Word: playwrighting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Knockout is just such a joker of a play. A movie in embryo and autopsy, it contains elements of every grade-Z fight picture ever made that was not worth its weight in popcorn. Give Playwright Louis La Russo II credit for knowing his Italo-American dropouts, fighters with four-letter mouths. He plants neon stickers on his key figures. The good guy (Danny Aiello) is Over-the-Hill. The bad guy (Edward O'Neill) is Below-the-Belt. There is an English Eliza Doolittle (Margaret Warncke) for whose favors they stage a slam-bang finale. Too bad someone...
...principle actors, however, demonstrate a full range of emotions and constitute fully-credible characters. Peter Stein captures the essence of the ancient Captain Shotover who drinks "to keep sober" and displays beneath his pachydermatous appearance a tender heart and all the wisdom of the playwright himself. Although Shotover is the ultimate source of chaos, confusing Mazzini Dunn for Billy Dunn, ignoring the arrival of his long-lost daughter Lady Ariadne Utterword and spewing forth random comments as he wanders aimlessly on and off the stage, the Captain is the only one who remains oblivious to the frenzy of Heartbreak House...
...absence of such clear distinctions in other aspects of Heartbreak House suggests why the play has been subjected to numerous interpretations since its first performance in 1920. Shaw's final act is especially ambiguous and leaves the audience pondering whether the playwright entertained hopes for the establishment of a new social order or whether, like Chekhov, he foresaw only a grim continuation of existing institutions...
...Playwright David Rabe's trilogy The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Sticks and Bones and Streamers, explored military brutalizations in the Viet Nam era. This week in Manhattan Actor Michael Moriarty is opening in David Berry's play G.R. Point, an equally brutal work about men doing graves registration duty in Viet Nam. Its refrain: "The 'Nam hasn't got any heroes. Dead is dumb, and dead in the 'Nam is the dumbest...
...most fascinating roles of the gay rights movement: influencing straight culture. Male homosexuals have long been particularly active in the world of the arts, where they often can work openly with no fear of losing their livelihood if they have the talent; Novelist Truman Capote and Playwright Tennessee Williams are two notable examples. But the new influence of homosexuals is something quite different: their dress, tastes and speech are being adopted by many straights who would be stunned if they knew the origins of the latest fashions or fads...