by Gina Guglielmo
Jules Feiffer! What a blast from the DQ's past! Feiffer was so New York, so late 20th Century, and his sophisticated cartoons were everywhere: The Village Voice, The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times. In 1986 Feiffer won the Pulitzer Prize for his political cartoons, and he was the ubiquitous and witty guest on talk shows in the early days of black and white TV.
But an author? Who knew? After a quick dip into Wikipedia, Feiffer's equally stellar career as a writer was made clear. He wrote the stage play for Little Murders as well as the screenplays for Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge and Robert Altman's Popeye. His book, The Great Comic Book Heroes was alluded to in the recent Kill Bill, and he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2004. Not surprisingly, his whimsical humor lent itself to many children's books including The Man in the Ceiling.
Silver Spring Stage is currently offering Feiffer's little-known play,
A Bad Friend, a bittersweet comedy which takes place in the paranoia-rich atmosphere of the McCarthy era and makes it worth a serious look post 9/11. The plot of A Bad Friend is pretty straightforward: a family swept up by its fervor for Communism as embodied in Stalinist Russia is torn by internal conflicts; it is threatened and nearly destroyed by external ones.
The cast is small: the parents, Naomi and Shelly; teenage-daughter Rose; Hollywood screenwriter, Uncle Morty: a snooping reporter, Fallon; and an enigmatic stranger Rose befriends named Emil. Rose is the focus of the swirling energies provided by her ultra "progressive" parents who read The Daily Worker religiously and blindly and defend their good friend, Joseph Stalin, for his noble actions. Despite this grim scenario, there is a great deal of humorous dialogue in the play. Fieffer's definition of a liberal is a gem although surely a self-deprecating one: a liberal is a person whose feet are planted solidly in mid air. However, the life of this close-knit family, for all their ardent faith in a new world, ends only in sadness and disillusion.
The production (handled by Seth and Brenda Ghitelman), is creative and fast-paced due to the fact that there are no clear cut scenes or acts but a series of vignettes, twenty or more. Watching them actually resembles reading a book of cartoons. One scene segues into the next accompanied by snatches of apropos music ranging from The Depression songs of Guthrie to those of Fred Astaire. The role of Rose is played by Lauren Uberman who captures all the nuances of the teenage spectrum: outrage, innocence, deep commitment and vulnerability. She also does a drop-dead perfect Brooklyn accent, not an easy accomplishment for those not born and bred in Coney Island or Flatbush. The entire cast was polished and gave strong performances notably Sally Cusenza as the perennial Jewish Mamma and Craig Miller as Emil, the mystery man who Rose befriends on the esplanade of Brooklyn Heights.
Lauren Liberman (Rose), Gordon Adams (Shelly) and Sally Cusenza (Naomi).
A drawback to resurrecting this play might be its wealth of allusions to the witch-hunt mentality of the forties and fifties. The program notes provide information on once prominent names like John Garfield, Clifford Odets, and Emma Goldman. Most of the audience was likely familiar with The Rosenbergs and Zero Mostel, but I fear this play would go totally sopra la testa of anyone under 50. Even DQ had never heard the wild accusation that High Noon was a metaphor for an isolated and beleaguered comrade forsaken by a whole town of craven, unenlightened cowards.
And just who are the bad guys in this play? That is the question. Well, Joseph Stalin is certainly up for a prize. Late in the play, Shelley puts together some information which implies that Uncle Joe was behind the pogroms. Naomi rages against such disloyal ideas. However, locating the villain or villains of the piece goes beyond the obvious Soviet leader. Uncle Morty (in a strong performance by Brian Turley) is Rose's idol, but he quickly throws off old loyalties to his sister and her family, and to his own Commie roots when his writing career is at stake. The reporter who stalks Rose throughout the play would appear to be a bad friend but may possibly be a good one since he desires to enlighten Rose about her misled family.
Emil is likewise a very ambiguous character since he genuinely likes Rose for her unspoiled self, but then gives her Dreiser's An American Tragedy to read. Dreiser was a Party member and his novel pointed out the rotten underbelly of our capitalistic nation. It eventually comes out that Rose's dear friend Emil is an undercover Soviet spy, the notorious Colonel Abel.
Maybe the Bad Friend term is a metaphor for all the clouds of suspicion and betrayal that hung over Americans during that era. Silver Spring Stage should be applauded for reviving this play which underlines the values of civil rights and individual freedom for contemporary audiences. As the Director succinctly puts it in his opening notes: "When we betray those values, we are a bad friend to the world."
A Bad Friend continues at the Silver Spring Stage at 10145 Colesville Road, Woodmont Center in Silver Spring on March 6, 7 and March 13, 14 and 15 (m). 301-593-6036.
