Word: playwright
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When Joseph Papp, the nation's leading impresario of serious drama, decided to produce Cuba and His Teddy Bear at New York City's Public Theater, stage veterans gaped at the good fortune of Playwright Reinaldo Povod, 26. A product of Manhattan's turbulent Lower East Side, Povod had never before even written a full-length play. Envy turned to astonishment when Papp announced the show would star Oscar Winner Robert De Niro in his first stage effort since 1970's One Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger. The seven-week off-Broadway run sold out in three hours. After...
...Povod, this splashy arrival puts unreasonable pressure on the current production and, even more, on whatever he writes next. Early success is followed, almost metronomically, by harsh reappraisal; and in the process, many promising writers are intimidated, disillusioned or silenced. Still, every playwright dreams of seeing his work designed with authenticity, directed with vigor and grace, and acted with menace, tenderness and humor. That is what has happened to Cuba...
...drug dealer (De Niro) and his much cuddled, much cuffed adolescent son Teddy (Ralph Macchio, star of the movie The Karate Kid). Also on the scene are the father's oafish partner in crime (Burt Young, an Oscar nominee for Rocky) and assorted street-corner toughs, including a junkie playwright who has befriended and apparently seduced the boy, a would-be writer. For De Niro fans, the role of Cuba evokes what he does best in film: veering unnervingly between caressing affection and blind rage. Small wonder that as the son, Macchio looks so skittish that his feet are almost...
When the show opened on Broadway last week, many appalled theatergoers demanded, Who is Bernard Sabath and how dare he defile these golden scamps? That outrage underscores how deep a nerve the playwright is aiming for. If life has so disappointed Huck and Tom, the epitomes of hope, how can a spectator not be plunged into pessimism about his own unfulfilled ambitions? The execution is not quite so imaginative as the premise. Tom (John Cullum) and Huck (George C. Scott) are both using assumed names, so it takes a long, creaky while for them to acknowledge each other as they...
CYRANO DE BERGERAC IS about the Rennaissance poet, playwright, soldier and all-around wit who was afflicted with a huge you-know-what. In love with his cousin Roxanne, Cyrano ends up aiding his rival Christian in winning her affections by supplying the good-looking but vacant boy with his specially crafted sweet nothings...