ELLIOT LOVES
This didn’t disturb me. I respect the critics from the Tribune and Sun-Times. I’m even willing to praise certain aspects of them. But overall, bottom line, I feel secure in disagreeing with them. We’re all Americans here.
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A new play by anxiety’s own cartoonist, Jules Feiffer, Elliot Loves follows the eponymous neurotic through a long night’s wrangling with his extremely nervous lady friend, Joanna–a Memphis-born, twice-divorced real estate broker with two kids and a tic-y way of saying “Piece of cake,” as Elliot notes, “in response to remarks that do not by any stretch of the imagination call for “piece of cake.”‘
The spitting gives way to negotiation before they’re done; but the play ends inconclusively enough that critics and audience members alike can find room not merely to disagree, but to claim contradictory results. For Richard, Hedy, and others I consulted, Elliot Loves is a deeply bitter, despairing vision of modern romance, in which unlovable inadequates go around clobbering each other with the big sticks they’ve fashioned out of their pain–in much the same way Jacob Marley fashioned chains out of his greed. The piece needs, as Richard Christiansen put it, “to lighten up, to avoid turning sour, to make its characters at least a little more likable, to engage its audience in a slightly less acrid environment and to stop confusing nastiness for reality.”
Still, like I say, the demonstrations are extraordinarily clever. And Mike Nichols’s production projects an awesome poise. The entire cast–from Anthony Heald’s exhaustingly compulsive Elliot and Christine Baranski’s tight, tough Joanna, to David Pierce’s shell-shocked Phil, Oliver Platt’s nasty/funny Larry, and Bruce A. Young’s heavily blocked Bobby–is perfect. I liked Elliot Loves, even if I couldn’t love it. Of course, you’ll probably disagree.
