STEPPIN' OUT FOR JOHN GUARE
Among the many modest pleasures I missed during the depths of this Pandemic was the simple kick of hanging with New York theatricals — at the West Bank Café down on western 42nd Street, say, or upstairs at Sardi’s, or anyplace, really, where actors sit and tell stories. I enjoy listening to actors tell stories almost as much as I enjoy watching them act stories out.
I’ve now been back to the West Bank, finally, and Sardi’s, inevitably, though I remain Covid cautious and mostly masked. Last Monday, however, I got to satiate my yen for theatrical society without the benefit of a barstool, at the 92nd Street Y, of all places, attending A Celebration of John Guare.
Without question, my favorite living playwright. Pretty much the first show I ever saw off Broadway (other than You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown, as a kid) was Landscape of the Body, at the Public Theater in 1977. Not only did the experience change me as a theatergoer, inspiring me to head out in search of more plays that were like nothing I’d ever seen before (a search that persists to this day) — it also launched me as a theater writer. I was so blown away by Landscape of the Body — so disturbed by it, so confused by it, so delighted by it — that I decided to try and write about it, submitting my “review” to the Columbia University student newspaper, The Spectator, which published my little write-up and…well, here we are.
The moment I heard that the 92NY Unterberg Poetry Center (I once heard Raymond Carver read there!) was hosting A Celebration of John Guare, I just bet that the evening would be a joyous communal confab. Because John Guare has always centered himself around community in the New York theater — mentoring, advocating, teaching, serving, attending, circulating, and ever-joyfully schmoozing. He is not merely a great playwright, he is a vital centrifugal force.
The sidewalk teemed outside the Y with ticketholders and ticket-hopers looking for their way in. It felt quite like an opening night. The crowd, masked and unmasked, was infused with familiar faces — some recognizable only from the nose and eyes up (like me). Again and again I greeted, and was greeted by, gazes that queried: Is that you? Again and again, the giddy answer was: Yes!
Down front, the guest of honor circulated like a Bar Mitzvah boy; gabbing, bear-hugging, still pecking cheeks as the lights went down. He is now 85, and I wish he’d been wearing a mask, but the guy has always lived dangerously as a writer, so what are you gonna do?
The distinguished organizers of this distinguished evening hit the stage without a word of introduction: the actress Elizabeth Marvel and the playwright Tony Kushner. This would prove to be the tribute’s organizing principle: folks simply entered and you really had to recognize them to know who the hell was speaking; like some crowded watering hole after a show.
In fact, there was little literal conversation. Actors stood (better yet, sat) and delivered the lines of John Guare. Still, the sense of savoring one another’s company was deliciously omnipresent.
For the record, I’m going to itemize what happened after Mr. Kushner and Ms. Marvel exited (on Mr. Kushner’s cackling final words: “There’s no intermission; enjoy!”).
Zoe Kazan, Paul Dane, Camryn Mannheim and Mike Faist delightedly batted around scenes from The House of Blue Leaves. Ato Blankson-Wood sang one of Mr. Guare’s disconcertingly daffy original “standards” from that show, “Where is the Devil in Evelyn,” accompanied by Daniel Schlosberg on the Steinway grand. Becky Ann Baker and Dylan Baker (Mr. and Mrs.) knocked it out of the park with their flirtation duet for two psychopathic therapy patients, from 1979’s Bosoms and Neglect. Linda Lavin, Mr. Dano and Bill Camp kicked the tires on one of Mr. Guare’s delirious early-1970s vehicles, Rich and Famous, abetted by Linda Emond, the Bakers, and Ms. Marvel, all joining together to sing another Guare original, a kind of Rich and Famous title tune. Ariana DuBose, Edie Falco, Ms. Kazan and Mr. Blankson-Wood made me wildly nostalgic revisiting some savagely comedic scenes from Landscape of the Body; Ms. DuBose then lingered, solo, to sing Landscape’s dead woman’s lament, “I’m Frightened of You.” Ms. Marvel and Mr. Camp (also Mr. and Mrs.) delivered poignant glimpses of Lydie Breeze, a two-play cycle Mr. Guare carved from at least four earlier plays about the loss of innocence and idealistic aspiration among four friends in the aftermath of the Civil War. Chaucer in Rome’s delectable circa-9/11 sacreligiousness was essayed by the full company (plus the actor Billy Eichner and the actor/playwright Keith Reddin), followed by a song called “Pearls” sprechgesanged by Ben Stiller, backed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Susan-Lori Parks on electric guitar. Ms. Lavin cooed another Guare ditty, “Hey, Stay a While,” that I happen to remember was once the title of an actual John Guare cabaret musical. Finally, there were shimmering fragments from Six Degrees of Separation, Mr. Guare’s masterwork, performed by Mses. Emond and Marvel, Messrs. Camp, Baker and Eichner, alongside Corey Hawkins, as the heartbreaking conman protagonist, Paul, a part he played in the 2017 Broadway revival.
As for straight-up theater stories (the kind that I’ve missed), there were tributes —admiring, whimsical, wistful — spun by an array of eminent playwrights whom Mr. Guare, along their way, once individually mentored — Amy Herzog, Samuel D. Hunter, Kenneth Lonergan and Ms. Parks. Wallace Shawn checked in briefly via pre-recorded video, as did the playwright Stephen Adly Giurgis, growling his Guare compliments hilariously and, ultimately, quite poignantly, as a guitar-strummed talking blues.
Finally, there was Meryl Streep, in the too too solid flesh, elegantly cloaked in red, with a Guare-ian bow tie at her throat. After reading aloud a superbly self-revealing tribute Mr. Guare once wrote to playwright Edward Albee, Ms. Streep concluded with a few words of her own that rang out across the night’s hang out with a concussive theatricality:
“In these times when writers move back and forth promiscuously between films and TV, and hopefully the stage, he maintains an exquisite fidelity to the theater. He believes an audience still exists, in this eye-drenched era of visual style, to match his belief that the text of the play is at the heart of the theater. The eye can be seduced but the ear hears the truth.”
Of course, Mr. Guare had the last word. “It’s like, ‘Oh, he came to his own memorial,” he crowed, bounding onstage. “But it’s so full of life. And I’m so happy to be alive.”