Word: nite
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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GOOD THEATER is not always entertaining. A Nite-Lite, a one-act play by Townsend Gorey, is a provocative drama which addresses the issue of the homeless in a profoundly disturbing, and often disgusting manner...
Like last year's film Blue Velvet, A Nite-Lite explores the seamy underside of human nature, forcing its audience to descend into the depths of perversity and look at what one character describes as "the part of the light that is dark." The play's action centers around a seemingly upstanding, All-American youth's sadistic abuse of a homeless person found asleep on his doorstep...
...Hollywood, as Buck and his singing group, the High Hopes, don spangled over-alls for "Put the Blame on Mamie (She Painted the White House Pink)" from the smash film that should've been, The Mamie Eisenhower Story.But the show never strays too far from its home, the nite-club, where "Song-stylists" moan torch songs and members of a capella groups strive, in the true spirit of the age, to be utterly indistinguishable from each other...
...although not able to change every scene, is equally inventive. In addition to the lacquered, stepped "nite-club" stage, it features a side area covered by a huge venetian blind, which any self-respecting femme-fatale would give her feather boa to be seen through, holding a smoking revolver in her arm-length velvet glove. Aided by Greg Sullivan's lighting, director Deal stages images that always seem eerily appropriate, as if we all carried around the Judy Garland version of A Star is Born like a race-memory...
...still treats its adult subjects with a childish joy, playing with baubles of memory like brightly colored toys. One might be left with an unsatisfied desire to know more about the denizens of the Fifties--our parents and teachers--than just their taste in clothing. To be fair, Nite Club confidential never pretends to be more than what it is, an affectionate and gently satirical tribute to a style of music and musical culture. As a musical revue, it's a success, supported by excellent performances and witty and inventive staging. But still, one wishes that American culture would stop...