THE GOOD DOCTOR
Back Rent Players
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Chekhov’s society, on the other hand, was fairly fixed. His comedies, usually based on the ruthless exploitation of the weak by the strong, frequently fail to communicate with American audiences, and Neil Simon, possibly the greatest farceur in American theater, knows this. In The Good Doctor, an adaptation of several Chekhov tales, he is very careful to see that bullies are overturned by those whom they would bully, or at least are confronted with the error of their ways. He also sees to it that the humor arises not from any one character’s personality but from circumstances that cause interpersonal conflict.
For instance, compare Simon’s interpretation of the story “Surgery” with that performed by the Studio Theatre of Moscow this past spring. In the story, a sexton must have a troublesome tooth pulled by an inexperienced dentist. As done by the Moscow company, the dentist was a tall, sinister figure, callously taking advantage of the vulnerable position into which the sexton has been thrust by his affliction. In Simon’s version, however, the dentist is a young medical student, eager to perform his first actual extraction, and the sexton a fat man terrified of pain. Thus, two men, equal in power, share the same goal–they are in perfect agreement that the tooth must be pulled–and instead of one man imposing his will upon the other, both struggle together to battle the villainous tooth. When the contest ends in a stalemate–the tooth breaks, leaving half out and half in–the man of science and the man of God kneel together to pray for a miracle to relieve their suffering. Yes, life is cruel, says the playwright, but it is cruel to all mortals alike.
To compare this production to community theater is to do community theater a disservice. Almost any theater group could have drawn on more resources in researching their production, or at least had more fun with it than the Back Renters seem to be having. Every aspect of this production indicates that the Playwrights’ Center is embarrassed to be doing it. Audiences would be advised to relieve them of their discomfort.
