"Thorstein Veblen's theory
of conspicuous consumption would find itself cozily vindicated in
Thomas Babe's GREAT DAY IN THE MORNING, a new play set in the fin
de siecle that also manages to pull the chain of the Charles
Keatings, Michael Milkens and other bandits of more recent times.
Not that the elusive DAY...is
that blunt about it or easy to peg.
The author himself has called
this sprawling opus `a little of this, a little of that, part
musical, part tragedy, part melodrama' and he should know.
GREAT DAY is all of the above
and more, drawing heavily for its inspiration from Elizabeth
Wharton Drexel's book `King Lehr and the Gilded Age', but laced
also with inventive helpings of Babe's own brand of vitiating
humor and sobering seriousness.
The seriousness is personified
in the fictionalized Wharton Drexel character, here called
Bessie, the young, wealthy, recently widowed Philadelphian who
moved to New York in the late 1800s in search of adventure. She
found more of it than she bargained for in the shape of a curious
new husband: glittery Harry Lehr who sang for his supper at all
the `A' parties of New York's upper crust.
To assess that tainted,
extravagant whirl, Babe juxtaposes Elizabeth's innocence with
Harry's decadence, tossing in various examples of the Rich
(arrogant Caroline Astor, outree Mrs Stuyvesant Fish) and Famous
(a gently wise-cracking Ulysses S Grant)"
Sylvie Drake, Los Angeles
Times
"Only Thomas Babe could
have written this play, imbued as it is with his special blend of
magical realism, energized with his bold theatricality, empowered
by his fluid, often poetic language, unabashed in its forays into
romanticism and melodrama. It bears the Babe cachet. The
playwright gives his imagination free rein, mixing fact, fiction
and fantasy.... It all works so well....
GREAT DAY IN THE MORNING is
playwright Babe in sure command of his powers. It glints with
shards of coldly glittering brilliance, heartens with pockets of
warmth and it always delights the senses...."
Polly Warfield, Drama-Logue
originally produced by South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa CA
4 M, 4 F
I S B N: 0-88145-144-4, $8.95