The mating dance.The Uneasy Chair * Written by Evan Smith Evan Smith (b. April 20, 1966) is the current Editor in Chief of Texas Monthly. Born in New York, Smith has a bachelor's degree in public policy from Hamilton College and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University * Directed by Richard Cottrell * Starring Dana Ivey Dana Robins Ivey (born August 14, 1942) is an American character actress. Biography Early life Ivey was born in Atlanta, Georgia, daughter of Mary Nell Ivey Santacroce (née McKoin), a teacher, speech therapist and actress who appeared in productions of , Roger Rees Roger Rees (born May 4, 1944) is a Welsh-born American actor. Rees was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, the son of Doris Louise (Smith), a shop clerk, and William John Rees, a police officer. , Michael Arkin, Paul Fitzgerald, and Haviland Morris Another theatrical homage to 19th-century literature opened around the same time as The Mystery of Irma Vep revival, only one block away at Playwrights Horizons. In Evan Smith's The Uneasy Chair, the dependably delectable Dana Ivey (who inaugurated the title role of Driving Miss Daisy Driving Miss Daisy is a 1987 play by Alfred Uhry about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish lady shares with her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, over the span of several decades. at Playwrights Horizons' tiny upstairs studio) plays Miss Amelia Pickles, who agrees to let the available room in her boardinghouse in a fashionable London district to one Capt. Josiah Wickett, played by Roger Rees (who received international acclaim in the title role of the Royal Shakespeare Company's adaptation of Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby). This comedy of ulterior motives tracks their 25-year relationship from landlord and tenant to legal adversaries to reluctant spouses to Beckettian roommates in a nursing home--during which time these two scrupulously withhold from each other what they're really thinking, which they share in stylized styl·ize tr.v. styl·ized, styl·iz·ing, styl·iz·es 1. To restrict or make conform to a particular style. 2. To represent conventionally; conventionalize. addresses to the audience. The play is a remarkable stretch for Smith, who was last seen at Playwrights Horizons as a teenage participant in the 1986 Young Playwrights Festival with Remedial English, his hilarious one-act about a gay high schooler hired to tutor a hunky hun·ky 1 n. pl. hun·kies Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a person, especially a laborer, from east-central Europe. but dumb classmate. On one level an expert if tame boulevard drama with juicy roles for terrific actors, The Uneasy Chair also reflects a gay observer's shrewd attention to the absurdities of heterosexual mating, not unlike Christopher Durang's minor masterpiece The Marriage of Bette and Boo. Shewey is the editor of Out Front: Contemporary Gay and Lesbian Plays, published by Grove Press. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion