series for classic Broadway plays, specifically comedies, that I’m reading for (mostly) the first time and then quickly reviewing. For this entry, I selected three comedies played in the 1930s by Tallulah Bankhead, who died 55 years ago this month…
THE CIRCLE (1921)
Logline: A woman considers leaving her husband on the same weekend they are visited by his estranged mother who did the exact same thing thirty years prior.
Author: W. Somerset Maugham | Original London Director: J.E. Vedrenne
Original London Cast: Fay Compton, Allan Aynesworth, E. Holman Clark, Lottie Venne, Ernest Thesiger, Leon Quartermaine, Toni Edgar Bruce, W.W. Palmer, Cecil Trouncer
Thoughts: After an original London production in 1921 that starred Fay Compton, and a same-year Broadway mounting with Estelle Winwood, Tallulah Bankhead played the ingenue character at the heart of The Circle in a 1938 Broadway revival that also featured her then-husband, John Emery. It’s easy to see why so many leading ladies were drawn to it. Maugham apparently considered The Circle to be his best play, and while it’s not as dramatically inclined or socially thought-provoking as his previously discussed The Constant Wife, it’s more entertaining, due to a handful of incredibly well-defined characters (such details!) and a plot that’s simple but suspenseful, managing to keep the audience guessing from the moment it sets up the central love triangle to the moment we get our final answer: will Elizabeth run off with the man she loves or stay with her husband, correcting the mistake that her predecessor (her mother-in-law) made 30 years ago? The story — which was apparently controversial in its original London debut — and its capacity for thematic cohesion, is well-applied, with strong comic figures who bring big laughs, for although the dialogue itself is not jokey or comedically stylized like the work of, say, Noël Coward, it’s more natural than we observed in The Constant Wife, and it gives a lot of room to the performers to sink their teeth into juicy parts — the three elderly members of the former triangle are particularly complex. In fact, I think for as impressive as the The Constant Wife manages to be with its ideas about marriage and the roles women are forced to play (especially when they’re not financially independent), that text feels more like an essay — a rhetorical argument — than The Circle, a comedic work of drama that has similar notions but is tailor-made for the theatre, for performance, for people… Incidentally, Tallulah Bankhead’s 1938 run was not terribly long but it was a successful change of pace for her — her Elizabeth is not the funniest character in the show, but she is the fulcrum of the drama, giving any actress a range of playable emotions. In terms of comedies, this was her best pick outside of the two biggies for which she is better known: The Skin Of Our Teeth and Private Lives.
Jackson’s Rating: 8/10
LET US BE GAY (1929)
Logline: A divorcee is unknowingly summoned to lure her ex-husband away from a friend’s granddaughter.
Author: Rachel Crothers | Original Broadway Director: Rachel Crothers
Original Broadway Cast: Francine Larrimore, Warren William, Charlotte Granville, Rita Vale, Kenneth Hunter, Adele Klaer, Ross Alexander, Gilbert Douglas, James C. Lane, Natalie Potter, George Wright Jr., St. Clair Bayfield
Thoughts: You may remember this title from its 1930 film adaptation starring Norma Shearer — it was one of the first Pre-Codes we discussed. It’s a lively farce written by Rachel Crothers, an unjustly forgotten playwright who had a knack for saucy but soulful dialogue, along with great comic premises that set up juicy romantic complications. Opening on Broadway in 1929 with Francine Larrimore and then in London with Tallulah Bankhead, Let Us Be Gay is about Kitty, a married woman who leaves her cheating husband in the prologue before showing up years later at the home of an elderly widow she befriended in Europe. This delightfully cranky broad has summoned Kitty — now a woman of the world, with many notches on her belt, and a career of her own — specifically to lure a disingenuous playboy away from her previously engaged granddaughter. The playboy turns out to be Kitty’s ex, Bob — a secret she implores him to keep during the weekend, where all the men drool over her, and all the other women, including the granddaughter, go mad with envy. However, much like Crothers’ Susan And God (1937), which I reviewed here, the plotting of Let Us Be Gay is disappointing — specifically, the end; the curtain comes down, just like in the film, on a Bob and Kitty reconciliation. In the play, Act II wraps with the granddaughter thinking Bob has been stolen from her, even though Kitty has refused to take him back. In the film, Bob is so jealous of Kitty giving attention to other men that he becomes engaged to the granddaughter. The latter is more dramatic, but it doesn’t matter — in both cases, the central emotional arc is given in Act III to Bob, who must reconcile himself to the fact that his wife has become a sophisticated, sexual being. Okay, that is necessary; however, the person we must see reach catharsis is Kitty — if she is going to take him back, then she has to forgive him. And that means she must decide, thanks to her new “gay” lifestyle, that casual sex is indeed casual. Crothers has her claim this eventually, but abruptly, and without narrative support. (Show, don’t tell!) To wit, I think Kitty needs a more explicit tryst with another man in the house, yet Let Us Be Gay seems to want to protect Kitty’s virtue as part of its overarching goal of mocking her modern frivolity as insincere and empty — a valid perspective, but not an excuse to deny her an arc or the ability to drive this story.
Jackson’s Rating: 6/10
REFLECTED GLORY (1936)
Logline: A stage actress is eager to give up her career and settle down in married life.
Author: George Kelly | Original Broadway Director: George Kelly
Original Broadway Cast: Tallulah Bankhead, Ann Andrews, Clay Clement, Phillip Reed, Alden Chase, Elizabeth Dunne, Robert Bordoni, S.T. Bratton, William Brisbane, Madeline Holmes, William H. Turner
Thoughts: It’s also easy to see why Tallulah Bankhead was attracted to Reflected Glory, which she debuted in a mini West Coast Tour ahead of a 1936 Broadway debut, for it’s about a self-conscious actress prone to performance in her real life. In other words, it was one of the closest roles to her actual self, allowing her to project even more of her own person into the character and be lauded for a technical naturalism that, for once, wouldn’t be at odds with the script’s. Unfortunately, the text itself is not nearly as impressive — starting with the fact that it’s not nearly as funny as the other comedies in (or mentioned in) this post, and ending with the unfortunate reality that it has a rather limp story. Oh, it may gain some points for its then-novel finale, where the actress is denied a conventional happy ending of love and romance and instead reconciles herself to a life on the stage, the arena for which she was made. But all that faux-noble self-affirming tripe seems telegraphed from the start, especially because her character has no chemistry (at least on the page) with either of her two love interests — the good guy who doesn’t wait for her and gets married to another, or the bad guy who’s only after her because of her fame. No, her greatest bonds are with her scheming manager — a fairly clichéd avatar for the theatre as an industry and persuasive pull — and her best pal colleague, who gets the wittiest wisecracks. (That last role was originally played by Bankhead’s good friend Estelle Winwood, before she left and was replaced ahead of Broadway by Ann Andrews.) Ultimately, though, Reflected Glory falters because the leading lady isn’t active enough — after the first act, where she picks one guy over the other, the star never makes another crucial decision; they are all made for her by circumstance, with other people convincing her of what she wants while she ponders herself in dressing room mirrors. The play begs for a stronger arc — for her to do something, discover something, and then do something else because of it. Without giving her more to reveal of herself in plot, it’s just an ode to the theatre by a bunch of over-written talking heads.
Jackson’s Rating: 4/10
Come back next week for a new Wildcard! And stay tuned Tuesday for more sitcom fun!