Word: buchwald
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Fairly good reviews for his "subversive comedy," Sheep on the Runway, may have launched a playwright's career for Columnist Art Buchwald (see THE THEATER). Meanwhile, cocktail conversation in New York and Washington is centered on Sheep's catalyst, Joseph Mayflower, played by Martin Gabel. Could Mayflower, a superhawk newsman who drinks only bottled water and claims Is Peace Inevitable? among his writing credits, possibly be a parody of Pundit Joseph Alsop? Buchwald denies it unconvincingly, but Alsop seems to think so. "If Joe's still angry after the run," suggests the humorist, "we'll meet...
...Buchwald's first play, Sheep on the Runway, is a cartoon allegory. Flush with military hardware but low on brainpower, a group of bumbling, do-good-ing, fast-talking Americans lead a small, neutral Himalayan nation in Asia into a deadly heap of trouble. The difficulty with themes like this is that a playgoer is not quite sure whether he is experiencing the shock or the drone of recognition. An audience should never know as much as or more about a play than the playwright does...
...Sheep needs a plot to usher the audience through the vacuums between jokes. The men and women on stage are superfluous, a fog between the audience and Buchwald's byline at the breakfast table. And the words, so funny when read, just don't work when they come from comic book characters on stage. Sometimes, the playwright in Mr. Buchwald comes creeping out, but he soon crawls back in. Buchwald often hints that something is really going to occur between certain characters, that a situation is leading to a plot. There is such a moment when the ambassador's daughter...
...playbill there was an article entitled "The Media Men." It listed a great number of familiar people, including Vice-President Agnew. But it left out Mr. Buchwald, who, if not for his columns, is revered as the sweet bumbling man with the frumpy suit and thick glasses who found it hard to talk about the death of Robert Kennedy on television. As did a great number of other media men. The article didn't seem to feel that the media men were very talented, but that they are easily devoured and replaced by a voracious public. I for one would...
Damn! Agnew may have done it! He's living a Buchwald column before Buchwald can write it. Art Buchwald can be replaced...