Word: lemmon
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...school has produced public servants like Henry Stimson and George Bush. Yale, the Los Angeles Times and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art are all headed by Andover graduates. Other alumni include the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Tarzan Creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, Actor Jack Lemmon. Humphrey Bogart never got his diploma; he was kicked out in 1918 for "incontrollably high spirits...
...roots of his fears--you know, the primal stuff. Tribute winds up pat and tidy, without plunging us into the existential abyss that can make this sort of thing a real corker. The tragedy of the American sit-com writer has turned out awfully shallow. This bathos gives Jack Lemmon his star turn: fast-food epiphany, downstage center. Neither he nor Slade really needed this--although it must be fun to break down onstage. Tribute slobbers when it ought only to quiver; the mask comes off and the jelly underneath dribbles all over the stage...
...already understand Lemmon's realization, and are deeply moved long before we are supposed to be. Now he simply perpetuates his chronic weepiness, the tears which won him an Academy Award for Save the Tiger. Throughout the evening, however, something very great is happening with Lemmon, and it's not obvious, because he looks extremely relaxed onstage, devoid of mannerisms, economical in his gestures, and highly expressive in his voice. He's playing a breezy juvenile again, with all that maturity and pained awareness forced under the surface, and though he does his damndest to keep the trembling from showing...
...flawless cast plays superbly off of Lemmon, especially Robert Picardo as Jud. Unafraid of being charmless or unendearing, Picardo gives a wiry, courageous performance which ultimately wins us over and holds its own against his formidable stage father. Director Arthur Storch provides one of the smoothest, cleanest pieces of staging I have ever seen--he also invokes splendid, precise comic timing from the entire cast. William Ritman's split-level set is sheer genius, both aesthetically and thematically. Like Scottie, it has something for everyone: paneled walls, lots of framed photos, ultra-modern but ultra-comfortable furniture, all in attractive...
...Broadway is a foregone conclusion (and if gaseous schlock like Deathtrap, which opened here in January, can be a hit, well--anything goes). Tribute must strike very close to the bones of some of its contributors: Slade, still struggling to shake off Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, and Lemmon, a graduate of the Hasty Pudding chorus line and academic probation at Harvard. These men, at some point in their lives, decided to stop clowning around and get serious. Both are at a point where their deepening maturity and inherent comic inspiration can merge and go deeper still...