Word: valour
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...especially not with the work in question. Reviewers won't be allowed to pass judgment until the official opening in two weeks (McNally, author of Master Class and Love! Valour! Compassion!, is still tinkering). But a first look reveals a play far less incendiary than charged...
...Manhattan Theatre Club, which plans to stage the play this fall. Citing security concerns, the theater abruptly canceled the production in May; then, after a barrage of bad publicity and cries of censorship, reversed itself and said the show would go on after all. Which means McNally (Love! Valour! Compassion!; Master Class; the book for Ragtime) in all likelihood has a hit on his hands. And maybe even, once the political posturing is cleared away, an intriguing new play. When: Opens Oct. 13 at the City Center in Manhattan...
...that just one week prior to the assault, the same two police officers heroically re-entered a collapsing building in order to save its inhabitants, despite orders to withdraw from the scene because their own lives were in danger. The tragedy of these two Brooklyn cops, models of both valour and depravity, is more poignant than anything the big-screen could offer. Unfortunately, the characters in the real life drama can expect no respite from the closing credits...
...course, their bond with one another doesn't matter all that much if they don't also connect with their audience. McNally wrote Frankie and Johnny early in his career, before Master Class and Love! Valour! Compassion! made him a latter-day B-way comic bard. Here, he plays the beginner's trick of substituting theme or plot with sparkling layers of verbal gift wrap...
...successes (a revival of Noel Coward's Present Laughter starring George C. Scott) before finding his artistic voice in several plays by McNally. His long association and friendship with the playwright is currently asunder, because Lane passed up a chance to co-star in the movie version of Love! Valour! Compassion! Lane blamed a schedule conflict, but McNally has stopped talking to him. "I assume we'll get over it," says Lane. "We work extremely well together. I would hate to lose that...