Summary
This one, also called The Cocktail Hour, is the son's payback for all the neglect and unhappiness his family, especially his father, has caused him. Neither Bradley nor his wife Ann (Christine Macomber) wants to see their dirty linen washed on stage. "Why don't you write a nice book?" Ann asks her son. "Books are not so...so public." Bradley tries bribing his son not to have the play done until he is dead-any moment now, according to him. John's sister Nina (Beth Deitchman) likes the idea of the play, but hates that she is only a minor, supporting character. As the cocktail hour goes on, the characters and the dialogue get loaded. Childhood grievances are trotted out in self-serving monologues about incidents that audiences will find amusingly trivial. [T. Louis Weltz] and [Eric Burke] prowl the Barn's expanded stage (set by Bruce Lackoyic) to create a family tension that is suffocatingly real. In both performances, anger and aggression, as well as insecurity and vulnerability, can be read. Weltz's Bradley insists on the privileges of the rich, even as his son accuses him of being a hypocrite who married into money. Deitchman's Nina is funny, strident and sympathetic as the big sister who would rather spend her life with dogs than her family. Macomber's tightly wound mother only wants first to keep the family peace and, second, to have "just another splash" of booze.
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Extract
Make Mine a Double!
Make mine a double!
'Cocktail' and 'Speed' make for theatrical highsA.R. Gurney and David Mamet write plays that show the emotional violence existing in any close relationship. Their styles would appear to be ...See the full content of this document
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