Word: gilroy
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ONCE IN PARIS Directed and Written by Frank D. Gilroy...
Uncloudable sunniness of mood is what is required to sit through this decorative but unsubstantial comedy without snarling. A viewer whose child, hitherto an incorrigible hubcap thief, had just won a full scholarship to Harvard might be in the proper frame of mind. Playwright Frank D. Gilroy (The Subject Was Roses) should have been able to manage something sturdier than this weak story, a trifle about a naive and virtuous American screenwriter-snickers begin here -who is called to Paris to rescue a bogged script. This pilgrim, played amiably and unseriously by Wayne Rogers, arrives with a red, white...
...Subject Was Roses wastes the talents of three very able performers and the time of the audience. Gilroy's play fairly oozes with a trite plot, an insipid and oft-repeated theme, and a hackneyed conclusion. Whatever dramatic tension there is develops fleetingly in the second act, building to a swift and unsatisfying climax. The story is simple. It's 1946 in Da Bronx. Timmy Cleary has just returned from the Army, back to the not-so-peaceful home of his parents, John and Nettie. They are a middle--class, heavily Irish family, and like all good families...
Through two acts the three pursue their various crazes, ending up with confessions of love and a seeming return to the gruff status--quo of the father--dominated household. Along the way, Gilroy would have us believe, they all learn a lot about each other and begin to appreciate each other more. How this play ever won anything, much less a Pulitzer, is beyond us; it must have been a bad year...
...SOMETHING IS still very wrong with this show--and unfortunately, the play seems to be the problem. All the good acting and careful technical work in the world cannot, after all, overshadow what is basically a mediocre play. Gilroy's work perhaps evokes some of the feeling of the times--the generation gap existed then, too, and the resentment and alienation of a failed marriage certainly didn't spring up in the last decade. This basic theme has been seen so many times before...a male child goes off to war, or what have you, and comes back...