Word: sams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Sam Waterston's performance as Sam Carter further exacerbates the problems inherent in creating this character. For the first half of the play, he is a big baby, throwing temper tantrums and quarrelling with his wife and father in front of his young son. Later, when we learn the reason for his aberrant behavior, the excuse seems insufficient. Waterston remains on one level throughout his portrayal of this man who has clearly reached the end of his rope: his rope: his strained hysterics rarely vary...
...Sam's father Everett (Hume Cronyn) opitomizes Organized Religion, and since Sam is a modern Everyman, God the Father and God Sam's father inevitably get mixed up. Fortunately, Cronyn doesn't pay much attention to the heavy-handed symbolism and manages to create the play's only believable character. He ends the first act with an oddly powerful prayer and unfortunately gets bogged down when he has to repeat the trick at the end of the play...
Like father Everett, wife Glory (Phyllis Somerville) and son Stephen (Damion Scheller) have to endure Sam's tiresome tirades. But while they help to highlight some aspects of Sam's character, they never become real characters in their own right. Empty-headed and beautiful, compassionate and forgiving, Glory remains inexplicably unperturbed when her husband announces his intention to leave her and take their son with him. She goes on smiling, fixing lunch and loving her dear Sam...
NORMAN REVEALS a bewildering predilection for nursery rhymes in Traveler-this theme is carried over to Heidi Landesman's set, which features a gingerbread house and a fanciful Mother Goose garden. Sam quotes and analyzes nursery rhymes at great length, and the result is a tedious and heavy-handed string of tired metaphors describing the aforementioned Big Concepts. The funny one-liners which permeate the play also lose their effect after two repetitive hours...
...Uncle Sam...