Fill up on comedy with ‘Light Lunch’
Published: February 03, 2010, 12:30 am
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Welcome home, Pete.
That would be Buffalo’s native son playwright, Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr., aka A. R. and the more familiar nickname above. Nearing octogenarian status and the author of more than 50 plays, television scripts and a novel or two, Gurney’s work is being highlighted at Road Less Traveled Productions with one of his latest plays, “A Light Lunch,” a fast and flimsy comedy about politics, theater and cleverly, self-disparagingly, a play-within-a-play featuring himself.
Theater Review
“A Light Lunch”
Three stars (out of four)
Comedy by A.R. Gurney presented through Feb. 21
by Road Less Traveled Theatre at the Market
Arcade Film and Arts Centre, 639 Main St.
For tickets, call 745-3000,
www.roadlesstraveledproductions.org.
Gurney’s plays are immensely popular in Buffalo— “The Dining Room,” “The Cocktail Hour,” “The Snow Ball,” “Buffalo Gal,” “Children,” the ubiquitous and epistolary “Love Letters.” But other stories in his acclaimed canon — “Big Bill,” “Ancestral Voices,” “Mrs. Farnsworth,” for example — have not been seen locally. And that is why it is very good news that Road Less Traveled, with “A Light Lunch,” has embarked on a three-year Gurney retrospective. Finally, some of the man’s more diverse and edgy work will come our way.
“A Light Lunch” begins innocently enough. A very attractive Texas lawyer, Beth, arranges a luncheon meeting in Manhattan with Gurney’s agent, Gary, ostensibly to strike a deal allowing an unnamed party gaining the rights to an “incomplete draft of an unproduced play,” the topic of which is rumored to be George W. Bush, “W,” “The Great Pronunciator.”
Gary at first believes that the interested buyer is a Bush hater but soon suspects that the opposite is true: Beth’s client is in actuality a Bush family insider determined to keep the play from ever seeing its first opening curtain. Beth and Gary spar. And flirt some.
They discuss Gurney.
“Isn’t Mr. Gurney old?” Beth asks.
“Ancient,” Gary replies.
They get into arguments about politics — they are polar opposites — eventually battling over W’s legacy and whether he would ever apologize to the country for his “mistakes.”
“Maybe he could do public service,” Beth suggests.
“No,” Gary answers. “Republicans don’t do that.”
So, over a light lunch they do battle. Gary’s arguments — he’s furious at Beth, but he has ulterior motives of his own — are supported by an aggravating and intrusive waitress Viola, a wannabe actress whose boyfriend, a pompous professor of dramatics named Marshall, appears in late play and adds his own polemic opinions about the “partial recognition of wrongdoing,” as assigned to Dubya.
Gary’s long minutes of comparing Bush and Gurney and their like backgrounds — WASPS, privilege, summer at the lake, Ivy League halls—and his impersonations of Bush 41, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney provide some chuckles, but these periods don’t entirely erase an overall smart-alecky attitude. Actually, all four characters are unlikable: smug, too glib, skilled at repartee but not legitimate give-and-take conversation. Refreshingly candid?
Not really. Gurney, the “gentlemanly playwright,” the Buffalo Brahmin, does indeed bash George W. Bush in “A Light Lunch”— in truth, he was an easy target — but he allows him to take a modicum amount of integrity back to Crawford. The attacks, some foolish, ultimately prove to be light-hearted, often very funny. Vitriol?
Not much. Scott Behrend directs this 90-minute one-act. His work is swift and wise. The cast — Matt Witten, Jessica Wegrzyn, Lisa Vitrano and David Hayes—are laudable, dutiful and fine Gurney interpreters, but I wouldn’t want to have lunch with any of their characters. Ron Schwartz’s restaurant set is noteworthy.
Fun poked? Frustrations vented? Legacy questioned?
Mission accomplished.
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