| . | 02/03/2003
Fifth of July
By: Simon Saltzman
If playwright Lanford Wilson were a screenwriter, he would probably have called his superior sequel to "Talley's Folly," "Talley II," instead of "Fifth of July." I'm glad he didn't. "Fifth..." is more than a sequel, it is an intriguing and penetrating play that needs no numerical suffix for us to recognize its worth and stature as an important American play. Now a quarter of century after its premiere, its theme remains painfully topical.
Nor does this play need our familiarity with "Talley's Folly" for us to quickly become involved with the Talley family. This second play, the centerpiece of a trilogy about the Missouri Talley's is in the midst of a Wilson retrospective at the Signature Theater Company. The theater world found much to praise in "Talley's Folly," an ever so delicate two-character courtship in ¾ time between a Jewish lawyer from New York and a mid-western debutante. "Fifth of July" is about as far removed in scope and dimension from "Folly" as the author could get.
There is boldness in Wilson's cramming every ideal and aspiration for a homogeneous democracy into a two and one-half hour play. Wilson stuffs his characters and his play with an abundance of rich and perplexing dichotomies. The introduction of a character, whose preoccupation is with botany, may serve as a metaphor as the author helps us see how humans, like plants, can be subdivided into classes both real and unreal, coexisting peacefully. Wilson's humanitarian theme and his unquestionable gift for complex character development and earthy dialogue make "Fifth of July" a challenge that director Jo Bonney meets with mostly excellent results. Any director would have his hands full bringing the long expositional first act into focus. Despite one major actor not quite up to the demands of the character, Bonney has wisely placed enough of the emphasis on the passion and poignant underpinnings of the other characters to gracefully offset this problem.
At the center are Kenny (Robert Sean Leonard), a paraplegic Vietnam hero and his male lover Jed (Michael Gladis), a botanist who is helping to rebuild and replant the family homestead. Around them is the clan members as they encounter each other 33 years after "Talley's Folly." The colorful assortment of characters that meet at the Talley farm represent the gamut of misplaced Americana. Kenny has decided to sell the family farm to two ex-college friends, Gwen (Parker Posey), a wealthy drugged-out rock singer and John (David Harbour), her cynical and calculating husband. The sale of the house becomes an anchor for the family to rustle up old skeletons. Shirley, (Sarah Lord) the illegitimate 13 year-old niece, her mother and Kenny's sister June Talley (Jessalyn Gilsig) and the family matriarch Sally Talley (Pamela Payton-Wright) add sparks to the family's day after Independence Day fireworks, as souls are bared in deliciously unexpurgated fashion.
What is refreshing is that no one is a villain. Each character becomes renewed through this meeting of the clan and is richer for it. This is an up play in which characters with enormous problems learn to face tomorrow with strength based on adversity. When the widow Sally makes a decision (that I won't disclose), we are instantly made aware of the continuity of life. Throughout is the touching relationship that exists between Ken and Jed. Caring for his crippled lover with matter of fact dispatch, Gladis is an actor sensitively demonstrates how intense love and passion can be both understated and powerful. In yet another of his many extraordinarily impassioned portrayals, Leonard, so memorable in his Tony Award-winning role in Stoppard's "The Invention of Love," makes us painfully aware of Kenny's bitterness and own death wish. Watching him slowly bring himself out of being a pathetic leg-less victim of the Vietnam War into a survivor and schoolteacher with something to live for, is an emotional experience made even more powerful by this first rate actor. Parker Posey, who hasn't met the challenge in anything I've seen her in so far on stage or screen, gets only passable results as the frenetic jaded and drug-using Gwen. Perhaps the role demands more than can be conveyed by this actor. Harbour is devilishly charismatic as he tries to wheel and deal the farm into a recording studio for his wife. Gilsig is convincing as the over the hill radical sister as is Lord as her precocious child. Both warm and austere, Wright, who has been appearing in this country's great theaters in the works of practically everybody for years and years, could easily have been the lovely Sally Talley of 33 years ago. Richard Hoover's setting of the interior and exterior of the Talley home was an eye-full of an era on the wane. Simon Saltzman
"Fifth of July" (through March 9th)
Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space, 555 W. 42nd Street
For tickets ($55) call 212 – 244- 7529
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