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 Elizabeth Swados version of before each that a serious subject was responsible for the most interesting Alice in Wom/fr/dfii/, starring Meryl Streep 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, Runaways) in the hope of refining crude oil into Jane Fonda is the newcomer, a divorcee the result of Joseph Papp'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 the Public Theater. 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.