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Frank Gorshin brings B&A back alive
BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ
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Say Goodnight Gracie: The Life, Laughter and Love of George Burns and Gracie Allen
By Rupert Holmes. Directed by John Tillinger. Set by John Lee Beatty. Lighting by Howard Werner. Sound by Kevin Lacy. Multimedia design by Werner and Peter Nigrini. With Frank Gorshin. At the Wilbur Theatre through November 2.
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Long before Seinfield, there was another brilliant comedy show about the adventures of real entertainers and their fictitious friends, one that featured the stars doing the comedy routines for which they were famous. For 18 years on radio and eight years on TV, The Burns and Allen Show kept audiences howling. At the time of Gracie Allen’s retirement, in 1958, the TV show was the longest-running sit-com on the air. George Burns and Gracie Allen started in vaudeville, where they met, and then made movies together, including Six of a Kind (with W.C. Fields) and College Swing (both are out on DVD) and Damsel in Distress, in which they danced with Fred Astaire. Memories are short, and the TV show, which remains the most inventive situation-comedy series in the history of television, is often absent from recent lists of TV landmarks. So we should be grateful to Rupert Holmes (who wrote the book of the recent musical version of the film Marty at the Huntington Theatre, and who won Tony Awards for book, music, and lyrics for The Mystery of Edwin Drood) and comedian, character actor (the Riddler on TV’s Batman), and remarkable mimic Frank Gorshin for Say Goodnight Gracie, a one-man show in which Gorshin, as George Burns, brings these beloved performers to life. The premise is that Burns — who in 1975, at the age of 79, won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as a retired comedian in the film of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, then played the title role in Oh God (and in two sequels), and who died in 1996, just after his 100th birthday — is at the Pearly Gates, hoping to rejoin Gracie in Heaven by "auditioning" for God with the story of their lives. It’s a story full of delightful theatrical lore — the way, for example, in vaudeville, Burns (real name: Nathan Birnbaum) had to keep changing his name whenever he had to fill in as someone’s partner. It’s also a love story, and Gorshin is especially affecting in the scenes in which he falls in love with his new partner, an Irish clog dancer and comedienne with a little bird’s voice — "the kind that would carry to the back of a theater without having to be raised." "I had a great talent," George tells God, "so I married her." Their vaudeville act started with Burns as the comedian and Allen feeding him lines. But when her straight lines got more laughs than his punch lines, he astutely reversed their roles. Her "dizzy" routine was irresistible. "It’s harder to work in the movies than on stage," she explains. "Movie stars have to act in black and white." Will her sister’s new baby be a boy or girl? "I can’t wait to find out if I’m an aunt or an uncle." She works in the ladies clothing department as a "diesel fitter": "I hold up the underwear and say ‘Dese’ll fit ’er.’ " When vaudeville started to die ("It wasn’t entirely my fault," Burns says), they discovered that their kind of act — "We talk to each other" — worked even better on radio and in film: "Gracie, what are you doing with that book under the bed?" "Someone told me I should read Jekyll and hide!" "Why did you throw away that life preserver?" "It was no good — it had a hole in the middle!" One great joy of Say Goodnight Gracie is the inclusion of movie and TV clips of the real Burns and Allen (elsewhere, actress Didi Conn skillfully re-creates Gracie’s radio and "real-life" voice) and of George’s best friend, Jack Benny, who in one hilarious clip actually dresses up as Gracie. And its show-biz philosophy is often quite telling. "Gracie was Catholic," Burns says. "My religion: get off the stage before they stop applauding." Gracie, he says, didn’t like to tell jokes; she "acted as if everything she said made perfect sense." The simple sets — a proscenium within the proscenium, a café table, an easy chair next to an old radio — and the lighting are economically atmospheric. Director John Tillinger has Gorshin move easily around the stage, and Gorshin’s timing is superb: the jokes keep coming, but never at the expense of his touching characterization. The night I went (last Friday), he received a well-deserved standing O. Holmes’s script ignores the darker side of Gracie’s early character; what Burns calls her "illogical logic" ("When I misunderstand what you say, I always know what you’re talking about") often risked someone’s life, limb, and property. And it passes over Burns’s odd Las Vegas career with young Ann-Margret after Gracie’s death. The narrative about Gracie’s death and the ending — the dying George rapidly rewinding the past — veer into melodrama. Still, it’s hard to imagine a sweeter tribute to these endearing and enduring figures, or a funnier evening of live theater.
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