Word: slade
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...PLAY, Tribute, Bernard Slade slowly peels the mask off the chronic cut-up, the "life of the party:" the guy who clowns with everyone, loves everyone, is loved by everyone and opens up to no one--not even himself. The play is an excellent piece of entertainment wrapped in an extraordinary production, and if Slade doesn't dig deep enough--opting to warm the heart rather than chill the soul--the play suggests that a more self-conscious and hence more penetrating approach to humor, wherein characters ponder the neurotic implications of their own one-liners, has merged into popular...
...Slade's protagonist is Scottie Templeton (Jack Lemmon '47), a divorced, once-promising writer who has squandered his talents on second-rate movies and television--and has had a damn good time in the process. Only his priggish 20-year-old son Jud seems to despise him; they haven't seen each other for two years when Jud comes to visit. Scottie wants them to spend time together, but Jud counters each of his father's jokes and suggestions with icy, detached monosyllables, preferring to journey off to a museum exhibit alone. Scottie's doctor arrives and breaks the news...
...tell a story about Scottie. It is this theater, "tonight," and we are in the audience "to pay tribute to Scottie Templeton," who is celebrating his 51st birthday and has just emerged from successful cancer treatments in the hospital. At first these interludes seem irritating and gratuitous, as though Slade were trying to disguise a one-set, chronologically ordered comedy by Pirandello-ing it up a bit. But afterwards, you can appreciate how these anecdotes should have worked: this is a tribute to Scottie's life, and yet each speaker can only talk of his outrageous practical jokes, his flair...
...Slade doesn't shy away from conflict or confrontation; his characters occasionally go for each other's jugular, and pieces of their protective covering fleck off after each battle. Scottie begins to understand that by never committing himself to anyone he has hurt those to whom he should be closest. As father and son grow more acquainted, they recognize themselves in each other; Jud's sobriety is a reaction to Scottie's geniality, and each is locked into an extremely isolating mode of behavior...
...right, porn may eventually exhaust itself, having run out of new taboos to conquer. Yet in his 1966 study of Victorian pornography, Columbia Professor Steven Marcus described the porn impulse as "insatiable." Slade and Marcus may be making the same point: it was precisely the repressive nature of prudery that created a taboo-rich culture in which Victorian porn fantasies could take exotic shape. But if the porn industry finds no limits, it could perhaps reawaken the American taste for censorship. The very thought is anathema to most Americans. The danger is that it may be found more supportable than...