OFF-BROADWAY REVIEW
BUFFALO GAL REVIEW
Reviewed by Rebecca Lewis-Whitson
Published 2008-08-25
“All theatre started out evoking some god, and today our gods are Hollywood stars,” muses Debbie, the affable yet slightly overzealous college student and intern for a Buffalo regional theatre in A.R. Gurney’s Buffalo Gal, now playing at Primary Stages at 59E59th St Theatre. Aptly directed by Mark Lamos, the play is a bit like artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s pastel rendering of Vincent van Gogh; it is a play about people putting on a play.
At it’s beginning, aging and (in her own words) “fading” movie star Amanda (splendidly portrayed by Susan Sullivan) has returned to her hometown of Buffalo to star in a regional production of Anton Chekov’s famous play The Cherry Orchard. (In a wonderful parallel, the character of Amanda often bears certain uncanny resemblances to the fading star of Irina Arkadina, the main character in another of Chekov’s highly lauded play’s, The Seagull.)
Amanda seems eager to fit in with the rest of the cast and crew, yet she can’t keep her Hollywood airs and bravado entirely at bay, which can be seen in everything from her insistence upon meeting with her co-star, Buffalo regional favorite James (Dathan B. Williams) as a kind of audition, to her matching bright orange jacket and high heels. As she meets with the director and stage manager of The Cherry Orchard, Jackie (Jennifer Regan) and Roy (James Waterston) respectively, news from her agent of a sitcom offer back west starts trickling in. Amanda becomes caught up in that age-old struggle between the appealing paycheck and recognition of a Hollywood gig and the passion and artistry of the stage. She finds herself leaning towards boarding a plane back to Tinsel town despite her frequent, persistent adulation of the theatre.
The reigning acting style of the play’s first few scenes is a rather heightened one. Amanda, James, Jackie, and even Roy all seem to be performing for each other; their interactions have a theatrical flair despite the realism of the scene. Only Debbie (Carmen M. Herlihy) and Dan, (Mark Blum, who as Amanda’s resurfacing childhood love has the most memorable entrance and some of the funniest lines of the play) ring true as, quite simply, human beings. Yet this is neither a defect in direction, nor in the play’s acting. In a way, these people are putting on a performance for one another while simply holding a conversation. They are all in one way or another trying to impress, or project an image. As the play wears on, we begin to glimpse little bits of composure crumbling, and real human emotion and insecurity intermittently bubble to the surface, most tellingly in Jackie and most poignantly in our glamorous Hollywood star, Amanda.
The world of the play is an appealingly intimate one; the stage on the ground floor of the 59E59th St. Theatre is the stage of this regional theatre in Buffalo . The floor is adorned with spike tape (used in the theatre to mark specific locations for set pieces). Props also litter the floor; a backdrop hangs idly in a corner. It produces a kind of voyeuristic effect similar to one being invited into somebody’s bedchamber to watch scenes from Romeo and Juliet.
The more you know about the theatre the funnier the show will be, yet wisely, Mr. Gurney avoids making previous theatrical knowledge a prerequisite for enjoying Buffalo Gal. All you need in order to be swept up in the humor and immediacy of this bittersweet love letter to the theatre is achieved the moment your ticket is torn and you take your seat. It is for their audience that any actor, director, or stage manager gather to put on a show, and the story of such artists’ struggle to do so, both financially and artistically, is a story about all of us sitting in the darkened house of the theatre as much as it is about those behind the curtains or in the spotlight. It is in such sentiments that Buffalo Gal proves itself to be the touching and truly satisfying evening of theatre it’s main characters want to desperately to create.
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