As they futilely try to find a piece of the action they can call their own, the people of Noon are totally pathetic. This essential pathos of the work keeps it from being erotic. Still, McNally's documentation of the sexual mores involved- complete with whips and chains, undressing, and noneuphemistic language- will nonetheless strike some people as obscene. That's their problem.
NIGHT, the final play of the trilogy, is in every way the third act of the evening. It is an answer to the chaotic world depicted in the first two plays, a goodbye-to-all-that farewell to the sixties. It is both devastating and exhilirating, and even bigger mind-blow than Morning or Noon.
This one-acter, written by Leonard Melfi, difiers radically in feel from the other two plays. It is one further step removed from what we call naturalism and hardly seems to be taking place on earth. It is essentially not a comedy, and the language operates on a fantastical poetic level that is closer to the cosmos than the nitty-gritty of American life.
The setting is a graveyard. The event is a funeral for a man named Cock Certain. It is a starry night, and four sad people have gathered to say goodbye to the man who breathed life into them all. These people- called Miss Indigo Jones, Robin Breast Western, Filigree Bones and Fibber Kidding- cannot agree on any specific facts concerning their dearly beloved, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is what they do agree on: It is all no use. No use to go on living in a world where all we can wait for is the inevitable senseless killing- the death that comes more and more from a war, a riot, a plane crash, a sniper's bullet.
There is nothing to do. As one character puts it (in a line that gives the best quick explanation of why the dream of American youth is dropping out that I have ever heard in a theatre): "It's a funny world full of funny freaks. You can't plan on anything. It's all so stupid in the end. I can't do anything anymore. All I want to do is sleep now; and cat now; and drink now; and smoke now; and bet now; and bowl now; and fuck now. I don't want to do anything else anymore. Just those things."
That's it folks. The sixties have brought us here. There is no place to go anymore in America. The only terrain left to explore is that of our minds, and Mclfi's play ends with a white-suited man leading the mourners on a trip of the spirit- a trip through the Rockies and across the Mississippi, a trip back to nature, back through time to America that no longer exists and maybe never did.
As the Loeb production of "Mornning, Noon and Night" has already been reviewed in the CRIMSON, I would just like to add a few words of my own to those of reviewer Gregg Kilday.
David Boorstin's direction of this triple bill is, in nearly every way,
superior to the original handling of these plays on Broadway last year. He has used the Loeb's three-sided arena set-up for maximum advantage, and achieved a high level of ensemble playing from the five members of the cast.
The actors- each of whom has three meaty roles- show an amazing amount of varsatility and are usually every bit as brilliant as the plays they are working with. Their names are Marty Ritter. Eric Davin, Sharon Klaif, Tim Carden and John Archibald. In a cast of this quality, it is hard to single any one actor out as being above the rest- but I must say that Carden has the kind of stage presence that makes you want to stand up and salute every time he makes an entrance.
Boorstin also has going for him the gracefully stark set, costumes, and lighting (by Bruce West, Joan Minto and Jim Harrison, respectively) and a swell rock band, The Rhythm Method, whose rendition of John Hall's music for "Morning" give that play the ersatz soul quality that helps make it tick.
Incidentally, "Morning, Noon and Night" not only helps close out a decade of history but a decade of Loeb drama as well. In the Loeb's case, this production does not so much end an era as herald in a new one. Everyone may not be ready for this step into the future, but hopefully everyone will go and see for themselves. While you may be driven crazy if you do go, you'll be just as crazy if you don't.