REVIEWS ...
Monday, August 4, 2003
'Frankie and Johnny' sizzles with sex, lots of humor
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
We hear them before we see them, as the moans and shouts of sexual ecstasy give the darkness an electric charge.
Then the lights creep up just enough to let us watch the wild, athletic finish to one heckuva first date. Still, if Johnny has anything to say about it -- and he will, because "garrulous" doesn't begin to describe him -- this magical, romantic, destined-to-be night isn't about endings. It's all about a redemptive, connective beginning.
Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, a 1987 Off-Broadway hit that launched a real-life couple when Stanley Tucci and Edie Falco did it on Broadway last season, has just opened as the fittingly hot summer show at GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel. Plays don't get ratings, but if this one did it would be an R, thanks to full nudity and frank sexual talk.
What can get lost in all the focus on that hot, hot, hot stuff is how funny McNally's play is. And there lies the genius in director Joseph Adler's seemingly surprising decision to cast performer-playwright Avi Hoffman -- yes, the man who brought you Too Jewish? and Too Jewish Two! -- as Johnny, an Italian short-order cook and diehard romantic.
Playing opposite real-life wife Laura Turnbull, Hoffman brings a comic actor's buoyancy, warmth and deft timing to Johnny's yearning campaign for connection. It helps that he doesn't look like a muscled stud, just an ordinary man with a little less hair and a little more belly than (to borrow Johnny's description) a "not young, not old" single guy would wish he had. When he's sitting in Frankie's bed, wearing her sunglasses, just the edge of the sheet giving him a touch of post-coital modesty, Hoffman's Johnny gives off a cuddly, nonthreatening vibe, naked though he may be.
Once the sex is finished, ravenous Frankie wants nothing more than a meatloaf sandwich and Johnny's immediate departure. But this Shakespeare-spouting kook, this co-worker who wants to push lust into a lifetime commitment, refuses to vanish.
Frankie is understandably frustrated at not being able to reclaim her own place, a one-room apartment in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen (the Spartan late-'80s space designed by Tim Connelly) from this incipient stalker.
Lest they be shocked, Hoffman's many loyal local fans need to know what's in store should they decide to sample a different side of his talents: full frontal nudity, sometimes under blazing stage lights; raunchy language; a flash of Frankie seated on the toilet.
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune is a tricky dramatic duet, comic in its colors, blunt in its yearning and the push-pull of its adult characters. Once Turnbull hits all of Frankie's notes, McNally's ode to possibility should flow with the grace of the Claude Debussy piece conjured by the title.
Christine Dolen is The Herald's theater critic.
Tuesday, August 5, 2003
Married couple make Frankie and Johnny at the GableStage
By Jack Zink, Theater Writer
In the new, 21st century version of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Terrence McNally's lovers perform the NC-17 version of cats in heat. Yet their thrashing begets a poignant drama about two frightened creatures battling over whether to turn a one-night stand into a relationship.
The play's sexuality is a lot more graphic since its off-Broadway debut in 1987. Last season's Broadway revival with Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci joined the trend of baring ever more nudity and sexual interplay onstage. But unlike the mostly voyeuristic recent experiences of The Blue Room, The Graduate and their ilk, McNally's story somehow becomes more intimate and meaningful the more his characters are exposed.
At least, that seems to be the case at the GableStage in Coral Gables. There, director Joseph Adler busies himself adding the sexual garnish to Frankie and Johnny's preheated slice-of-life realism. But the play's reputation and Adler's uninhibited style take back seats this time out, to Laura Turnbull's Frankie and real-life husband Avi Hoffman as Johnny. Her skittishness, and his go-for-broke romantic idealism, make for a fascinating emotional pas de deux.
Frankie is a waitress and Johnny a short-order cook at a blue-plate restaurant, and the two have had their eyes on each other for a while at work. Their first date has adjourned to her crummy apartment at 53rd Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan when we first hear, and then see them having sex in the semi-darkness. Soon they'll bicker, have more sex and bicker again in a witty, painful, touching, mostly naked middle-aged mating dance that lasts past dawn. This isn't a couple from a Calvin Klein advertising spread; Frankie and Johnny, often described as losers, have worn off a lot of tread on life's highway.
Frankie's digs are rendered in an aged, sooty walkup by set designer Tim Connelly. Mark Martin's lighting mostly plays on shadows but occasionally erupts into a brilliant, nearly blinding metaphor for the characters' self-exposure.
As the determined, talkative, slightly intellectual Johnny, Hoffman finesses the play's underlying comedy -- as well as Johnny's obnoxiousness -- into a warm and appealing performance. Acutely aware that he's facing the short end of life's yardstick, he's eager to start over. Not so Frankie, who wants only to push her conquest out the door and resume her isolation once their passion is spent.
Adler's best directorial decision may have been to cast the husband-wife team, whose intimacy onstage often has nothing to do with the situation's sexuality. But there's no denying this is an adults-only performance. And while Hoffman's nice-guy reputation isn't in any danger, fans weaned on his lighthearted Too Jewish one-man shows (and Turnbull's glamorous musical comedy personality) ought to be prepared to have their heads wrenched around 180 degrees.
Jack Zink can be reached at 954-356-4706 or jzink@sun-sentinel.com.
