NY Theater: “Buffalo Gal” a wry look at going home again, with a nod to
“The Cherry Orchard"
by Lucy Komisar
Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya returns to Russia
from Paris, where her finances have been exhausted by the extravagance of
her lover and life style. She is devoted to the family estate, especially
the cherry orchard, and wants to save it from a threatening debt. But her
estranged lover sends word urging her return to Paris. In the end, she sells
the estate to Lopakhin, a family friend, who chops down the trees to clear
the land for development.
Fast forward about a century from Anton Chekhov to
American playwright A.R. Gurney. With the help of a smooth, light-hearted
production by director Mark Lamos, Gurney weaves the Chekhov story into
“Buffalo Gal,” an often wry tale of a woman who is drawn to her childhood
home but has to deal with economic realities. It’s also about the acting
game, those who make it and don’t, and the people and places they leave
behind.
 Amanda (Susan
Sullivan), a once successful TV actress, is in tough financial straits
because her video star has fallen, she is divorced, and her adult daughter
is bi-polar and in and out of institutions that cost money. She comes home
to Buffalo, where she is still big stuff, to star as Ranevskaya in a
regional theater production of “The Cherry Orchard.” She hopes it will
restart her career. Her presence could also help the local theater; maybe
the show will be good enough to go the Broadway, taking the director with
it.
 Amanda
loves Buffalo (also Gurney’s home town), which is enriched by fond memories
of her grandmother and her youth. At the theater, she reconnects with James
with whom she went to acting school and who will play her brother, Leonid
Andreieveitch Gayev. It’s the 21st century, and a theater company run by a
lesbian director such as Jackie (Jennifer Regan) of course practices
nontraditional casting. Susan declaims: “The 19th-century land-owning
Russian lady just discovers she has a black brother.”
 She is pursued by
another Buffalo memory, Dan (Mark Blum), who in high school wrote a musical
and was her first lover. Now a mild-mannered but dogged dentist, he carries
a torch. His wife is threatening to leave him, because she says she can’t
compete with his memory of Amanda; he’d like to restart that affair. Perhaps
an inside joke on Gurney’s reputation for writing about WASPS, Dan changed
his name from Rubens to Robbins -- less Jewish.
Amanda has done theater in the past – even won a Drama
Desk award. She has always hated the TV shows she’s appeared on. She says,
“When I said I was considering a play, he [her agent] frantically put me up
for a stupid sit-com at Fox. …. A character named Granny Sweetpants. Can you
believe it? They even stole the name from Li’l Abner…I met the writers - a
couple of kids fresh out of kindergarten. They wanted me to wear a gray
fright wig and come into a suburban kitchen, and make jokes about Viagra. I
said, ‘Thanks but no thanks, gentlemen’.”
Then the call comes from her agent in Hollywood (ie.
the estranged lover?) for a TV series. He says “the suits” have met her
demands. One actor has already quit to do an airlines commercial in Kuala
Lumpur. TV pays big bucks. Will she also follow the money, take the sit-com
and ditch the show?
Susan Sullivan, svelte in tight jeans, orange patent
high-heeled sandals, matching jacket, is dynamic as Amanda. Mark Blum exudes
a sense of nostalgia and loss as Dan. Jennifer Regan makes you feel the
director’s angst about the future of the play and her theater group.
Gurney’s clever confluence of “The Cherry Orchard” and
his imagined story works well for those familiar with the Chekhov plot.
Hollywood is Chekhov’s Paris, and the theater in Buffalo is a stand-in for
the cherry orchard. But the theme of connections and loyalty to roots and
family is always current. So is the notion that you can’t go home again.
It’s clear where Gurney’s sympathies lie; his voice is
Debbie (the comical Carmen H. Herlihy), the director’s assistant. She says,
“All theatre has to do with invoking some god. Greek theatre began as a
prayer to the god Dionysus. Today our gods are Hollywood celebrities. And so
what we’re really doing right now is trying to invoke our own local god,
Amanda, hoping she’ll reappear in our sacred space.”
Debbie also from time to time pronounces that we need
government funding for the arts. That might require some political magic as
powerful as the revolution that Chekhov’s aristocrats didn’t see coming.
“Buffalo Gal.” Written by A.R. Gurney. Directed by Mark
Lamos. Starring Mark Blum, Carmen M. Herlihy, Jennifer Regan. Set by Andrew
Jackness. Costumes by Candice Donnelly.
Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th St. Tue
at 7pm; Wed - Sat at 8pm; Sat at 2pm; plus Wed Aug 13, 20, 27 at 2pm.
Through Sept 13, 2008. $60. 212-279-4200.
http://www.primarystages.com/.
by James Leynse. | 
