I don't impute craftiness to Huston— are caricatures. If he devises ways to laughs at the humiliation of the man in at the time of making the film, anyway. sneak looks down her cleavage, OK, this film is, 1 think, humiliating women, He took a giant first step, as large as he though Parton would have had to be who are being exploited again in fake was presumably permitted at the time, mentally deficient to wear dresses like expose of their business exploitation. maybe even a bit further. Milestones that on the job. But when he chases It was directed by Colin Higgins, who are honorable, essential: Light is a mile- her—literally—around his office, grab- perpetrated Harold and Maude. He wrote stone. But—and it's not the first in- bing and missing and falling, with the it with Patricia Resnick. Fonda has no stance—suppression has helped its door unlocked, the picture begins to go character, just some novice stuff at the reputation. stupid. It goes very much stupider: at start and some non-novice stuff later. one point Fonda just accidentally misses Parton quickly passes from sweet vul- Nine to five is a comedy, it says. Incon- murdering the boss with a pistol. Lack of nerability to pneumatic nuisance. Tom- gruity is an essence of comedy. What conviction and brains takes its toll early. lin, who manages simultaneously to could be more incongruous than to The absence of both quickly converts look like an attractive woman and a quote Plato apropos of Nine to Five? Here the women's vengeance into a base for high-spirited filly in an animated film, goes, from Book X of The Republic: a lot of incredibly incredible and offen- has real comic gifts and managed to get sive "comic" shenanigans. Anyone who a few laughs out of me. Plato, forgive. There are jests which you would be ashamed to make yourself, ^nd yet on thecomic stage . . . when you hear them, you are greatly amused by them, and are not at all disgusted at their unseemli- ness. . . . There is a principle in human nature which is disposed to raise a laugh, and this, which you once restrained by Robert Brustein on theater reason because you were afraid of being thought a buffoon, is now let out Crossed Purposes again. . . . I went to Sam Shepard's True West (Mar- went dry, Papp has been looking for I guess I'm feeling guilty because I tinson Theater) expecting a significant another commercial oil well like A Chor- laughed a couple of times at this crock. event. The evening was significant, but us Line, the bonanza that has kept his Nine to Five is not a comedy. It's an act not quite in the way I had anticipated. theater functioning. Certain recent of desperation, trying for laughs by any What it revealed was an important projects—the Wilford Leach production means—from comedy through farce to theater in a state of momentary of The Pirates of Penzance, for example— burlesque. The picture has one resem- disarray. very probably were developed with blance to ComiiJg Home. Jane Fonda is in For all its problems, the New York Broadway in mind, just as Alice in Con- both of them and gave the impression Public Theater undoubtedly has been cert—the version of before each that a serious subject was responsible for the most interesting Alice in Wom/fr/dfii/, starring to be treated seriously: in the earlier productions thus far this season: Lee —seems to have been undertaken as a picture, Vietnam; in this picture, the Breuer's A Prelude to Death in Venice,pilot stage project for an NBC television male exploitation, sexual and other- JoAnne Akalaitis's The Dead End Kids, spectacular. On the face of it, an arcane wise, of female employees and co-work- Andr^ Serban's The Sea Gull. Evenings experimental theater company such as ers in business. Both films fizzled. Nine like these have provided what little dis- Mabou Mines is hardly in a position to to Five is disgusting not because it's a tinction currently can be found in the provide Papp with a long-running Broad- comedy but because it is not. It's an New York theater, and the only grounds way hit, but it has been his habit first to old-style exploitation flick, exploiting for hope. At the Public, one feels theatri- encourage workshop productions by another current hot topic. cal artists throwing off inherited con- the most interesting and innovative It starts with a pretty good graph of ventions, challenging the audience with American theater people—Foreman, the territory. A huge office floor of a big new experiences, breaking the crust of Leach, Serban, Swados—and then to company is dominated by a vain male. cold earth to discover warm fertile match them with a commercially viable Lily Tomlin is the knowledgeable assis- springs beneath. project {Threepenny Opera, Pirates of Pen- tant, cynical but competent and loyal; Each of these productions has been zance. Umbrellas of Cherbourg, ) in the hope of refining crude oil into Jane Fonda is the newcomer, a divorcee the result of 's traditional Exxon Supreme. returning to business after years in the policy of offering space, facilities, en- household. For a while, their problems couragement to imaginative radical The procedure is similar to the way ring true. But Dolly Parton is unbeliev- theater innovators, at a time when certain large corporations underwrite able from Moment One as the boss's money and resources are scarce. Al- research and development programs. personal aide for whom he lusts. I've though this policy has earned for the By luring away some unworldly genius seen women in offices who were al- New York Shakespeare Festival a well- from his university laboratory, the cor- legedly hired for their sexual possibili- deserved reputation for generosity, porate executives hope to put the scien- ties. It was notorious 30 years ago that a Papp's motives never have been entirely tist's basic research to profitable com- big New York book publisher always altruistic. As a paternal theatrical bene- mercial use. In industry and medicine, had an easy lay on the staff who was factor, Papp always is responsive to this process has been responsible for billed as an editorial assistant; but she new talent; as a practical producer feed- advances in DNA research, for the looked like an editorial assistant. Parton ing hungry mouths, he also needs to development of the integrated circuit is dressed and directed like a caricature. earn some bread. Ever since the con- (or silicon wafer chip), in fact for most And the boss's advances toward her ventional sources of unearned income of the recent breakthroughs in modern

January 31, 1981 21 scientific and technological products. for serious creation. Douglas movie. Lonely Are the Brave. What's wrong with this, aside from the The present production of True West When the bedazzled producer unac- way it corrupts the aims of pure science? is a case in point. It is heartbreaking in countably offers a munificent advance Not much, really. The only problem its failed opportunities. Not so much for this bizarre Western, and drops his arises when the corporate producer, in misdirected as undirected, it has the option on Austin's work. Lee forces his impatience to get results, begins to look of a show, the feel of a workshop. Austin to write the script. At the same push his researcher a little harder than Shepard and Woodruff apparently as- time that Lee is turning his eyes on he wants to go. sumed they would give Papp the same Hollywood, Austin is turning his eyes On the premise that what's good production of the play they did at the toward the desert and, to prove how enough for Hi Tech groups is good Magic Theater, including two San Fran- liberated he is from middle-class values, enough for theater, the same thing cisco actors in the leads, while Papp steals 10 toasters from the homes of his seems to have been happening lately at apparently assumed he was buying neighbors. The two of them get drunk the Public. In his eagerness to clone A something that would bring financial and wreck their mother's kitchen. When Chorus Line, Mr. Papp has begun to returns, enhanced by Shepard's recent she returns, she witnesses her two sons intervene in the creative process of his Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child. The engaged in an epic battle during which house artists, with the result that, with- play rehearsed to the accompaniment Austin almost strangles Lee to death in a matter of weeks, Andr^ Serban was of a lot of fanfare, including a long with a telephone cord. The play ends removed from the production oi Alice in article about this reticent playwright in with the brothers locked in deadly em- Concert, Robert Woodruff resigned from the magazine section of the New York brace under a crescent moon. Time$; New York was primed for a the production of True Wesi. and Sam True West is fascinating as long as its serious "hit," Under these pressures, Shepard repudiated his own play, de- design is hidden; finally, its very sym- you don't go with the San Francisco claring that he would never again give metry undermines its mystery, I sus- equivalent of an off-off-Broadway cast, another work to . pect the work will ultimately be of even if the director and playwright This theatrical Saturday Night Massa- interest mainly to Shepard's biogra- demand it; you go for movie actors. The cre was unquestionably the result of phers, for it is possible to detect in the result? Tommy Lee Jones and Peter Mr. Papp's effort to accelerate the pro- tension between the two brothers a Boyle. cess of creation. Whether it actually personal meaning for the playwright. I improved the productions is a matter of have a feeling that Lee and Austin debate, but it certainly provided deli- represent two aspects of Shepard's cious material for the media mills, most VEN WHEN such actors deliver, as Peter Boyle does splendidly, the career —the increasingly renowned play- of it speculation on the character of E wright and movie actor on the one Joseph Papp. This obscures the real purpose of the presentation gets clouded. The production has no unity, hand, the freewheeling coffeehouse issue, which has little to do with wheth- writer and carefree musician on the er Papp is kind to crippled children. The no style, no control. It's a wonder the actors aren't bumping into each other. other. It may be that Shepard is work- issue, rather, is the desperate state of ing something out in this play, a kind of the non-profit movement, whose very Even so, the first act of True )Neit comes through, largely because of Shepard's nostalgia for his past life, which he survival has grown so dependent on associates with the real or true West, as grinding out hits for Broadway. stubborn neo-Pinteresque power. It is a dazzling piece of writing—terse, sug- opposed to "shopping in the Safeway, Papp was entirely within his rights in gestive, mystifying, intense. In the sec- riding on the Freeway," the suburban taking over the productions of Alice and ond act, however, when Shepard's in- traps in which "There's nothing real True Wfs(—and not just legally, the way spiration flags, the faults of the pro- down here anymore—least of all me." Richard Nixon was empowered to re- duction become glaring. Like Seduced, The real Shepard is certainly not on move Archibald Cox through the good Shepard's recent play about Howard display at the Public, and that, too, may offices of his attorney general. It is quite Hughes, True West has the feeling of a be the price he is paying for his fame. possible that the productions were first draft, Shepard rarely revises any of Peter Boyle aione gives us a glimpse of foundering, and required a producer's his work extensively, but at his best (in authentic Shepard, moving through the intervention. The confusion arises over Buried Child, for example), the initial space of the Martinson Theater like a whether Papp is developing artists or rush can carry him through. In True huge tramp steamer pushing clumsily producing shows, whether the Public is West, his impulse is not sustained; the into port—his jaw slack, his hair lank, devoted to experimental workshops or play looks thin, even emaciated, like a hisbody lumpy asif he had been poured pre-Broadway tryouts. Until Mr. Papp healthy organism turning anorexic be- into his clothes. It is he alone who pro- clarifies his own role as a producer, and fore your eyes. vides the danger and menace of the the function of his theaters, he is in The play is about role reversal. Aus- play. Tommy Lee Lones, on the other danger either of alienating the talented tin, a successful Hollywood screen- hand, playing his entire part on a single people who work there, or instilling in writer, lives comfortably in his moth- note, never departs from his cool movie them a cynical opportunism. Neither er's house, while his brother Lee—a persona, even when he is supposed to alternative provides inviting conditions shambling, paranoid, lopsided drifter— be drunk, and thus never convinces us spends his time in the desert, emerging that he shares any blood with Boyle, If You Lo\'c Words, occasionally to steal appliances out of David Gropman's set is appropriate in you'll love VERBATIM. The Language Quarter suburban homes. Just when Austin is its characterless neatness, and Hank ly. dealing with all aspects of language. Send Williams's Country and Western songs $7 50 (U.S.) or $8,50 (elsewhere) for a one-year about to sell a script to a Hollywood subscription, starling with the curfenl issue. producer. Lee interrupts to describe a provide a proper musical background — Money back it nol pleased Allow 6 weeks but the evening generally seems to be TTK^* POST OFFICE BOX 668NP script idea of his own based partly on i yrvi ESSEX, CT 06426 U.S A his experience, partly on an old Kirk an exercise in sloppiness, without

22 The New Republic even the excuse of being a work in of this play, aimed for the commercial volume of letters, written during the progress. market; it is quite another to pretend to time of Virginia's mourning the deaths And that, ultimately, is the really offer the conditions of a workshop, of her friend Roger Fry and her nephew pathetic thing about this exercise—that where the process of development is as Julian Bell, her anxieties at the destruc- one of the few genuine dramatic writ- important as the results. At present, tion of Britain during the war, and her ers of our time should have been so Mr. Papp is confusing the purposes and growing fears of insanity. In her letters shamefully mishandled, I share Joseph the personnel of the experimental Wooif characteristically and obsessively Papp's doubts about the professional theater with those of the commercial focuses on the minor irritations of daily capacities of Robert Woodruff and I stage, and thereby serving neither God domestic life: the getting of lunch and suspect that, under the circumstances, nor Mammon well. Perhaps now that dinner, the buying of garters, the sever- he was probably correct in intervening Pirates of Penzance has proved a gusher, heity of the cold, the noise of workmen, when he did. But it is one thing to will be able to relax the pressures on his the aches of the flu, the interruption of launch a fully professional production artists and let them do their work. visitors, the pruning of the yews, the breeding of pets. Woolf is crotchety and often funny about these matters, but the overwhelming impression is that she is willfully restricting her attention to the ordinary to avoid "blows" that Virginia Woolf in her last letters. were terrible and deeply felt. The reader of the Letters knows that something Enemies Within and Without more was going on, for on March 28, 1941, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the by Edwin J, Kenney Jr. icy Sussex Ouse, But with a few telling exceptions and the suicide notes to her Volume VI of Virginia Woolf's Letters, philosophical, and it certainly does not husband and sister, most of her letters which contains letters written between demonstrate any historical or political prattle on. If one did not know that 1936 and 1941, completes the publica- comprehension of world events. How- Woolf killed herself, one would not tion of The Letters of Virginia Woolf, edited ever, this ordinariness is so powerful consider these letters those of a deeply by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Traut- that it must be understood not as a disturbed person. But in hindsight, the mann. Just as this final volume is only a lapse, which a few critics have charged, knowledge that these letters lead up to part of the collected Letters, so too it is but as an achievement, an act of will. and end with her stTicide hoth allows only a partial record of the years 1936 In Moments of Being Woolf reveals that to 1941. To be properly understood, the she always felt life on two distinct lev- letters must be read not only as a com- els, which she called "being" and "non- plement to Woolf's public writings of being." She defined non-being as the ACADEMY CHICAGO this period—her novels The Years and "nondescript cotton wool" of daily life. FORBIDDEN SANDS Between the Acts, her biography of Roger She considered the painful "sledge- A Search in the Sahara Fry, and her feminist pamphlet. Three hammer" blows of fate as "being," not Guineas—but also as a counterpoint to only because they were intense, but Rictiard Trench her diary, which is now being published also because she believed that such in its entirety under the editorship of blows were "tokens of some real thing Anne Olivier Bell, and to her autobio- behind appearances," Virginia was am- graphical memoirs composed during bivalent about both non-being and this time, some of which have been pub- being. Non-being might be nondescript lished as Moments of Being, edited by appearance, but it was safe and re^assur- Jeanne Schulkind. Such a context is ing; being might he the "revelation of necessary to define and understand the some order," but the revelation was peculiar nature of Woolf's letters and threatening and the order was uncer- their relation to the final act of her life, tain. In non-being the self was the her suicide. author of the action. In being the self Over the years of publication of the was only an actor, only a part of a work individual volumes of The Letters of Vir- of art, whose creator and whose end ginia Woolf, many reviewers have praised were unknown, for "certainly there is them as"vibrant,""brilliant,""enchant- no God." ing," and "wicked." But the most perva- In her letters more than in any of her sive characteristic of the collected Letters other writing, Virginia Woolf confined "This txxjk is in the tradition of tine is their ordinariness. Woolf's is not a herself to the cotton wool of daily life, British writing on Arab lands and literary correspondence, for she does without discussing her "mountain sum- people • -Library Journal not openly discuss her fiction; it is not mit moments" of revelation. In this way Cloth. S1O.95 she demonstrated almost daily to her ACADEMY Edwin }. Kenneif jr. teaches literature at friends and herself that everything was CHICAGO Colby College, Maine, and is the author all right and that she was all right—safe LIMITED of Elizabeth Bowen (Bucknell Universityand normal. This deliberate limitation Press), of scope is especially apparent in the last 360 N, Michigan Ave , Chicago, IL 60601

January 31. 1981 23

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