Word: mona
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...Mona L. Meagher...
...DOES, he risks the chance that someday when no one is around to shield him, the screws will drag him into a closet and "gang-splash" him, like they did Mona. So Smitty submits. But not for long, as Queenie convinces him that he could become a "politician" and a "hippo," too. The next time Rocky calls him to the shower, Smitty acquaints his patron with the floor of the crapper--and now he's the "old man" in the block...
...society wouldn't have him back--and this explains why he so jestingly accepts his life shuttling between street-hustle and prison stints. Rocky reveals that his parents are dope-pushers and bootleggers, but says he's not asking for sympathy. And in the play's most poignant monologue, Mona pathetically tells the story of how the street gang assaulted him, not the other way around. But the police chose to see it the gang's way, and Mona has learned to expect the same raw deal from prison...
Harold Rappoport, as Mona, has the most subtle, trickiest emotional transition of the play to make. And he carries it off convincingly. In the first act he comes across as nothing but a gutless nebbish, passively accepting any manner of verbal humiliation. But in the second act he shows that he has remained vulnerable by his own choice, because there's a degree of sensitivity that he refuses to lose to the prisoners' tough conformity. When he finally refuses to let Smitty become his "old man," declaring with the Shakespeare sonnet that he cares too much for Smitty to play...
...quantum leaps in Smitty's development into two short acts. Initially, Elliot plays Smitty as a naive, slow-witted, very unhip rookie whose first revelation to the cell is that he plans to learn advanced auto mechanics while behind bars. Then suddenly Smitty becomes a sensitive, loyal friend to Mona. And finally he turns, despite himself, into a hardened bastard concerned only with salvaging his own hide. Prisoners do have to learn the ropes fast, but Herbert's script and Elliot's interpretation turn the tables much too fast...