cover art by David Prittie
“A R Gurney
has written a play that, as accurately appraised by one admirer, has `turned the
world upside down’. It can be said without exaggeration that this epochal work
is directly responsible for, among other things, an effective universal health
care system, world peace, smooth-running public transportation and significant
declines in global warming and the divorce rate.
Would that Mr Gurney were alive to witness the effects of his miracle drama.
Sadly, he was killed—some say murdered (possibly by, ssshhh,) Dick Cheney—before
it was ever produced.
POST MORTEM, the panacea of a play described above, is not to be confused
with the bubbly grievance list of a comedy with the same title...about a panacea
of a play called POST MORTEM… [which] was also written by Mr Gurney, who at last
report was very much alive.
Indeed, Mr Gurney—the theatrical sociologist who has devoted much of his
career to recording the habits of the endangered American WASP in plays like THE
COCKTAIL HOUR and the magazine article THE DINNER PARTY—could be said to be more
than alive. For the purposes of his latest offering, set “sometime in the
future” at a Midwestern university ruled by censorship, he has become God,
restructuring the world in his own image to consider the plight of his beloved
country and the state of his beloved art.
Though he is principally known as a practitioner of the “middle-class comedy
of manners” (to borrow a dismissive self-description from this latest play), in
recent years he has used the stage of the Flea for cathartic venting about a
world that seems determined to destroy itself. His previous collaborations with
Mr Simpson include O JERUSALEM, MRS FARNSWORTH and SCREENPLAY, all political
fantasies of wish—and fear—fulfillment….
But in addition to taking sardonic aim at Mr Gurney’s usual favorite
targets—chiefly, the sins of the Bush administration—this latest work deals
specifically and wistfully with the role of drama in a culture that has
increasingly little respect for it. On one level, POST MORTEM isn’t much more
than a grab bag of Broadway insider jokes, polemical satire and cosmic
lamentation. But its parental concern and love for theater lends the show an
affecting sweetness that lingers.
….it’s hard not to be infected by the relish with which Mr Gurney rewrites his
own past, as well as invents a glorious posterity for himself. Early in the play
Dexter talks about coming upon a rare copy of Mr Gurney’s privately printed
autobiography, which reveals that he had affairs with many famous actresses,
including Cameron Diaz and both Audrey and Catherine Hepburn.
Hey, if you’re going to be the author of your own life, you might as well
make it juicy.”
Ben Brantley, The New York Times
originally produced by The Flea Theater
1 M, 2 F
I S B N: 0-88145-328-5, $12.95