Wishin’ and Hopin’

Primary Stages’ handsome new space at 59 East 59th Street offers an auditorium painted deep blue, 200 comfy seats, stadium seating for its nine rows in the orchestra section and, after an empty row, three rows on the left-hand side and four rows on the right-hand size in a modified mezzanine. There’s also a narrow strip of single seats on the right side of the house to create a loge-like situation.

Faithful readers have seen me write that while Roman Catholics have a tradition of making three wishes whenever they enter a new church, I like to do the same whenever I enter a new theater. So that’s what I’ve done since visiting the new space where I saw The Stendhal Syndrome, Terrence McNally’s two-one acters, “Full Frontal Nudity” and “Prelude & Liebestod.” The former makes good points on how we think and talk of trivialities when we’re in an art museum in front of a genuine masterpiece instead of basking in its glory, while the latter shows us what an egomaniacal, bisexual orchestra conductor is thinking when he’s working. I enjoyed both, but I was so taken aback (as is everyone else who’s been to the new theater) by Richard Thomas’s yeoman performance as the conductor. Good Lord, does he knock himself out in this virtual monologue! It’s already — and will continue to be — one of the season’s most talked-about performances.

As I would learn the following night when I was at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, McNally is grateful that Thomas was able to do it — and a bit surprised, too. “For,” he told me, “Richard was supposed to do one of my plays a few years ago, but then had to deal with his seven children — they include triplets — while he was going through a divorce. And the last time, when he was scheduled to do Andre’s Mother, he got a TV thing and took that.” So McNally was a little gun-shy when Thomas said he’d do “Prelude & Liebestod,” for the playwright half-expected the actor to come up with another excuse, however valid. But the third time’s the charm, and I can only urge you to see what wonders Thomas is achieving over there on 59 East 59th in McNally’s impressive work.

I spoke with McNally during the first intermission of the Gorge Street revival of his 1991 play Lips Together, Teeth Apart. (Three McNallys in a row!) And speaking of this Garden State revival, that brings me to the first of my three wishes:

I wish that everyone could see Alison Fraser in Lips Together, Teeth Apart. We haven’t seen much of Fraser lately, and for the worst of reasons: Her beloved husband, Rusty Magee, was ill for years from colon cancer that metastasized in his brain. Alas, just this week, Fraser had to mark the first anniversary of his death. In a way, it’s good that she’s working; but in another way, it can’t be so good, for her husband in the play is dying from cancer, too.

She told me during an interview last month that she just decided to face that fact straight-on — which is the way she’s playing Chloe, the seemingly carefree, free-spirited community theater actress who knows her husband is sleeping with another woman, but knows that making a scene over it won’t get him back. She’s wonderfully flamboyant, moves like a dream, and is touchingly tender, too, in the scenes that call for that emotion. Many of us think of Fraser as a musical performer, what with her galvanizing roles in In Trousers, Romance/Romance, and The Secret Garden, but she shows here that she has the acting chops for a serio-comic role, too. You’ve only got till March 7 to see her, and believe me, getting to New Brunswick from New York by train is no big deal. The George Street Playhouse is a mercifully short walk from the train station.

My second wish: I wish that Regina Taylor hadn’t mentioned Chekhov in Drowning Crow. Her play, as you may have heard, is an update of Chekhov’s masterpiece, The Sea Gull, set in contemporary times on the South Carolina coast. Madame Arkadina is now Josephine Nicholas Ark Trip, a successful actress, and whose son, C-Trip, is a performance artist who’s putting on a show in his backyard, which she’s attending. Josephine doesn’t like what she sees, makes no bones about it, but a few minutes later, happens to mention Chekhov in one of her rants. Gee, if the lady knows Chekhov, I believe she’d say something like, “Isn’t it a coincidence that what’s happening here today is exactly what happens in The Sea Gull?”

But that’s the problem when a famous property is updated. When I saw the film version of The Wiz, I kept wondering why Diana Ross didn’t say at one point, “Migawd, this is like what happened to Judy Garland all over again!” I guess it’s possible that she hadn’t seen The Wizard of Oz, but it’s certainly not likely. Anyway, Taylor would have done better to just pretend that there was no such playwright as Chekhov.

My third wish: I wish that the management of Roulette had brought a curtain with them to the John Houseman Theater. The playhouse doesn’t own its own curtain, but producers who feel their shows need them — as Steve Asher, Avalon Entertainment, and David W. Unger did when they brought Pete ‘n’ Keely to this 42nd street playhouse — do buy or rent them and then install them. Would that Ensemble Studio Theatre had done the same when renting the place. For Roulette has a dynamic first-act curtain, which I won’t divulge here. The problem is that, during intermission, techies put something on the set that kills the suspense. So if you’re going to Roulette, and leave the auditorium during your intermission break, make sure when you return to not look at the stage while you’re going back to your seat. Frankly, it’s easier to get through the long, uninterrupted rows of the Houseman if your back is to the stage as you walk in, anyway, but when you turn to sit down, keep your eyes closed until you hear the hush of the crowd which will clue you that the second act is about to begin.

To be frank, this is not all that’s keeping Paul Weitz’s play from succeeding. I would wish that his play were better, but I guess that’s a wish I’ll have to keep for when I next go to a new theater. Sad to say, I don’t expect that Roulette will still be around then.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]