Word: shrike
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...insipid and cliched. Worse, Teichmann's attempts at character development partially distort West's intent. In the stage version, for example, the relationship between Miss Lonelyhearts and his sweetheart Betty--which assumes a far more central role than in the novel--is transformed into a typical 50s romance, while Shrike, Miss Lonelyhearts' misanthropic boss, becomes too intrusively a father figure. Worst of all are Teichmann's omissions. Absent from his script are many of West's most pungent passages; missing too are several key incidents which suggest that Miss Lonelyhearts' real impulse in the face of suffering is to destroy...
...unpleasant because of his extreme morbidity; in this production, because of his insipidity. He must emerge, however, as something more than self-parody. Unless he embraces his Christian mission with evident conviction, the painful irony of his demise is undercut, and the play belongs totally to the ever-cynical Shrike...
...weak Miss Lonelyhearts tilts the balance of the play in Shrike's favor, and Lorenzo Mariani as the sharp-talking features editor makes the most of it. Poor Miss Lonelyhearts never really stands a chance. Mariani's magnificent presence and resonant voice dominate the stage, as he enunciates West's vision in a way that mixes cynicism with sense. Especially fine is Mariani's handling of Shrike's monologue, in which he relentlessly demonstrates to a bed-ridden Miss Lonelyhearts the futility of traditional means of escape...
ALSO FINE is Margaret Downey as Adele Farnum, Shrike's target. Aided by apt makeup and costuming, she fits comfortably into the '30s atmosphere, capturing well the archness of the classic tease. Miss Lonelyhearts' newsroom colleagues also do a more than adequate job. Derek Pajaczkowski as Ned Gates, "The failure incarnate," swings adroitly between hope and bitterness, and Brian Foley as "Flash" Goldsmith excels at wry faces. Less convincing is Brooke Davida Waxburg's Mrs. Shrike, more fluttery than seductive, while Holly Blatman as Betty--"the typical American girl, well-scrubbed and soft as steel"--labors courageously with the worst...
...this Miss Lonelyhearts succeeds in evoking the supreme negativity of West's vision, Teichmann's occasional soppiness notwithstanding. Because of the peculiar balance of this production, however, we don't even need to wait for the final curtain to experience the onset of despair. When Shrike, shrill as the song of the bird he's named for, tells Miss Lonelyhearts to "Get off this milk of human kindness bit," we wish the misguided kid would take his advice...