Theatre in Review: Dog Day Afternoon (August Wilson Theatre)

	Jon Bernthal, Jessica Hecht. Photo: Matthew Murphy/Evan Zimmerman

Dog Day Afternoon is most notable for merging the two trends driving Broadway today: the reliance on IP titles and the cultivation of star vehicles. It offers two major names in a play derived from a classic, Oscar-nominated film: Applying the logic of the current commercial theatre, what could be bad? For extra glitter, toss in a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and a Tony-nominated director. To quote On the Twentieth Century, it's like an Oscar Jaffe production "that's commercial, yet it's art."

But this high-prestige vehicle is an in-between affair, unable to live up to the cinematic dazzle of its source material yet never finding its own identity as an alternate version of its stranger-than-fiction true story. In attempting to machine-tool a status-symbol Broadway hit, its talented creative team ends up with a classy-looking, yet often hollow, comedy that does no favors to its over-the-title stars. As a collection of brand names, it is well-positioned to pay off before its late-June closing date; that's the best you can say about it.

Sidney Lumet's 1975 film, based on a Life magazine article, begins with Sonny and Sal, would-be desperadoes, knocking off a Brooklyn branch bank on a sweltering August day. What with one thing or another -- the bank is short on cash, the security guard has a seizure, a suspicious neighbor tips off the police -- a ten-minute smash-and-grab operation becomes a hostage situation, featuring a squadron of cops, an army of newshounds, and a swarm of bored, angry Brooklynites looking for some diverting street theatre. The story gets even wilder when Sonny's "wife," Leon, shows up, cueing the bombshell revelation that this supposed tough guy wants to finance his boyfriend's sex change surgery (to use the parlance of 1972). As the standoff continues, Sonny becomes an instant folk hero, the FBI gets involved, and a plot to escape to (of all places) Algeria, goes fatally awry.

The film is an unforgettable souvenir of New York at its seething, bankrupt low point, a bombed-out, garbage-ridden landscape where black humor is the lingua franca and respect for authority doesn't exist. (The opening montage, cutting through various neighborhoods, tells all you need to know about a city in crisis mode.) The action is packed with great character actors, many of them not yet famous: James Broderick, Charles Durning, Carol Kane, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Judith Malina, and Chris Sarandon. Dede Allen's hot-wired editing catches the jittery mood of a small-time theft blown up into a rowdy cause celebre, exposing fault lines between gay and straight, haves and have-nots, Manhattan and the boroughs.

That's a tall order for a playwright to capture onstage, although if anyone could do it, you'd think it'd be Stephen Adly Guirgis, whose specializes in teeming casts of mouthy, attitudinal, New Yorkers wielding verbal switchblades. Alas, he seems hemmed in by a scenario he didn't dream up and by the decision to pitch the play (until the last twenty minutes or so) as a comedy-melodrama along the lines of, say, The Front Page. What he ends up with is a crude collection of punchlines that recalls a lesser Norman Lear sitcom of the 1970s, or one of Neil Simon's shorter-running efforts from the same era.

For example, the cop in charge of the case is named "Fucco," pronounced "Fuo-co," which sets him up to be called "Fuck-o." (It's not a gag that improves with repetition.) When Alison, one of the bank teller hostages, laments a faithless lover, Butterman, her boss, consoles her, saying, "Fuck that guy." "I already did," Alison wails. The promiscuous Leon confesses, "I'm like McDonalds -- over a million served!" Rebuffing Sonny's escape plans, he says, "I can't go to Algeria -- what would I wear?" There are comic bits about Deep Throat, Beefsteak Charlie's, Luchow's, and other era-defining ephemera. When Butterman, commenting on the firestorm of news coverage, says, "The media lies, it's getting to be a problem," the feral, psychologically disturbed Sal shouts defensively, "Walter Cronkite don't lie!"

That last bit is occasioned by Sal's upset that reporters are calling him a homosexual, although, according to the script, he has spent many a night with Sonny at Julius and Tenth of Always, popular gay bars of the period. In a nod to changing times, Guirgis endows Sonny with an out-and-proud attitude that probably wouldn't have flown with movie audiences in the Gerald Ford years. (Soon enough, Pacino would be alienating the gay community with William Friedkin's Cruising.) In any case, neither of the play's stars is seen to his advantage. Jon Bernthal's Sonny drives the action with tsunamis of energy, but he lacks the neurotic edge, the unsettling volatility that Pacino brought to the role; in contrast, Bernthal gives us a good-looking schmo, exposed as a loser soon after the lights go up; it's a choice that robs the action of suspense. As Sal, who has a suicide pact with Sonny if the robbery goes south, Ebon Moss-Bachrach's knack for smoldering rage, so central to the video series The Bear, is oddly missing; aside from a few key moments of menace, he is left to fade into the woodwork.

Acting rings around them both is Jessica Hecht as Colleen, the head bank teller, a fierce den mother who rides herd over her "girls," fending off her customers' polite advances and maintaining a swear jar lest ever be heard a profane word. (It's an expanded version of the role played by Penelope Allen in the film.) Colleen cows Sonny with a Catholic nun-like moral authority -- ordered around by him, she snaps, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; who can comply with a gun to your head?!" -- although she slowly warms to him. Hecht also provides the one touching moment on offer when, heading off to what might be her death, Colleen leaves behind instructions for the care and feeding of her beloved pets.

Making more-than-solid contributions are John Ortiz as Fucco, frantically trying to keep Sonny on the phone lest he do something stupid; Michael Kostroff as Butterman, whose dirty laundry gets a thorough airing in front of his employees; Elizabeth Canavan as the most abrasive member of the bank staff, and Andrea Syglowski as the woebegone Alison, who discovers at the worst possible moment that her boyfriend is married.

Rupert Goold's direction keeps the action moving but never builds much tension, and he doesn't fully manage the eleventh-hour transition to drama, when Sonny's escape plan is put into action. This is also one of the most elaborately designed non-musicals to come our way in some time. David Korins, not known for hyperreal designs, delivers an evocatively detailed bank interior, on a turntable that slowly spins to reveal the street outside; it's so convincing, you may feel the need to cash a check. A nearby liquor store, which becomes police headquarters for the duration, is deftly suggested with a couple of inserts. Overall, it's gorgeous work, but one yearns for something more cinematic; surprisingly, nobody seems to have thought that projections could helpfully suggest the street carnival churning behind police barricades.

Fortunately, Cody Spencer's sound design calls up the attendant chaos, marked by sirens, helicopters, cheering crowds, and breathless news reports. Isabella Byrd's excellent lighting is filled with details as well as a sense of afternoon slipping into darkness; an especially felicitous touch is the set of red police lights reflected in the bank's front window. Brenda Abbandandolo's costumes once again display her unbeatable knack for dressing New Yorkers of various decades and walks of life.

Dog Day Afternoon is doing good business and will probably steal its way into the black before its early summer closing. It's easy to see why: As was true of Othello, Good Night and Good Luck, and Waiting for Godot, people will pay top dollar to be in the same room as their favorite stars; the familiarity of the play's title surely doesn't hurt. And, for many, Dog Day Afternoon's only-in-New-York plot and rat-a-tat gag lines may be enough. But you can rent the movie on Amazon for $3.99. And brother, does it hold up. --David Barbour