Word: zoditch
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Dates: during 1969-1969
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This is the only quality he shares with Zoditch, the first reader of the Grubov Publishing Company. Zoditch--much against his own inclination--is assigned to read the diary that Chulkturin kept just before his death. As Zoditch reads, the play weaves in and out of his own flights of fancy as well as those of the book he is reading. All are acted out in front of him, with occasional interruptions--as when a fellow tenant manages to get chewed up by the landlady's wolf hounds...
...Zoditch reads, he tries in vain to keep from realizing that he, too, is taking the journey of the fifth horse. He constantly criticizes Chulkaturin's characters, his words, his sentimentality, his quiet compassion, and, of course, he criticizes Chulkaturin's love for Lisa. But there is no escaping the obvious, and he is drawn deeper into Chulkaturin's tale; he even begins to substitute the names of figures in his own life for those of Chulkaturin's characters. And as he is drawn deeper, as his critique becomes more impassioned and more futile, it becomes obvious that Zoditch lacks...
This is the piece of human garbage that Peter Lempert is given to play, and, with the exception of a number of scenes where he is just a bit too hysterical, he plays them well. Despite the fact that Dustin Hoffman popularized the role, Lempert's Zoditch is so real, with his thin face, his pointed nose, his beady little eyes, and a body and limbs that curl and twist like those of a man old before his time, that it is virtually impossible to imagine anyone else in the part. What Lempert does best is comedy, and, though Zoditch...