Word: ableman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...than because so many plays recently have used the same sort of situation and devices (plays like Moonchildren and The Wager). What these plays have in common is the use of clever, Tom Stoppard-like dialogue as a facade, covering emotions that are revealed in a dramatic crisis. Paul Ableman is no Tom Stoppard, but his brand of collegiate wit keeps the surface of his play funny and entertaining...
...routines. There's a lot of humor in the comic bits, not just in the word-play, but also in the hammy mugging of Stephen Kolzak and Paul Jackel as Jake and Bob. And when the covering starts to wear thin, there's also considerable potential for pathos. Ableman doesn't have enough control over his material to bring it off, though, and some clumsy inconsistencies and bad writing keep the play at the level of melodrama...
Green Julia, by Paul Ableman, at the Loeb Ex, tonight till Saturday...
Green Julia is a Rorschach-test play and an awfully good one. It is the first full-length drama by Britain's Paul Ableman, 45, who has previously written three novels and some 50 abstract and surrealist playlets. Like most plays of this sort, Green Julia is low on action and high on intensity of situation. The only characters that the audience sees are Robert Lacey, a young plant physiologist, and Jacob Perew, a young economist. For some time, Perew (John Pleshette) and Lacey (Fred Grandy) have shared a flat in an English university town. They also share...
...pull one last manipulative ploy. He wants to saddle Lacey with his mistress, a promiscuous lush 14 years his senior who hangs out at a local pub called The Green Man. She is the unseen Julia of the title. Lacey refuses, but that scarcely settles the questions Playwright Ableman tantalizingly raises. Is Perew merely a heel trying to avoid emotional remorse? Is he, perhaps, more in love with Julia than he lets on, enough to want to soften the blow of his departure? Is it possible that he wants to bring a little fleshly warmth into Lacey's loveless...