Theatre in Review: Lone Star (Ruth Stage/Theatre Row)

	Dan Amboyer, Matt de Rogatis. Photo: Miles Skalli

"Imagine a Burt Reynolds movie as written by Mel Brooks, and you might have an approximation of the hilarity." So wrote Mel Gussow about Lone Star when it opened on Broadway in 1979 to general acclaim (and admittedly, a short two-month run). Such hilarity is missing in action onstage at Theatre Row, leading one to think that James McLure's tragicomedy has aged badly. But I think it's more complicated than that; the allure of Lone Star is hard to make out but those involved in the revival don't make it any easier.

Lone Star was one of many 1970s-era plays that explored Texan manners and mores with an almost anthropological fascination. (Others included Jack Heifner's Vanities; Preston Jones' A Texas Trilogy; Paul Zindel's Ladies at the Alamo; and the smash-hit musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Waiting in the wings was Horton Foote, with his exhaustive, multi-generational family chronicles.) A mood piece about two boozy good old boys -- brothers improbably named Roy and Ray -- raising hell out back of their local dive bar, Lone Star was hailed as the debut of a fresh new comic voice; underneath the banter and carrying on, critics asserted, was a canny assessment of the damage done to America's soul by the Vietnam War.

The current director, Joe Rosario, and his cast are, apparently, going for poignancy over laughs, but to get there they must bend the material out of shape. With a piece this fragile, it's not a good idea. The changes are both textual and directorial: This version incorporates material from Laundry and Bourbon, another McClure comedy, which introduces Elizabeth, Roy's steadfast spouse. Strumming a guitar and dipping into songs like the Linda Ronstadt classic "Long, Long Time," she talks at length about romance and marriage with Roy, who has been irrevocably scarred by his Vietnam experience. (She also drops the news that she is pregnant, which, after we meet Roy, is especially worrying.) This prologue, well-handed by Ana Isabelle, is, nevertheless, like one of those long, scrolling prologues at the beginning of the Star Wars films, filling us in on the backstory. After she exits, the projection designer Tomás Correa unrolls a lengthy montage of stills and film footage showing bombs falling on rice paddies, helicopters, soldiers' coffins, the White House, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Jane Fonda, and Walter Cronkite.

It's a one-two punch of awkwardness: Elizabeth is little more than a Greek chorus, pointing out such symbolic features as the pink Cadillac that is Roy's most prized possession. ("That there car's my youth," he exclaims at one point -- as if everyone in the theatre hadn't gotten the idea ten times over.) This, followed by Correa's barrage of images, leaves one feeling carpet-bombed with exposition. The script makes clear that Vietnam has been Roy's undoing; we don't need a potted history of the entire war.

These sequences also strike a mournful note that is at odds with the play's crude, farcical main action, in which Roy has a reckoning with the gentle, dim-bulb Ray. As played by Matt de Rogatis, Roy is such a basket case -- a mumbling, stumbling drunk steeped in memories of his supposedly glorious past -- that it's hard to believe that the attractive, sensible Elizabeth ever fell for him. He's a feral creature, haunted by scenes of wartime mutilation and sexual violence, more in need of a VA hospital than the love of a good woman. (His speeches about the war contrast jarringly with the comic routines that constitute most of the action; how did these play in 1979?) Forever standing at his side is Ray, kept out of the war by his "football knee," who passes the time in idle conversation, for example noting how much Baby Ruth bars look like turds. Their antagonist is Cletis, the milquetoast manager of an appliance store who, in his naked desire to emulate Roy, has seen the Paul Newman picture Hud six times. (The recently married Cletis, we are told, is so innocent he had difficulty finding his wife's vagina. If you think this is plausible or funny, Lone Star is the play for you.) Also, Cletis, who has long coveted that pink Cadillac, takes it for an unauthorized spin, setting in motion the play's climax.

Lone Star consists almost entirely of calculated outrages that, perhaps, seemed amusingly transgressive four-and-a-half decades ago, but which now mostly feel embarrassing. (They include a farcical bout of war games, the memory of drunken gunplay in a nearby town, and the account of a car-seat sexual interlude that I can't bring myself to describe.) Rosario's over-the-top direction results in a festival of performance styles. De Rogatis' overstated acting serves to draw a big red line under every plot point. ("Ain't nobody can understand my hurt," he shouts. "It's deep down. No one understands. Who could possibly understand my hurt?" Really? We hadn't noticed.) Ryan McCartan plays Cletis as a bundle of nerves out of a TV sitcom -- and, really, what is a prim little nerd like him doing among the barflies? Dan Amboyer is rather better as the slow-talking, slow-on-the-uptake Ray, but even he overacts at times; he also struggles to make plausible the moment that reveals Ray's big act of brotherly betrayal.

Most of the design credits are solid, especially Matthew Imhoff's seedy backyard set, with its weather-worn walls, displays of license plates, and sad little TV antenna; the overall effect is aided by Christian Specht's lighting. Correa's sound design is especially strong when evoking memories of Vietnam battles. He returns, however, with another lengthy projection sequence, this one featuring comic book illustrations by Legacy Comix, that recaps much of the play's action. Without these, you could knock a good chunk off the play's running time. (Lone Star originally ran on Broadway on a double bill with Pvt. Wars, another McClure comedy; I doubt if it got anywhere near its current ninety minutes.)

In a funny way, I'm grateful to Ruth Stage for presenting Lone Star, as I've long been curious about McClure, who had a long career in resident theatres but never returned to New York. But what little allure the script has retained is erased by this padded and overemphatic production. Maybe in another forty years...--David Barbour