Hollywood Arms
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| HOLLYWOOD ARMS -- Michelle Pawk, Sara Niemietz and Linda Lavin. (Joan Marcus photo) |
"Hollywood Arms"
Writen Carrie Hamilton and Carol Burnett
Directed by Hal Prince
Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street
Tele-Charge (212) 239-6200
Opened October 31, 2002
Reviewed by Edward Rubin November 7, 2002
Somewhere during the middle of the first act - realizing
that what I was watching on the stage, however compelling, was little more
than a series of loosely connected sketches with a few star turns - I reached
for my program. Hit with a bout of temporary amnesia, I was wondering who
it was that was attempting, admittedly with some success, to turn this sow's
ear of a play into a silk purse.
The answer, both a surprise and not, is Hal Prince. With twenty Tony Awards and more than forty years of theatre under his belt, who better to rescue Hollywood Arms than Carol Burnett's friend Hal Prince? All the magician had to do was hire a stellar cast, engage a boffo production crew, pull out every trick that he learned during his long and considerable career and presto a relatively enjoyable evening in the theatre is born.
An adaptation of Carol Burnett's 1986 autobiography, One More Time, reworked for the stage by her daughter, the late Carrie Hamilton and the star comedienne herself, Hollywood Arms is the story of a dysfunctional family. Here we meet three generations of women: Helen, a young, pre-stardom Burnett (played by two actresses), her alcoholic mother Louise (Michele Pawk), and Nanny, the grandmother who raised her, a very needy and loving pill popping, morality lecturing, wind-passing Christian Scientist (Linda Lavin).
Essentially a memory play, Hollywood Arms begins with the older Helen (Donna Lynn Champlin), now on her way to stardom, looking back to her beginnings. The year is 1941. She (Sara Niemietz playing the younger Helen) and Nanny are still in Texas. In an obligatory scene or two we find ourselves, along with all of the major characters, living in a shabby one roomer hotel called Hollywood Arms. Directly behind the hotel, high in the hills - a specter of things to come - is the infamous Hollywood sign with its fifty-foot letters. It could be said that the silent star of the play is Walter Spangler's set design. As simple as it is, it is the perfect blend of both location and mood, one that never lets us forget where we are, what we are watching and who the characters are.
The plot, a Hollywood tried and true, is another version of your rags to riches story. Louise, dating a handsome two-bit actor, is torn between pursuing her own career, that of a Louella Parson's type Hollywood reporter and being a mother to her own daughter. Unsuccessful in everything that she touches, with a loser mentality, Louise becomes pregnant, marries a man she doesn't love (at her mother's urging) for a meal ticket and ends up an alcoholic. Predictably, Helen goes on to become a star. The year is 1951 and her first big break is an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
While the men in this production, Jody (Frank Wood) as Louise's ex-husband and Helen's father and Bill (Patrick Clear) as her current boyfriend, turn in finely tuned performances with the few lines that they are given, the play clearly belongs to the director and his two female leads. Make no mistake, the role of Louise, the only well rounded and nearly fully written character in the play is a career-defining role for Ms. Michele Pawk. And she handles it, transition after transition, beautifully. Pawk starts out youngish, innocent and hopeful. By the end of the play, she has gone through the wringer several times from a sexy adventuress to a washed out, fall down dead drunk. Slowly drained of all hope, is nothing more than an empty shell. Louise is running on empty. Watching this actress age some ten years - the actual span of time from act one to act two - as all of her hopes and dreams, one by one evaporate, is two inches short of miraculous.
The titular star of the play - her name is above the title on the Cort Theatre's marquee is Linda Lavin. I must confess that despite this actress's many stalwart performances - in her determined movements from point A to point B, she is the stage equivalent of Emma Goldman - I have never fully appreciated Ms Lavin's talents, nor understood her popularity. Her mugging and screeching, like chalk across a blackboard, throughout the entire The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, a role that would have been better played by the playwright Charles Busch himself (at a small theatre thank you), was most annoying. Even her performance as Mrs.Van Daan in the 1997 revival of The Diary of Anne Frank - and that won her a Tony nomination - was rather perfunctory. Yes, for me Lavin has always been an acquired taste that I never quite acquired, that is until now.
Here Ms. Lavin as Nanny, the matriarch of the play - with
humor masquerading as pathos - gets to play more than her customary one
note. True most of the funny lines and rollicking sight gags still belong
to her, but the reality of her situation, her strained relationship with
her daughter, her fear of losing her granddaughters on whom she relies to
give meaning to her life, give rise to more serious moments. When Helen
tells Nanny that she wants to move to New York we actually feel her impending
loss. We share her pain. And we are genuinely surprised when Nanny explodes
after Helen's father Jody, also an alcoholic, accuses her of thwarting Helen's
dreams. All of the pain of Nanny's own life's experiences which remain mostly
unexamined - that she had six husbands for instance - come sallying forth
as she angrily screams, "Don't you dare tell me I'm pissing on anyone's
dreams."
If I had one bitch to moan - as enjoyable as the play was when watching
it - by the time I got home, my Hollywood Arms experience had all but evaporated.
It was as if it had never existed. Little from this anorexic play, save
for Michelle Pawk's impressive performance - a career maker if I ever saw
one - and Linda Lavin's touching and surprisingly toned down moments - a
few more nuances then I have ever seen her achieve in one fell swoop - remained
on my hard disk. Still, so sketchily thin was the play that even these few
minutes of glory were hard to retrieve. [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). He can be reached at erubin5000@aol.com.
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