"This talented duo reached Frankie and Johnny's emotional cores and got every joke along the way..."
"gets as many laughs today as when it premiered in 1987 -- thanks to director D.J. Sullivan, actors Daren Scott and Devlin, and the Vantage Theatre production"
---S.D. Reader
Reviews
Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune
by Pat Launer, KPBS Theater Critic
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kpbs/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&pid=31&sid=12&id=483535
In the heart and on the stage, love is a fickle, unpredictable business. At
three different theaters, folks of varied ages, customs and cultures battle
with their emotions and societal constraints. At Vantage Theatre, a very funny,
poignant production of "Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune"
stars charismatic Daren Scott and Devlin as two lonely midlife lovers, past
their prime but surprisingly, not their romantic potential. D.J. Sullivan, respected
local acting coach, took a risk in casting a plus-sized woman in the often-sexy
role of Frankie. But the gamble pays off; Devlin is not only skeptical and vulnerable,
but also physically appealing. The antic Scott is irresistible. Terrence McNally's
witty, script, with its multiple mentions of a voracious appetite, make the
against-type portrayal thoroughly credible. It's a delightful production, teeming
with talent, infused with hope.
S.D. Playbill:
http://www.sandiegoplaybill.com/reviews/reviews_frankieandjohnny_vantage.html
“Frankie and Johnny were lovers
Oh Lordy how they could love
Swore they'd be true to each other
Just as true as stars above. . . “
Or so goes one of the many versions of the American folk ballad thought to have
originated when Frankie Baker gunned down her unfaithful lover, Al “Johnny”
Britt in 1899 St. Louis, Missouri. He was wearing the $100 suit she bought
him when she caught him with Nellie Bly or Alice Fry or some cat house kitten.
Like I said there are many versions. Every few years, the tale has
new life shot into it by another blues, country, jazz, rock, pop singer, including
the King (in his title role movie). Then there was the 1930’s New Deal
Project ballet. In 1987, Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in
the Clair de Lune was a smash Off-Broadway hit featuring Kathy Bates and Kenneth
Welsh, followed by the movie with Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino, and recently
revised on Broadway starring Edie Falco/Stanley Tucci and now Rosie Perez/Joe
Pantoliano.
McNally’s play isn’t the same story, you might say! But, I’m
not so sure that it isn’t exactly the same story. McNally might
just have written a good, solid, close-up of how the relationship began AND
provided some insight into the ‘real story’ behind the legend.
In the darkened theatre, the noises from the convertible sofa/bed immediately
inform us that, whoever it is under those covers, they are definitely sexually
in sync! As the moonlight casts a soft glow into the dinghy, messy apartment,
the sizeable blanketed hump crescendos and ebbs. A woman’s voice gives
us the ‘all clear’ when she calls out for a cigarette – a
habit that she’s long given up. Frankie (in a formidable performance
by Devlin ) deftly wraps her nude body in a totally rumpled sheet and is first
to rise. Johnny, on the other hand, in a tour de force performance by
Daren Scott , gets the giggles and wants to “bask in the after-glow.”
Thus starts the first round.
Johnny, like a bantam rooster, begins his quest to convince Frankie that they
are made for each other: they must get married; gotta’ have kids; adopt!
– his answer to her barrenness; my god – he even cooks! Isn’t
he what every woman wants? Can she believe her good fortune? To every
objection from the convincingly bewildered, frustrated, angry, then frightened
Frankie, this supposed one-night stand oozes clever retorts displaying verbal
skills he’s honed by reading Shakespeare and the Dictionary —
books he keeps in his locker at the diner where he’s the new short-order
cook and she the seasoned waitress. At first impressed with his efforts
to “better himself,” Frankie recoils when he uses those same skills
to intimidate and minimize her feelings. From Frankie’s point of
view, the gal in Looking for Mr. Goodbar didn’t have it this bad. This
guy won’t leave! She orders him out! He says no! She
threatens to scream! He points out, in this neighborhood, who would listen?
Yet, he’s funny, charming and so-o-o-o sincere. Frankie’s
defenses begin to collapse as the night wears on and their scarred pasts are
revealed. The moonlight truly is a co-conspirator in creating an “us”
from these two loners, as its soft rays peak through the New York City skyline
into the one-room walk-up. Johnny uses Frankie’s phone to coerce
a radio announcer into playing “the most beautiful music in the world”
to enhance his likelihood of completely obliterating Frankie’s those defenses.
The announcer ( Jack G. White ) chooses Debussy’s Clair de Lune and plays
it twice with impeccable timing. Could Johnny be what Frankie needs in
her desperately lonely life? Or, is her loneliness, the moonlight, Clair
de Lune, and this man who has captured her in her own apartment and is saying
all the right things conspiring to seduce her into a battering relationship
like the one that left her barren. When Johnny prods Frankie's body with
his feet, were these love-pokes precursors to something less loving in the future?
Outrageously funny, often poignantly touching, by turns crude and eloquent,
the D.J. Sullivan -directed Frankie and Johnny in The Clair de Lune is also
very, very chilling. Ms. Sullivan has restored integrity to McNally’s
script through this multi-faceted production. The image of Frankie’s
frightened cringing body at one point in the cat-and-mouse game does not leave
me as the night wears on, and Johnny’s particular brand of romancing begins
to bear fruit. My own resistance to Johnny is melted by his crazy charisma.
I really liked this guy! In the next moment I, too, cringe at the thought of
what might lie ahead for Frankie, whose vulnerability was evident in her face,
her body, and her movement. Johnny displays early symptoms of a batterer
– controlling, cajoling, coercing, intimidating, with no regard for Frankie’s
feelings and wishes. All with an irresistible panache! Who’s to
say that his m.o. might not also include being a cheater who ploys the same
wares elsewhere? He’s so-o-o-o good and so-o-o-o practiced at pressuring
for what he wants. Easy to anger when he feels his manhood has been slighted,
Johnny turns Frankie’s resistance to him against her instincts of self-protection
from his emotional and physical intrusion. Was the dark side of this play
ever more effectively staged? Or, are we living with more savvy about
the warning signs of an abusive relationship? Vulnerability and cockiness, touching
in the beginning, could have lethal consequences. There are plenty of women
in prison for killing their abusers. So, who’s to say that this
Johnny is not a modern-day Al “Johnny Britt, and this Frankie is not a
modern-day Frankie Baker? Ms. Baker, by the way, died in a mental institution
after being acquitted for murdering her “Johnny”. He was a
real charming cad, who lived off his women. Was there a faint echo of
the parasite in Johnny's sizing up Frankie's apartment as larger than his and,
thus, a better place to raise children? What lies ahead at the final curtain
is what makes this play so timely and edgy.
Additional kudos must go to: Lighting Designer Sally Stockton . Did
any one else succumb to the moonlight’s spell?; Sound Designer (?)
which included Ms. Peggy Lee’s Fever as Act 1 opens, and Etta James’
At Last My Love Has Come Along at the closing curtain; Set Designer Michael
McGee . The frig definitely made me think “icebox.” Great
details, except I didn’t understand the overhead light stage left; and
Costume Designer Sheila Rosen for Frankie’s oriental-icious dressing gown
and the toe-hole in her right slipper – the symbolic chink in her protective
armor?
Va ntage Theatre has provided yet another totally satisfying evening of exceptional
theatre.
-- Carolyn Passeneau