THE THEATER MIRROR, New England's LIVE Theater Guide
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Somewhere, not long ago, I heard that someone, perhaps the ancient Greeks, believed that no one truly died until the last time someone mentioned their name. And since I have never seen convincing evidence that there is anything "immortal" (except perhaps biologically) in the human make-up, I like this idea that remembering someone confers immortality, and I would like to remember David Wheeler. In truth, I never knew him as his actors and fellow theater-makers did --- but I knew his work; and in a sense writing and thinking about the plays he made helped create me.
Shortly after I came here to Boston I saw a play called "The Caretaker" done in an odd space in, I think, some hotel in Boston's Theatre District. The old man in that show was actually played by someone in his twenties that no one noticed until he was cast as "The Graduate" and became Dustin Hoffman.
In that same space I saw a peculiar Samuel Beckett play: three people were buried up to their necks in what looked like urns. They talked for a bit in unison, then each launched into a different monologue, stopping in mid-sentence then plunging on again as though uninterrupted. I realize now that each of the three was buried in ego, and hadn't even an awareness of anyone outside himself.
There was a little comedy in which a couple met for a brief assignation, but the woman could not stop talking; I remember his hands unbuttoning her mackintosh but as his hands worked downward her hands rebuttoned the coat behind them. It was brief, and British.
Then, in a first golden age, The Theatre Company of Boston established a space in the basement of the Hotel Touraine at 62 Boylston Street; I think it was at the end of a bar down there. Anyway it was a company, with actors who stayed and worked an entire season, and for a time Federal arts grants let them flourish. And they did many memorable plays.
I remember "Armstrong's Last Goodnight" where Larry Bryggman played a brigand chieftan on the border of Scotland when James The First became king of England, and came to visit. "Johnny," an old retainer advised him, "when the king comes in there'll be only one man wearin' a hat; Johnny, it'll no be you!" The show started with everyone speaking a brogue so thick as to be incomprehensable, but gradually, it seemed, familiarity made it easier. I think the director subtly smoothed away the Scottishness to let us think we were learning the language! Anyway, the king arrived saying simply "well, let's get on with this," and they proceeded to hang Johnny Armstrong --- who grabbed the noose in both hands and, while his strength lasted, sang his last "goodnight" and died. I'll never forget it.
And I remember Paul Benedict in "Yes Is for A Very Young Man" --- a play by Gertrude Stein about the coming of the Nazi occupation of Paris. He had a long, looping, repetative monologue describing the people, in the rain, coming up and, saying nothing, reading an edict about the occupation. The prases looped in on themselves, yet Benedict read the lines with such variety that every repetition carried a fresh feeling.
Benedict and Bryggman did "Tiny Alice" in that space, with a man named Ralph Waite and an innocent ingenue named Ellen Coulton, and a woman named Olive Deering (whose measurements I was told were 38-38-38).
In those days, whenever an off-Broadway play closed in New York, TCB was ready to pounce and get the rights to do it here in Boston.
With the grants drying up, TCB nonetheless did "Marat/Sade"; I remember when a woman whipped deSade, she did it with her long hair.
I remember a set of one-acts that included a series of monologues called "Icarus's Mother" with people on a beach all seeing and speculating on an airplane with smoke coming from it --- either crashing or skywriting --- ending with fourth-of-july fireworks. That was by Sam Shepard.
Another was a satire in which Paul Benedict played "Dink Stover at Yale" who admonished Larry Briggman's haughty villain saying "You're not really a man who wears a bowler hat, smokes cigars, and plays golf, deep down you're still A Yale Man!" That was by TCB's playwright-in-residence named A.R.Gurney. They did a sort of satiric docu-drama of his called "William Jennings Bryan" in which someone finally burst out "During the past twenty years that you have been its leader, the Democratic Party hasn't held power for even one hour!"
TCB was always on the move, fitting itself into new spaces like a hermit-crab. The next one I remember was a huge old movie-house that The Berklee School eventually renovated and turned into a music space. The big space let TCB do big shows --- like "Benito Cereno" an adaptation to the stage of a story by Herman Melville written by Robert Lowell. The play told of a slave-ship taken over by its "cargo" and TCB combined with The New African Company to bring it to the stage.
TCB never did easy ones. I remember an image from a plotless, poetical play: I think it was Stockard (still Susan then) Channing, in a brief bikini, standing at the tip of a diving-board doing a monologue holding a lovely snail-shell in her hand.
And they did "After The Fall" --- Arthur Miller's play about his wife Marilyn Monroe. It was a "popular" play designed to make money, but hardly anyone came and TCB was scrambling for a new home soon after.
When David Wheeler was with A.R.T. they let him do Shaw --- but on big, expensive sets that tended to dwarf the human dramas he loved to do. Then he did a new play by that same Sam Shepard whose "Icarus's Mother" I still remember, and reacquainted himself with Harold Pinter. He never stopped directing.
Someone once defined for me David Wheeler's directing style, describing a rehearsal session in which, after a scene run-through Wheeler said to Bronia Steffan "Uh, Bronia, could you... I mean I think..." And she said "Right, David, let's take it again," and they did and it was better!
No, I never really knew David Wheeler. But I knew the plays he made. And they were --- they are --- unforgettable.
Love,
===Anon.
( a k a larry stark)