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![[Theater reviews]](/images/boston/arts/theater_header.gif){kind=small}
Israel Horovitz tees off by CAROLYN CLAY
50 Years of Caddying
Israel Horovitz does not like prejudice. He does, however, like golf — and we had better like it too. The prolific playwright’s latest work, 50 Years of Caddying, jumps back and forth between the early 1950s and 2001 to depict the ebb, or at least the closeting, of racism in America, as represented by what has traditionally been " a white man’s game. " Alas, the play, in its world premiere at Gloucester Stage Company and overseen by a kind of Ghost of Golf Past, is, at least for a non golf fan, as tedious as a round played behind a quartet of dawdling duffers. In parallel plot lines set around the club championship at a posh golfing establishment, Horovitz’s fable counterpoints the relationship of a predictably bigoted white guy of the ’50s with his black caddy and that of an elder white caddy lugging clubs for a hot-shot black stock investor in 2001. Naturally, this being a Horovitz play, everybody’s related. The caddy of 2001 is the son of the mid-century golfer, and the turn-of-the-century golfer is the grandson of the earlier caddy. Moreover, as the later twosome negotiate the course, they are dogged by a subplot in which a professional woman golfer who grew up at the club has sued for the heretofore unheard of right to play in the overall club championship — and now she’s winning. Thus we learn? That racism was more blatant 50 years ago but has hardly disappeared? That sexism dies even more slowly, at least in golf? That money buys privilege? That golf can serve as a metaphor for life? This is Horovitz’s second play set on a golf course. And certainly golf, with its fabled greens and snobby clubs and built-in master-servant thing, is fertile ground on which to tweak oppression. At the play’s opening, as bagpipes wheeze, we meet the tam-clad ghost of the great Scottish golfer Tom Morris, groundskeeper, caddy, and champ at St. Andrews’ " Royal and Ancient " (and four-time winner of the British Open). Morris, who died in 1908, points out that, whereas he has been all but canonized at the club where he worked and played, he was never actually permitted to join. 50 Years of Caddying is fond of such ironies. For example, in the 1950s story, the country club where the play is set has only just become so " forward-thinking " as to permit black caddies. By 2001, not only can a black man join the establishment but, if he has sufficient funds, he can stake a large group of his friends to membership (and regale his white caddy about his " Jewish accountant " ). Which hardly means that racism, masquerading as " tradition, " has died. But Horovitz is also fond of clunky symbolism: the black grandfather and grandson are called Chip Eastern; the white father and son are named Westin Frank. Moreover, the playwright is so pleased with this conceit that he has one of the characters call attention to it! In the end, Eastern negotiates a deal to take lessons from Westin, but whether this means the twain shall meet is open to interpretation. All that can be gleaned for sure from 50 Years of Caddying is that golfers of whatever hue cheat. For a host of reasons, this is not one of Horovitz’s better efforts. He works too hard to establish parallels in his two stories: dictation of fortune by the stock market, a $50 tip, allusions to various ethnic stereotypes, and a bizarre bit tying women’s liberation to the doffing of old song lyrics. The earlier story awkwardly saddles its golf game with a melodrama complete with infidelity, financial ruin, and suicide. In both plots, the matches halt unconvincingly to make room for hunks of revelatory chat. And the play is shoehorned full of little golf nuggets, from the exclusionary character of the pre–Tiger Woods PGA to the invention of the tee. Through it all gambols the phantom Morris, like the Stage Manager in Our Town. Simon Hammerstein, who did a smart job earlier this summer with Neena Beber’s Dew Point, is at the helm of the GSC production, which can seem a little shaky, probably because Horovitz has had the actors teeing up to daily rewrites. Still, director and actors do their best to negotiate their rolling bit of astroturf. Richard Mawe brings a viable Scottish accent to Morris and a hangdog presence to the Westins; Ricardo Engermann endows the Chips with an appealing affability. Marianne Ryan is annoyingly perky if undeniably correct as the LPGA intruder on estimable old-male-fart terrain. But to misuse a golfing term, the handicap here is the script. Issue Date: August 16-23, 2001 |
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