Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams

“The theater should surprise us,” says Lou, the children’s theater owner played by Nathan Lane, part way through the first act of Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams at Primary Stages. This simple statement captures the essence of Terrence McNally’s bittersweet valentine to an art form that has the power to change lives on both sides of the footlights.

The opening sequence of this poignant comedy is played out in complete darkness. It is Lou’s birthday, and his “wife” Jessie (Alison Fraser) has arranged for them to spend some time in the abandoned theater located on the main street of their small upstate New York town. This is the space that Lou would desperately love to be the home of the couple’s children’s theater instead of its current location, a former shoe store in a nearby strip mall. But the grand old palace, still full of props that were used in more than a century’s worth of shows, is owned by the eccentric millionaire Annabelle Willard (Marian Seldes), who has lost all interest in the property. She has only granted the couple entrance after Jessie — who meets the reclusive, elderly woman by chance at a movie matinee — lies to her that Lou has cancer of the esophagus, the very same cancer that is killing Annabelle.

Surprise number one for the audience is learning that Lou and Jessie are a happy couple even though Lou has the same quip-heavy, hyper-neurotic personality as several other gay McNally protagonists — e.g., Buzz in Love! Valour! Compassion!, another part that was written for and played by Lane. Soon enough, the truth will out: Here is an unconsummated, non-legal, yet very loving marriage of convenience between two people bound in large part by a shared dedication to a vision of theater as an enriching, life-altering experience. Such an arrangement, however, is not without its psychic costs. Neither is a failure to tell the truth, either to oneself or to others.

McNally takes a tad too long to get the plot going and wheel out his other “surprises” — most notably, the unexpected arrival of Jessie’s daughter, a Courtney Love-like star named Ida Head (Miriam Shor), and the appearance of Annabelle, who offers Lou lifelong ownership of her theater if he will agree to perform an almost unthinkable act. A more serious flaw in the production: Director Michael Morris has fallen into the same trap that snares many helmers of Chekhov’s plays (and there’s something distinctly Chekhovian about Dedication) in accentuating the play’s comedy at the expense of its dramatic undercurrents. Specifically, Morris mishandles the triangular relationship between Lou, Jessie, and Arnold (Michael Countryman), their dedicated technical director — a relationship that is much clearer and deeper on the page than on the stage. And the show’s final moment, which should induce tears, seems simply awkward as staged here.

At least the cast — which includes an almost unrecognizable R.E. Rodgers as Annabelle’s quirky chauffeur, Edward, and the sublime Darren Pettie as Toby, Ida’s unconventional lover — gets every possible laugh from the script. Fraser, who replaced Patricia Kalember shortly before rehearsals started, may need a little more time to fully embody the complex Jessie, but she’s still quite effective. And what can one say about Nathan Lane playing an uber-Nathan Lane part (originally set to be played here by Peter Frechette), other than that he does it expertly? Yet I’m not convinced that Dedication will suffer with a different actor as Lou when Lane relinquishes the role towards the end of the run to begin rehearsals for the Broadway revival of The Odd Couple.

The same cannot be said of the irreplaceable Marian Seldes, who gives yet another extraordinary performance as Annabelle. Looking unspeakably elegant and tossing out bon mots and vicious retorts with the same nonchalance — a gift that only the fabulously rich possess — Seldes creates the ultimate monstre sacré. However, by play’s end, she’s found every spark of compassion, regret, and even goodness in this woman. When she disappears for a chunk of the second act, her absence is palpable.

If Seldes is occasionally larger than life, there’s something a little too small-scale about this production, which features an adequate set design by Narelle Sissons and uninspired costumes by Laura Crow. That may be because Dedication was originally intended to open Manhattan Theater Club’s Biltmore Theater but was rejected by the company’s artistic director, Lynne Meadow. Though MTC’s blue-haired crowd might have found the play a little shocking, it’s far better than any other new work that has been presented in that beautiful space during the past two years. So Primary Stages should be grateful to Lynne Meadow; audiences should be grateful to Primary Stages for allowing Dedication to be seen in New York; and we should all be grateful to Terrence McNally for reminding us just how important theater (and plays about the theater) can be.