‘Lenny is dynamite’

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32628, 9 June 1971, Page 12

‘Lenny is dynamite ’

Leant; Bruce, rhe sharptongued satirist and comedian who died by his own hand five years ago, is the protagonist of a new Broadway play which is likely to be one of the biggest stage hits of 1971 in the United States. Clive Barnes, “New York Times" theatre critic, discusses this cultural aboutface. The article is supplied through N.Z.P.A.

Lenny Bruce made obscenity into a fine art, and it killed him. What is obscenity loose and vulgar talk about human genitalia, or kids starving in ghettos, humorous celebrations of sexual intercourse or men getting blown to pieces by grenades? Obscenity is usually in the ear of the listener.

Julian Barry’s play “Lenny,” which opened recently at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York is a curious play, but a dynamite stick of theatre. It raises . issues, twists nerves and at times rages with scatological fury. It is neither for the prurient nor the prudish—but nor was Lenny Bruce. It also has a virtuoso’s performance of fevered energy and measured distinction by Cliff Gorman, as Lenny. The first-night audience gave him a standing ovation such as is rarely heard in a theatre, and he deserved every last, hoarse hurrah.

The play is about Lenny Bruce, Jewish night club comedian, satirist, iconoclast, sourpuss, humourist and, unexpectedly, latter day martyr. Lenny was abrasive and honest. He didn't just milk sacred cows, he flayed them alive. He spat dirty-mouthed insults at the church and the state, and he shocked, irritated and annoyed. He was the warning graffiti on the wall.

The play is very largely composed of Lenny Bruce’s own night-club routines, and goes from his beginnings in 1951 to his solitary bathroom death from a drug overdose in 1966. We see his marriage, his court cases and, at times, his fantasies. We hear his mocking attacks on the Establishment, his scorn for the misuse of words, his hatred of cant and hypocrisy. Tom O’Horgan has taken the play, with its multiplicity of night-club scenes, and given it a phantasmogoric style. He has made it into an American night-mare-full of crazy judges, tribal chieftains, lepers, jazz musicians, irreverent priests, naked prophets and the whole pressure-cooked madness of the neurotic way of life.

In part, the style comes from O’Horgan’s staging of “Tom Paine” and, to a lesser

extent, “Hair," but it is more innovative than either in its use of , parody and blockbusting theatrical trickery. Here he is most imaginatively helped by the giant scenery of Robin Wagner, who provides the play with a truly Wagnerian sense of gods and twilight. Where O'Horgan has been very successful is in capturing the pace and sleazmess ot show business, and little night-clubs, and bands that laugh and customers that don’t.

There are some neatly turned performances here, Joe Silver turning up everywhere in a number of roles, and each one a joy. Jane House as Rusty, Lenny’s stripper wife is both convincingly attractive and cool. But, of course, Lenny is “Lenny” and Lenny is Cliff Gorman. We don’t see much of his drug-taking or drinking. We don’t see the body wasting, the talent eroding, the slack jaw, the forgotten lines, the lost control. I didn’t much admire Bruce’s night-club act—but I wasn’t then ready for it. Many people weren’t. And I didn’t understand the moral fervour behind it. The two or three times I saw him —pretty much toward the end of his career—he seemed like an incompetent, foulmouthed loud-mouth. But then I never saw the real Lenny Bruce. And, of course, this play doesn’t show us the real Lenny Bruce either—it takes Lenny as a symbol of free speech, and politica heterodoxy. I think it whitewashes aspects of his character I guess after what happened in his lifetime he may deserve it—but does present his uncompromising honesty, and his all-American insurgency. It also indicates, I believe with justice, that his reckoning with society was prompted as much by his political irreverence and candour as his continual stream of obscenity. It also shows the fun of Bruce. When I saw Bruce, white and ferret - faced, caught in a spotlight of notoriety and trying to face the horrors, the guy wasn’t very funny. But this play, like his books, sayings and records, puts it straight. Apart from the obvious trickle of obscenity, which you can find loathsome, unnoticeable or liberating according to yourself, there was here a bitter Swiftian sense of the ridiculous. And the courage of a David facing a Goliath with just a sling-shot of shocking obscenity to defend himself with.

Gorman doesn’t look much like Bruce, and he doesn’t

even sound much like Bruce. But he does have a fantastic gift for mimicry, an absolutely driven style that hammers and hanimers home to the audience, relentless, mocking and acerbic. Gotman is on that stage for hours and hours and hours, facing the audience, belting the material, and also revealing the scalding anger of a man who didn't want to be misunderstood. This is a performance that cannot fajl to make a major star out of, Gorman—the man is a consummate actor. Irony, irony, all is irony. What Bruce got busted for in private night clubs is hire being displayed in Broadway theatre just five years after his death. And a man who died penniless and alone will probably ' make plenty of bread for the ones who come after. Perhaps he would have seen the joke.

So there is “Lenny,” dirty, fierce and shook-up. Many people will be offended by “Lenny” and I would humbly suggest that they don’t go to see it But always remember that sticks and stones may break your bones, but hard words never,hurt you. Once in a while a few hard words can be refreshing. I found "Lenny” sad, funny and, yes, refreshing. The last laugh is with Bruce.