Word: mcphee
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MacShane's research included conversations with O'Hara's brothers, sisters, wives and more distant relatives. He lists hundreds of contacts in the acknowledgements, including Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., John McPhee, William Saroyan (apparently still kicking around), Frank Sinatra, John Cheever and John Updike. They all find their way into the narrative. O'Hara's employers--Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, The New Yorker, Random House and the Screenwriters Guild--allowed MacShane to dig through O'Hara's files...
With a natural style essential to Simon plays, Achtman and McPhee display their characters' foibles coping with absurd situations--a robbery, for instance, in which the thieves steal everything but Mel's khaki pants--until Mel flips out. As his life unravels Achtman builds to a Vesuvius-like explosion. Eventually regaining control, he learns a new perspective, distinguishing the true necessities of life his cache of East Side luxuries...
Simon's Edna is not a well-developed character; she often serves as a sounding board for Mel. Nevertheless, McPhee maintains a reasoned voice. Not surprisingly, when Edna finds a job after Mel has lost his, she also assumes his original neurotic qualities. Act Two's opening marvelously reveals this switch as Simon contrasts Mel's aimless wandering with Edna's verbal rambling. They also tend to philosophize; in the course of the play they wonder anxiously about their existence. To Edna's assertion that you either live with life's problems or get out, Mel replies that human beings...
...Achtman and McPhee who allow us to see through the fourth wall into their characters, and ultimately Simon's view of 1970's city life. Both have precise, well-timed deliveries that bring to life lines like, "Some night I'm gonna put that air conditioner on High, they'll have to get a flamethrower to get us out in the morning." Their understanding of the characters enables us to identify with them, even if we're not as efficient at coming up with the witty thing to say at the right moment...
...second act, and Mel and Edna's quarreling begins to grate. Likewise, Simon is out of his league when he attempts to portray a nervous breakdown; as a result Achtman is forced to rely on a farcical style when Mel snaps. But if, in the end, he and McPhee don't possess the passion to enflame the big emotional speeches in some scenes, they make us care about Mel's and Edna's ups and downs, triumphs and hardships. And that's no small feat...