An American Collage

TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY America. A time of prosperity, when the Horatio Alger myth is still alive, if somewhat decrepit. The country is growing up so fast--growing up cynical. The rich advance, playing the stock-market and beating back the unions. The workingman comes to understand he is no more than a commodity. A world war is fought for democracy and the benefit of the wealthy. Flappers flap and workers grow accustomed to Henry Ford's innovative assembly-line factory techniques and nobody--rich or poor--can hear over all the din. No one can think. They just keep on laboring and dancing. And stepping up the pace.

U.S.A., an adaptation of the John Dos Passos trilogy, covers the frenetic period in American history from 1900 to the Crash, 29 years later. It is an undeniably ambitious subject, one which the well-respected Dos Passos trilogy handles in about 1000 pages, tracing the lives of a representative collection of Americans and employing a literary collage to help cover the enormous historical ground. The play, directed by John B. Manulis '78, makes an admirable attempt at covering the same ground in a little over two hours. He ultimately fails, and U.S.A. is a frustratingly superifical production. It is, nonetheless, an entertaining play with a good deal of energy and several strong performances in its favor.

The plot--broken up by newsreels, dramatic profiles of famous American figures from a ruggedly moralistic Eugene V. Debs to Rudolph Valentino and assorted other collage skits and "cut-outs"--centers on the life of J. Ward Moorehouse, Dos Passos' version of The American Success story.

At the start of the play Moorehouse is an undistinguished, boyish employee in a real estate firm. He is clean-cut and innocent with bright blue eyes, and he meets a wealthy woman whom he marries several scenes later. As Moorehouse's career soars, the plot switches focus to Janey and Joe Williams, two kids from a middle-class Georgetown background. Unlike Moorehouse, Janey and Joe do not become success stories. Joe runs away from home, enlists in the navy, deserts, and become a workingman whose "future is behind him." Janey ends up as Moorehouse's secretary.

To the intricate, at times overly-serious structure of the Dos Passos/Paul Shyre adaption, Manulis adds his own twist: in his production, the audience does not view the play U.S.A. perse; rather it views a dress rehearsal of the Dos Passos play--the old play within a play idea. A device of this kind is a potentially good idea for this material; it could mitigate two of the play's most irritating problems--the occasionally moralistic tone of the playwright, and the differing degrees to which the players act "in period." Yet Manulis fails to develop the dress rehearsal framework coherently, and the result is a hastily slapped on, somewhat confusing effort.

Because the play takes place over a long period of time, providing only momentary glimpses at a given stage in any character's life, U.S.A. poses major dramatic problems. The script provides only stereotyped outlines for the characters, leaving any detail or fleshing-out to the cast-members--each of whom plays several different roles. But as stereotypes go, U.S.A.'s emerge acceptably. Although few of the players succeed in developing their roles beyond superficial characterization, most of the stereotypes they portray are themselves enjoyable.

IN MANY RESPECTS, the character of Moorehouse embodies the spirit of U.S.A. Moorehouse skips into the play with enormous idealism that decreases in direct proportion to his rising fortune. His success, too, is typically American--based less on merit than on chance and a talent for the hard-sell con-job. And when he dies at the end of the play--a lonely middle-aged man who is more a victim of The Success Story than its hero-prosperous pre-Depression America goes down with him. Stephen Toope's Moorehouse lacks the strength to carry this broad, demanding part. He takes what is essentially a string of stereotyped roles--the various stages of Moorehouse's life--and produces hollow caricatures of the stereotypes. Toope masters the young man's engaging smile and the power-hungry eyes of a rising businessman, but beyond this sort of obvious device brings little depth to the part. If he is credible as the shallow, aging Moorehouse of the second act, it is not because he has captured the character, but because Toope plays the part with a shallowness of his own.

Cynthia Cardon provides an enjoyable performance as Moorehouse's wealthy, cloying wife, and as various other personifications of American aristocracy in its death-throes. Cardon's character, unlike the others, does not change with the times. Rather, she clings to the past. While Cardon fails to use this constancy to bring real dimension to her characters, she successfully shapes their affectations and mannerisms into a real--if painfully superficial--personality.

Tom Prewitt is cold, ironical, and very effective in his role as Dick Savage, the bright young businessman under Moorehouse's wing. Prewitt's greatest assets are his insincere smile and deceptively flat voice. Where Moorehouse is soft, Prewitt's Savage is tough and pragmatic. Somehow he will survive the Crash and become the new era's success story; even as the cognac flows in a Paris cafe in celebration of the end of the world war, Savage suggests somewhat cheerfully, "Who knows? We might be back here for the next war."

It is the strong performances of Kate Silverman, Kerry Konrad and Lou Ann Maywald, however, that carry U.S.A. through its weaknesses. Kate Silverman, as the bouncy Janey Williams, is consistently credible and fun, perhaps because she makes little effort to act in period. While she fails to make the transition convincing from the child Janey to the adult, she brings considerable depth to both personalities.

Konrad and Maywald each play a number of mini-parts. Konrad, always interesting, is at times inaccurate in his characterization. As Joe Williams, the gruff, cynical workingman who carries with him a good deal of class resentment, Konrad speaks with too much kindness and pathos. In other roles he is both funny and on-target; his portrayal of Bingham, the elderly businessman with a penchant for health foods and naked women comes across particularly well. Maywald turns in the evening's most impressive performance, handling a wider range of roles than anyone else in the play. In her brief part as an efficient, sexless stenographer, clicking away at her typewriter while barking orders over her shoulder at the other stenographers, Maywald's characterization is sharp and perfectly loathsome. Playing a remarkably different role, she precisely captures Eleanor Stoddard, the attractive sophistocate who keeps Moorehouse hanging on a string.

A variety of creative productive elements add to the show, bringing it closer to the era it portrays. The costuming is generally good and accurate to the period, although the working class characters dress a little too well. Anne Fine's piano playing and singing and the occasional dance numbers convey a sense of false gaiety the action fails to achieve on its own.

U.S.A. is the portrait of a national illusion, or rather, of national disillusion. The closer America moved toward that disillusionment, the farther away its people grew from themselves, running about and seemingly never exerting even a modicum of control over their own lives. America of this period is well suited for a novel or play that examines that superficiality and gets at the pain lying beneath it. But Manulis's U.S.A. omits far too much of what transpires beneath the surface. What remains after the newsreel and strung together character collages is a superficial play about superficial people.