Theater Review
by Edward Rubin
A Good Act is Twenty Four Hours
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BETTE BOURNE IS QUENTIN CRISP--As seen in "Resident Alien" at New York Theatre Workshop. Photo: ŠJoan Marcus 2001. |
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Resident Alien
Written by Tim Fountain
Directed by Mike Bradwell
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East 4th Street
Box Office (212) 460-5475, 1-6PM
Opened January 18, 2001
Reviewed by Edward Rubin January 12, 2001
Towards the end of his life Andy Warhol, though he appeared everywhere, was not a beloved figure. For those that cared about Art with a capital A, and there were a few of us, we called him Warhol and wherever he was was the enemy. The enemy of "real art." Then the world changed. He was gone, and he became our best friend. We called him Andy and missed him terribly. Now there was "nobody" to protect us from "them." Our buffer was gone. Once again death changed everything. Yes, we had to lose him before we appreciated him again.
The case of Quentin Crisp, the now gone fabulous eccentric, is a similar one. Like Andy, Quentin was everywhere. And after twenty years of seeing him on every corner, at every show and opening saying the same things, wearing the same clothes, the same makeup and lavender hair, his act had grown pretty thin. Still a darling of the media, on stage and off, Quentin had become little more than a photo op - a filler when things got too boring for the press. Like Sylvia Miles, he became a fixture, a work of art at the door. Whatever words he had to say were lost in the colorfulness of his character.
When Quentin died at age ninety in 1999, I seem to remember not giving it give it much thought. For me, the rumblings were low on the Richter Scale. It was only last year, when I attended his memorial at The Great Hall at Cooper Union and began to relive and rethink his life as well as mine that I realized what a great loss his passing was. The fact that he hadn't changed his tune from age 70-90, the twenty years that I knew him, no longer mattered. There was nobody like Quentin, and I now missed him. To my delight and surprise the Great Hall was filled with one of everything. It was a reverent and joyous circus of friends, a United Nations of race, age, gender and sexual persuasions. Here was Crisp being loved and not only by the gays. Also in attendance, which came as surprise to many of his friends, was a loving family. He was less the outcast than he pretended to be.
For me, the most shocking thing about Quentin Crisp, was his will. According to reliable sources, he left five thousand dollars to each of twenty friends and a substantial estate, in cash, to his niece and nephew. Rumors place the amount of his estate at between $400,000 to nearly 3 million dollars. Whatever the amount, the fact remains that he literally sang for his breakfast, lunch and dinner and rarely, if ever, dipped into his movie rights, book royalties or for that matter his own pockets. Vivid plumage masked his simple concerns. As an old friend said, "Quentin, like all of us, was afraid of growing old, getting sick and having to be taken care of. He was afraid that he would go through his money." His one regular cash outlay, as his former landlord related to me, was the blocking of his fedora. For the most part, as fame has its price, other people picked up his check.
Here was a man, who could afford better, and yet deliberately chose to live in one room with a bathroom down the hall. A man who wore the same clothes, day in and day out, listed his number in the telephone book - "how else would people be able to reach me," he would say -and went, most times, with people he didn't even know, wherever he was invited. It drove his agent crazy. As far as his meals, his favorite restaurant was the Cooper Square Diner in the East Village. Frequently, he could be seen sitting, not unlike the Queen of England, in the window, "making an appearance." He liked to brag that everything they served tasted the same, "like before the war." I assume he was talking about World War Two.
Obviously this sameness, this predictability gave him both comfort and stability. It was also all he could handle. Despite what appears to be an extremely carefully crafted lifestyle, he would still claim with some truth, "my entire life has been a matter of chance. I never decided to do anything. Everything has been given to me by others." He was quick to capitalize on the fact "that in the United States, Englishman are regarded as pets, like budgies, that can almost speak American." To this he added, "if you seem to be even vaguely connected with show business, you become sacred." And sacred he became.
No doubt about it, Quentin had a great act. He was his own dazzling work of art. It was makeup and costume and in your face, day in, day out, year round. The minute he left his room he was on stage. Being noticed for Quentin was not enough. He wanted to be recognized. Obviously he followed his own advice or more accurately, like all of us, the advice he dispensed developed out of his own set of special circumstances. "Polish up your raw identity until it becomes a lifestyle," he would say. As far as his own appearance, not unlike Dame Edna whom Crisp precedes by decades, he was well aware of its effect. "My appearance is simply a leaflet thrust into the hands of astonished bystanders." Like Oscar Wilde, neigh, more so, he left his entire act, word for word, thought for thought, in his books and plays, all eminently quotable, if not actable, for others to follow.
The first to pick up this challenge is Bette Bourne, of Bloolips fame. Currently channeling Quentin in Tim Bradwell's, play "Resident Alien" at the New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village, Bourne as Crisp is casting at its most ingenious. Short of meeting Quentin in Homo Heaven it is the closest we will ever get to the man again. Bourne, a fellow Englishman and a friend of Quentin's - which gave him plenty of time to study the man himself - is something of an eccentric himself. He is also a wonderful actor. Bloolips, his double Obie winning, queer comedy ensemble, which blended the English Movie Hall traditions with American Vaudeville for a number of years during the late 70s and early 80s, was the East Village's most eagerly anticipated event. I first saw Bloolips at the Theatre for the New City when it was still on Second Avenue. Still embedded in my brain is Bourne's, 1991 production, with Split Britches, of "Belle Reprieve," a takeoff on Tennessee William's "Streetcar Named Desire." Bourne playing Blanche to Peggy Shaw's Stanley is one of the most memorable theatrical experiences that I ever had.
"Resident Alien," based on Quentin Crisp's "life, writings and musings," as the advert says, portrays the writer actor in the last year of his life. He is ninety, suffering from angina, arthritis and eczema and has a paralyzed left hand. Though his mind is clear and his wit sharp, sadly the end seems near. The setting, true to his life in New York where he lived in the East Village, is a tiny, filthy, one-room apartment. Piles of books, letters and papers cover the floor and surround a single bed. "I never dust," Quentin would say. "After the first four years it doesn't get worse, it's just a question of not losing your nerve." As Bourne shuffles around the room waiting for visitors who never show up, he quietly begins to tell us a story.
Much of the material being recycled during the evening is thrice told tales, lifted part and parcel by playwright Tim Fountain from Quentin Crisp's various writings and one man shows. The writing is there but the selection and order, in which the stories are strung together, seemingly without rhyme of reason, is less than inspiring. Still, with Quentin out of the picture and Bourne delivering the punch, familiar stories are heard as if for the first time. Strangely enough, Quentin's queenly utterings are also revivified. We are now party to philosophical observations, many of which ring true.
From the outset, Bourne challenges the audience to participate. "It used to be thought that you had to have talent in order to achieve fame but television has changed all that," he intones. "We can now see that there are people in our society who can earn vast sums of money, become the world's sweethearts, be photographed at airports and be known by name to the proprietors of hotels without displaying talent of any kind." The challenge is met and names pop into our mind.
If anything Quentin was consistent. He rarely, if ever, changed his mind. Sex was disgusting. He didn't care for drag queens, effeminate men or the gay movement and Diana, the "People's Princess," as Crisp has Bourne trumpet, "is trash and got what she deserved. She was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana so she knew the racket. She knew that royal marriages have nothing to do with love. You marry a man and you stand beside him on public occasions and you wave and for that you never have a financial worry until the day you die."
As "Resident Alien" tells us he didn't have much use for politics either. "Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice. Politics are not for people, they are for politicians - a medium in which a person can suspend his monstrous ego." As far as America versus England, "I have found that there is a strange relationship between the countries and their systems. In England the people are hostile to the man but the system is benevolent. The very old, the very young and the ill equipped to live will always be looked after. In America everyone is friendly - almost doggie like but the system is ruthless. Once you can be pronounced unproductive, you've had it. You will end up living in a cardboard box at the corner of a street where once you occupied a mansion." "This is why I live in one room," the audience is informed.
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| Our Edward Rubin (R) with Quentin Crisp (L) in 1999 | |
As trite as it sounds, the coupling of Bourne with Crisp is a marriage made in heaven. In its very best moments, Bourne is Quentin and we are astonished. Here, besides getting his voice, the exact cadences of his speech patterns and the accurate physical movements of an ailing ninety-year-old, we get what appears to be the real Quentin looking us in the eye. We are made to share his fears. We are deeply touched by his humanity. We understand his stoicism and above all we take him seriously. Underneath we know that there is more than meets the eye. That these moments are few and far between has with less to do with the actor than the uninspiring selection and assemblage of Quentin Crisp's words by playwright Tim Fountain. His choices seem to have been skimmed from the top rather than plumbed from the depths and we are left with more manner than man. Still, a full-blown Bourne and a half of Quentin makes one damn enjoyable evening. [Rubin]
Edward Rubin is a senior editor for "Manhattan Arts International" and a regular contributor to the "New Art Examiner" and "The Hispanic Outlook." He is also a long standing member of the New York Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle and AICA (The American Section of the International Association of Art Critics). On Tuesday April 10th, he will present his lecture, "One Long Singular Sensation: The London Artworld from Frances Bacon to Damien Hirst," at The Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City. (For further information he can be reached at erubin5000@aol.com).
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