After the Night and the Music

If you’ve listened to the three irresistible record albums that Mike Nichols and Elaine May released in 1959, 1960 and 1961 — namely Improvisations to Music, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and Mike Nichols & Elaine May Examine Doctors — you might have noticed (as I have) that Nichols’ contributions to the team’s seminal comedy were substantially different from May’s. Both Second City alumni were screamingly funny, of course, but it sounded as if May was the one with the gift for volcanic explosions of wackiness while Nichols yielded the editor’s scissors.

Put concisely, it seemed that May was more the writer and Nichols more the director. Theater history has borne out that division-of-labor theory, with May continuing to write and Nichols having turned almost exclusively to directing. But whereas Nichols’ subsequent work has been largely brilliant — e.g., last year’s superlative televersion of Angels in America and this year’s Broadway smash Monty Python’s Spamalot — May’s output has been more problematic. Most recently, she got a few good notices (inexplicably, I’d say) for Adult Entertainment, a send-up of the porn industry that sputtered to a relatively quick Off-Broadway close. Now, with a trio of one-acts presented under the evocative umbrella title After the Night and the Music, she bats an unimpressive one for three.

The good news comes first with Curtain Raiser. The skit’s title is projected on the show curtain as the curtain is raised, a droll idea to begin with. What then unfurls is virtually a playlet that could have been a Nichols and May routine. Lumpy guy Keith (Eddie Korbich), complete with a hideous comb-over, pleads with lesbian-in-pants-suit Gloria (J. Smith-Cameron) to join him on a dance hall floor to the strains of “Dancing in the Dark.” At first declining because she can only lead, Gloria eventually gives in and discovers that Keith, a self-advertised dance instructor, isn’t lying about his expertise. Within minutes, he’s got her moving like Ginger Rogers — only not always backward and certainly not in high heels. The symbiotic activity allows Gloria to impress her girlfriend Brittany (Deirdre Madigan) and bolsters Keith’s sagging self-esteem.

May has written an utterly charming if lightweight piece that’s made scintillating by the performances of Smith-Cameron and, especially, Korbich. A reliable performer who has sparkled on and off Broadway for a couple of decades now, the balding, only slightly pudgy Korbich is always a featured player. He should be given a starring role as soon as possible; his comic terping here (Randy Skinner is the choreographer) is reminiscent of great stage-clown antics.

Unfortunately, Korbich is not in either of the following skits, which may be a blessing for him but is a loss for May. In the second one-act, Giving Up Smoking, the author has concocted monologues for Jeannie Berlin (her daughter), Jere Burns, Brian Kerwin, and Smith-Cameron, all of whom are rolled out on winches that set designer John Lee Beatty outfits economically. Their assignment is to talk about “why I’m not depressed.” Berlin plays Joanne, who’s longing to be phoned for a date by Kerwin’s Mel but is repeatedly interrupted by Burns’ gay, lonesome “Wizard of Oz” fanatic Sherman. Smith-Cameron is Sherman’s mother, Kathleen, whose cancer has metastasized and who has come to terms with her condition. There’s a good deal of extended talk about need, contact, and aggravation, but director Daniel Sullivan has trouble keeping it interesting while the actors are confined to such tight spaces.

Just as the best came first in this show, the worst comes last: Swing Time. The thrust of this playlet is apparent early when tense Mitzi Grade (Smith-Cameron, the evening’s cumulative acting champ) and her husband Darryl (Burns) start squabbling about the unusual evening they’ve impulsively planned with arriving friends Gail (Berlin) and Ron (Kerwin). The “swing” in the title indicates what’s on the way: a variation on couples-swapping, 36 years after Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice! Obviously, May thinks she has something new and amusing to say on this threadbare subject — but she hasn’t. As is customary with these middle-brow doodles, there’s no follow-through on the sex after the sporting actors tear off many of Michael Krass’s costumes. Just as May blunted her satirical arrows in Adult Entertainment, she backs away here, introducing instead a dopey plot twist that shifts the characters’ attention.

If you sift carefully through this three-part endeavor, you’ll realize that it has an underlying theme: human need. In each of the pieces, May is looking at people who want to be noticed, who crave validation. Would that she had found more inspiring vehicles to reach her goal. There are other themes here, of the musical sort. Throughout, sound designer John Gromada airs standards and, at one point, Kerwin plays a few measures of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” on the guitar. But I suspect that, for me, the lasting effect that May’s work will have is the bad taste left in my mouth for the spellbinding Howard Dietz-Arthur Schwartz ballad “You and the Night and the Music.”