Word: hurrah
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...screenwriters concede that they massaged some facts for dramatic effect. To offset the downbeat reality of Andy's premature death, for example, they took a successful Carnegie Hall show from early in Kaufman's career and recast it as his last hurrah before succumbing to cancer. Several girlfriends were combined into a composite character, played by Courtney Love, and a few other liberties were taken as well. But Kaufman's life remains familiar to those who best know it. "Facts, schmacts, they made him honest," says Bill Zehme, who spent six years researching Kaufman for his comprehensive new book Lost...
...make it to the stage, you can bet that it shouldn't have made it there at all. But such ominous artistic omens didn't prevent Producing Director Peter Altman of the Huntington Theatre Company from adapting Nobel-prize winning author Edwin O'Connor's 1956 novel, The Last Hurrah, into a theatrical event. Speckled with scheming politicos, snooty aristocrats and down-to-earth Irish-American folk, O'Connor's novel, a sweeping panorama of '50s Boston political scene, seemed a perfect recipe for dramatic success, right? Wrong...
...zeal to promote Boston-themed plays, Altman thought he found an easy answer in the colorful Last Hurrah, the notorious parody of four-time Boston mayor James Michael Curley's last-ditch bid for re-election. What he got, however, was an unreasonably large and unmanageable cast of characters, many of whom are demoted to ornamental, cardboard cut-out status in the three-hour world of the theatre. There's Amos Force (Keith Perry), the conservative Yankee who will do whatever it takes to see the Irish mayor lose; Francis Jr. (John P. Arnold), the mayor's playboy, finger-snapping...
...Oscillating between razor-sharp and nauseatingly trite (see above), director Eric Simonson's adapted script is too inconsistent to be praised. Besides containing about twelve too many characters (with not an interesting female role in the bunch), the script lacks the moral ambiguity that would have made The Last Hurrah a more intellectually engaging production. The press material for the play asks the seminal question "Is Skeffington a compassionate champion of the poor, an unscrupulous back-room deal maker, or both?" and it is clear early on in one's evening that the answer will not be hard to figure...
...Though filled with energy and period piece spirit, The Last Hurrah fails to reveal a deeper meaning beneath its entertaining surface. It's fun to go along for the ride, but at the end of this political campaign, one can't help but ask himself...