Word: costigan
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Baby Want a Kiss is a sort of ventriloquiz, a chance to guess whose playwriting voice is being thrown onstage. Dramatist James Costigan can mimic the voices of Edward Albee, lonesco and the Theater of the Absurd, Pirandello and even James Thurber, but except for a few sallies of wit and whimsy, he cannot speak for himself...
...most of their time polishing their halos. Unconsciously, they are cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. They pay a visit to a kind of hermit of integrity, a bachelor, writer and onetime friend unseen for 15 years. A bearded pixy, nicely played by Costigan, the writer likes to surround himself with pygmy baptismal fonts, and serve drinks from 16th century eyecups...
Once he has dispatched with all that mendacity, Costigan reveals psychological truth. And how does he do it? The characters tell each other their dreams Edward was rejected by mommy; he needs love. Mavis wanders from man to man; she needs love. Emil wants to be a daddy; he needs love. But Edward cannot satisfy their confused desires, and he rejects them both. To relieve their frustrations, Emil and Mavis transfer their guilt feelings by condemning Edward...
...Costigan must have known he was dealing in cartoon-like commonplaces; his failure is to establish a point of view. The audience is aware that he is being satirical when he spoofs Emil's supposed masculinity, but it isn't sure how seriously to take the psychological mishmash. If Costigan is truly concerned with dreams and guilt feelings, he doesn't say very much, badly. And if the whole play is intended as a boff of modern theater, Costigan fluffs the job by giving the production an overly sober tone...
Newman and his wife have said that they had left the fake West for some real acting in the legitimate theater. And both are always fun to watch and at times as real as one could wish. But because of Costigan's myopia, no clear Mavis or Emil (or Edward for that matter) ever comes through; the only consistent performance is from Barney, the sheep-dog (played, the program reports, by Patrick, the sheep-dog). And he can't save the show. Baby Want A Kiss some how manages to be as inane as its title...