Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday! This week, I’m sharing the latest in our “potpourri” series on classic Broadway plays, specifically comedies, that I’m studying for (mostly) the first time. For this entry, I selected three 1960s titles — all united by the fact that they were played during the decade by Marjorie Lord, best known as Kathy on The Danny Thomas Show, which aired its last original primetime episode 60 years ago this week!
MARY, MARY (1961)
Logline: An IRS audit reunites ex-spouses before the husband plans to remarry.
Author: Jean Kerr | Original Broadway Director: Joseph Anthony
Original Broadway Cast: Barbara Bel Geddes, Barry Nelson, Betsy Von Furstenberg, Michael Rennie, John Cromwell
Thoughts: This is the only play in our series so far that I’ve already written about — I dedicated a whole post to Mary, Mary in 2014, when I was curious about how it resembled some of the 1960s’ intentionally witty, urbane sitcoms (like Dick Van Dyke and He & She). It was a negative review because I had an issue with the Mary character’s arc — finding it clichéd and convenient. Well, ten years later, I still don’t think it’s great, but after having read and analyzed many other works from the time, I’m ultimately much more positive overall. For starters, Jean Kerr’s script is very funny — it’s deliberately jokey, and almost every character (with the possible exception of the accountant, who’s more of a plot device) is well-defined with a specific brand of humor. In a comedic play, that’s half the battle. (I’m particularly impressed by Bob’s new fiancée Tiffany — she’s a scream.) Also, the story — a comedy of remarriage, using an IRS audit as an excuse to reunite a battling pair — is so solid that it later would show up on several sitcoms, and it makes room for a lot of physical gags as well, which further links it to the best TV comedies of the period… Now, to that point, it is definitely a time capsule from the early 1960s — there’s a lot of smoking, for instance — but since I think every piece is a period piece, that doesn’t bother me. My main critique, again, is the way the two leads receive their arcs. I appreciate that the text aims to evolve them — with Mary revealing that she uses humor and sarcasm to mask insecurities about her looks and femininity, and Bob realizing that his emphasis on reasonability and logic obscures his ability to present emotions and vulnerability. However, Mary changes more than Bob over the course of the show; her arc starts in Act Two, while his is confined to Three. This has the effect of making it seem as if Mary has more work to do than Bob to earn the reconciliation, and although Kerr has Bob comedically suffer like all the great screwball clucks of the ’30s and ’40s before he decides that he’s been a fool and wants her back, it’s hard not to shake the feeling that the show is giving Mary more of the attitude adjustment when it’s Bob who most needs it. Accordingly, the play is not as dramatically satisfying as it could be… And yet, I reiterate: it’s really funny and well-written by the standards of its era, and I would love to see it staged — the 1963 film adaptation does not do it justice!
Jackson’s Rating: 7/10
CACTUS FLOWER (1965)
Logline: A dentist asks his nurse to play wife after he lies to his girlfriend about being married.
Author: Abe Burrows, based on a play by Pierre Barillet & Jean-Pierre Gredy | Original Broadway Director: Abe Burrows
Original Broadway Cast: Lauren Bacall, Barry Nelson, Brenda Vaccaro, Robert Moore, Burt Brinckerhoff, Arny Freeman, Eileen Letchworth, Will Gregory, Michael Fairman, Marjorie Battles
Thoughts: If you’ve seen the delightful 1969 film adaptation of Cactus Flower starring Ingrid Bergman, Walter Matthau, and Goldie Hawn, you have a good understanding of the play from a few years prior, for the movie is very faithful (as these things go) and perfectly evidences how well-constructed the piece was on the stage. All the principal players are distinct and well-defined — again, that’s half the battle! — and the plotting, with its twists and turns, is naturally and brilliantly developed, boasting leads who are strong enough to motivate beats that might otherwise be farcical and hard to believe. That is, the text uses its characterization to earn the plot, so even though there are leaps we must make with what seems “normal” and “logical,” it all actually makes some internal sense based on the definitions afforded to the main players. And both the principals (especially the two primary women — played on Broadway by Lauren Bacall and Brenda Vaccaro) and the story itself are amusing. In fact, although there are definitely laugh-out-loud moments in the dialogue — many, by the standards of this Literary Society series — it’s not nearly as jokey as the above Mary, Mary. Rather, the strength of Cactus Flower is its construction — the bones of the plot, which came from a French play that Abe Burrows adapted for Broadway. In this regard, Cactus Flower is the very definition of a well-made comedy, and I think it should be talked about alongside several classic Neil Simon efforts of the 1960s as one of that decade’s finest. If there’s anything to critique, it’s maybe that young Toni’s inevitable pairing with her age-appropriate neighbor feels too much of an inevitability from the beginning to sustain much comedic or dramatic tension throughout the show, but that’s really a secondary concern to the central triangle, where both women bounce around the faux-philandering-yet-inherently-deceitful Julian, who keeps digging his lies deeper and deeper, and there’s just too much fun with those characters and the story overall for anything to disappoint. Ultimately, this is a piece that works well and should be performed more often today.
Jackson’s Rating: 7.5/10
THE GIRL IN THE FREUDIAN SLIP (1967)
Logline: A therapist’s psychodrama about his attraction to a patient is mistaken for a play.
Author: William F. Brown | Original Broadway Director: Marc Daniels
Original Broadway Cast: Alan Young, Marjorie Lord, Russell Nype, Susan Brown, Bruce Hyde, Heather North
Thoughts: Well, this is the dud of the trio — the only one that Marjorie Lord (the uniting agent for this post) actually played on Broadway — and that’s a shame, for it had an esteemed TV pedigree with Lord, Alan Young (of Mister Ed), Heather North (of Scooby Doo) and director Marc Daniels (of I Love Lucy). Unfortunately, most TV comedies — at least, those we study here — have better character work than this bland mess, which takes a routine and unoriginal story about a psychiatrist lusting after an attractive patient and handles it as predictably as you’d expect, with the shrink bumbling around in denial, the patient throwing herself at him, the wife walking in at just the right time alongside the family friend who’s been attracted to her for years, and a teen daughter who’s more emotionally insightful than her folks. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and it lacks leads who could help make things fresh via details and specifics. Okay, there’s some snappy dialogue (at the level of a so-so sketch comedy), and the very concept of a “psychodrama” scenario getting mistaken for a play is funny. But all the talk about psychiatry is ridiculously trite — even in a somewhat amusing subplot for another recurring patient — and with both the story and these characters not having much originality or specificity, this four-performance flop proves its failure was warranted. How to improve it? Aside from giving the leads more obvious definition that would allow them to influence the storytelling more directly, I’d also change the course of the action — the “psychodrama” misunderstanding has to snowball until it gets all the way onto the stage, where the entire world can see the nervous shrink’s fantasies acted out in public, and that should then spark additional consequences. What’s more, the whole notion of a married hornster drooling over a bombshell while we explore his psyche seems knowingly in the Seven Year Itch mold — and similarly, it needs to give much more character thought to the lady if it’s then going to ask that we also understand her actions. The better-written Itch got away with that in 1952, but Freudian Slip doesn’t — it has lamer character work and a script that just doesn’t know how to freshen an already rote, formulaic setup.
Jackson’s Rating: 4/10
Come back next week for a new Wildcard Wednesday and more sitcom fun!