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across as alternately a dispenser of high-toned, dryly
ironic jokes or a lecturer on ethics. Mr. McCormack’s
slippery Cantwell may be repellent in his ruthlessness,
but at least he’s not a snore.
Ms. Bergen, making a rare stage appearance, looks a
trifle stiff as the long-suffering wife, but she hits her
comic marks with crisp efficiency, delivering Alice’s
sardonic asides with the same brittle edge she brought
to her performance on TV’s “Murphy Brown.” The slight
air of discomfort Ms. Bergen radiates certainly suits the
character, who shares her husband’s innate distaste
for the indecorous business of glad-handing.
As Cantwell’s upstart Southern belle wife Mabel, Kerry
Butler looks luscious in Ann Roth’s well-turned
costumes, but she pushes her character’s kittenish
sexuality and crass cattiness a little too close to
caricature. Jefferson Mays makes an effectively
sweaty impression as a squirrelly former Army mate of
Cantwell’s who is corralled by Russell’s campaign
manager into revealing a secret in the senator’s past
he hopes to use to neutralize Cantwell’s plan to go
public with Russell’s medical history.
But the audience warms most to the veterans onstage.
Ms. Lansbury, a welcome presence in many a recent
Broadway season, makes every moment of her stage
time count as Sue-Ellen Gamadge, a chatty and genial
but steely party operative given to dictating to
candidates and their wives what the female voter does
and does not appreciate. The role is small, but Ms.
Lansbury embodies her character with such style that
she is as vivid a presence as any when she’s onstage,
and manages to nail a sure laugh merely by lowering a
newspaper.
The great Mr. Jones is provocatively (if not
preposterously) cast as Arthur Hockstader, a former
president from the South whose endorsement both
candidates hope to win. It is obviously a trifle absurd to
suggest that an African-American would have
achieved the presidency before the civil rights
movement had even gained steam. And since no one
else onstage is black, I’m not sure Mr. Jones’s
presence can be classified as color-blind casting.
But no matter: this consummate actor digs into his role
with a relish you can surely sense from the back row of
the balcony. He all but swamps the stage with
Hockstader’s hearty bonhomie and zest for the
machinations of backroom deal making, but also
succeeds in inflecting his character — in the last
rounds of a losing battle with cancer — with a moving
sense of his mortality.
He also earns robust laughs with some of Mr. Vidal’s
The New York Times/ - Politics, Seg, 02 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
piercingly funny lines collapsing the distance between
the politics of mid-20th-century America and today.
“The world’s changed since I was politickin’,” he
observes in a conversation about religion with Russell,
after Russell confesses he isn’t a believer. “In those
days you had to pour God over everything, like
ketchup.” (Apparently the world’s changed back,
Arthur.)
But the play more often strikes postures that feel
antiquated even in their idealism, as when Russell
responds to a question about the importance of polling
with a tidy little lecture about the role of government in
a properly functioning democracy.
“I don’t believe in polls,” he says. “Accurate or not. And
if I may bore you with one of my little sermons: Life is
not a popularity contest; neither is politics. The
important thing for any government is educating the
people about the issues, not following the ups and
downs of popular opinion.”
Noted.
Gore Vidal’s The Best Man
By Gore Vidal; directed by Michael Wilson; sets by
Derek McLane; costumes by Ann Roth; lighting by
Kenneth Posner; music and sound by John Gromada;
projections by Peter Nigrini; hair design by Josh
Marquette; technical supervision by Hudson Theatrical
Productions; production stage manager, Matthew
Farrell; company manager, Brig Berney; general
manager, Richards/Climan, Inc.; associate producer,
Stephanie Rosenberg. Presented by Jeffrey Richards,
Jerry Frankel, Infinity Stages, Universal Pictures Stage
Productions, Barbara Manocherian/Michael Palitz,
Kathleen K. Johnson, Andy Sandberg, Ken
Mahoney/The Broadway Consortium, Fifty Church
Street Productions, Larry Hirschhorn/Bennu
Productions, Patty Baker, Paul Boskind and Martian
Entertainment, Wendy Federman, Mark S. Golub and
David S. Golub, Cricket Hooper Jiranek, Stewart F.
Lane and Bonnie Comley, Carl Moellenberg, Harold
Thau and Will Trice. At the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater,
236 West 45th Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200,
telecharge.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
WITH: James Earl Jones (Former President Arthur
Hockstader), John Larroquette (Secretary William
Russell), Candice Bergen (Alice Russell), Eric
McCormack (Senator Joseph Cantwell), Kerry Butler
(Mabel Cantwell), Jefferson Mays (Sheldon Marcus),
Michael McKean (Dick Jensen) and Angela Lansbury
(Sue-Ellen Gamadge).
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