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Side Man
The usually dark and somber CSC theater has been completely reconfigured for Warren Leight's moving stage memoir of a '40s jazz musician. The side seating sections have been removed to accommodate the restaurant, bar and house where the lives of the title character and his family and friends play out for us.
Fluidly directed by Michael Mayer, evocatively designed by Neil Patel, and graced with a splendid cast, this personalized slice of musical history has all the earmarks of a small show that might well exceed its current limited run. Just in case it doesn't, however, grab a ticket and catch it while it's on.
A side man, in case you never heard the expression, was a type of journeyman musician who in the 1940s the heyday of the big bands, played backup to the "star" bandleaders. When those stars could no longer provide steady employment, the side men who did not move on to more mundane careers, kept their instruments packed ready to do a gig wherever an extra player was needed.
Leight's serio-comic drama centers on the odyssey of Gene (Frank Wood) through the twilight years of the big bands. Mr. Wood subtly portrays a man who, except for the passion for jazz that rules (and ruins) his family life, is an out-to-lunch cipher. As narrated with wry humor and affection by an involved by-stander, Gene's son Clifford, (Robert Sella) we watch the assembling of a collage that pieces together Gene's musical and marital history from 1953 to 1985.
Also pieced into the canvas are vivid portraits of Gene's Runyonesque cronies, all erstwhile horn players in the legendary Claude Thornhill band. As their life style disappears like the smoke from their reefers, they survive only through periodic gigs on the unemployment line (which also inspires some of the most amusing bits of business, as the lesson in "jazzenomics" accompanying a lunch to celebrate Cliff's initiation into the rites of "collecting").
Making up the Melody Club round table are: Michael Mastro last heard but not seen as the invisible "side man" calling out the cues to Christopher Plummer's alcohol-dazed John Barrymore. ( Barrymore ) is terrific as the fast-on-the-verbal drawer Ziggie; Joseph Lyle Taylor's Al is a convincingly bare of hair and finnesse womanizer and Kevin Geer is achingly funny as the heroin adicted Jonesy.
But dominating the jokey camaraderie is the musical passion that binds these men together. It's best illustrated in a scene when Gene and Ziggie and Al are dressed in powder blue tuxedos and on a break during a gig with the Lester Lanin society band which plays for people who "couldn't' swing if you hung them." Ziggy has found a rare tape by one of their musical heroes and as they listen with rapt expressions, fingering their own trumpets, we become privvy to passion as powerful as that in any "regular"" love scene. (Those wonderful few minutes are also a musical treat).
The only women in this first-rate lineup are Angelica Torn and Eddie Falco. Torn is Patsy the appropriately tough waitress with a heart and libido big enough to at one time or another bed down all the musicians. Falco, makes a most impressive debut as Gene's wife Terry. Through Cliff's eyes we see her when she still orders water and doesn't know a Phillip Morris cigarette from a reefer and follow the romance fired up by the prospect of meeting Frank Sinatra (with whom Gene has played) deteriorate into a marriage soured by his obssession and her self-destructive alcoholism. Even when her behavior is most outrageous, she holds on to our sympathy, as she does to Cliff's with her tough humor and the cracks in her "crazy Terry" veneer -- as when she refuses to hear Gene play at the Melody but sends him a Lasagna because she knows he often forgets to eat..
It's a hauntingly, blues-y tale full of characters who will stay in our hearts and minds for a long time.
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SIDE MAN By Warren Leight Directed by Michael Mayer With Edie Falco, Kevin Geer, Michael Mastro, Dan Moran, Robert Sella, Angelica Torn and Frank Wood. Sets: Neil Patel Costumes: Tom Broecker Lighting: Ken Posner Sound: Ray Schilke. CSC Theatre, 136 E. 13th St. (212/ 279-4200) 3/03/98-3/29/98; opening 3/11/98 Reviewed 3/12/98 by Elyse Sommer |
