{l to r) Arnie Burton and Matt McGrath in ‘Lonely Planet.’ (Photo: Carol Rosegg.)
By Samuel L. Leiter
Steven Dietz’s 1994, two-act, two-hander, Lonely Planet, briefly seen last winter at the Gene Frankel Theatre and now being given a disappointingly leaden revival by the Keen Company, is set during the AIDS crisis of the 80s, although neither AIDS nor HIV are ever mentioned. The “lonely planet” of its title refers to the photo of earth taken from Apollo 17, revealing the relative insignificance of the planet in the universe, and, by extension, our own place in the greater scheme of things.
As the recent death at 41 of composer-lyricist Michael Friedman reminds us, the subject remains pertinent. Nonetheless, the potency of its theatrical topicality has somewhat faded amid over three-plus decades of AIDS-related plays (like the soon-to-be-revived masterpiece, Angels in America), and, at least in America, a waning of widespread panic. As the New York Times notes, Friedman’s death was shocking because many “had come to see HIV infection as a chronic but manageable condition.”
However, if Dietz’s combination of gentle sentiment and whimsical humor is to reach us deeply, it needs a far more compelling production than this one, directed by Jonathan Silverstein; here, it comes off as a mildly dated, minor handling of a subject treated with far greater serio-comic power by other playwrights.
The photo of earth I mentioned hangs on a wall in the small map shop—designed in detail by Anshuman Bhatia with dexterous lighting by Paul Hudson—owned by a gay man named Jody (Arnie Burton). The boringly dressed, soft-spoken, outwardly stable Jody is agoraphobic, afraid to leave the place, situated “on the oldest street in an American city,” and engage with the world outside, where his friends are dying off one by one.
His speeches often make metaphorical connections, involving distortions, distances, and angles, between the maps on his walls and life. He speaks of his “Greenland problem,” for instance, the outsized image of that country on maps reflecting the outsized place of AIDS in his psyche.
No customers ever appear, the only other character being Jody’s younger friend and comforter-in-chief, the colorfully flamboyant Carl (Matt McGrath), who urges Jody to take a break from the shop.
Carl, a fabulist, is immersed in the world although the various occupations he claims to have must be taken with a grain of salt. Each time he appears he wears a sharply different outfit (costumes are by Jennifer Paar), the clothes possibly reflecting each friend he’s lost, just as his disparate jobs are those of his late friends.
Bringing the men closer together, and ultimately inspiring Jody to join the world outside again, is the epidemic; this is signified—in a heavy nod to Ionesco’s 1952 absurdist drama The Chairs, which Jody happens to be reading—by a growing accumulation of chairs Carl keeps bringing to the shop, each taken from the home of another victim, and each as in Ionesco, the trace of a human being who must not be forgotten.
Dietz’s plotting, like this production’s pace, creeps along, with very few moments of stinging dramatic substance. Instead, we get a sequence of bland situations as Carl comes and goes, engaging with Jody in time-killing chitchat, verbal and physical games (including a tiresomely juvenile sword fight with cardboard map tubes), phone calls, descriptions of troubled dreams or personal experiences, and soliloquizing.
Bart Fasbender’s sound score of period rock music, particularly Joe Cocker’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” isn’t enough to give this flat production the three-dimensionality it requires. Carl and Jody’s relationship has a mapped-out quality that seems more the work of a theatrical cartographer than a pulsating dramatist. Only toward the end, when Jody agrees to be tested or stretches out a long pause as he waits for the results on the phone, is there any serious concern for what happens next.
Burton and McGrath, both honored New York actors, struggle mightily but their efforts are forced and uninspired, making Jody and Carl dull buddies with whom to spend an hour and 45 minutes. Even at that thankfully compact running time, some audiences will be humming along with Dylan’s words, “Any day now, Any day now, I shall be released.”
Lonely Planet
Clurman Theatre/Theatre Row
410 W. 42nd St., NYC
Through November 18
Samuel L. Leiter is Distinguished Professor Emeritus (Theater) of Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. A voting member of the Drama Desk, he has written and/or edited 27 books on Japanese theater, New York theater, Shakespeare, and the great stage directors. For more of his reviews, visit Theatre’s Leiter Side (www.slleiter.blogspot.com).
