THE LAST WORDS OF DUTCH SCHULTZ
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The development of character and the spoken language–these, I think, are areas where theater can not only compete but surpass both novels and films. Theater is the person and the voice. So you’d think that a play entitled The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (adapted from the novel by William Burroughs) might capitalize on these strengths. It doesn’t.
Scott Vehill, who both adapted the novel and directed this show, is like the kid who couldn’t get his fist out of the jelly-bean jar. Vehill tries to capture the entire span of Dutch Schultz’s criminal life in no less than three dozen scenes. That’s a lot of scenes for a show only slightly over an hour long. It averages out at less than two minutes per scene, so you can imagine how both character development and sustained dialogue are sacrificed. And there are so many characters that some actors play two, three, or even four roles. After a while I didn’t know who was playing what or who killed whom and why. Nor is any sense of continuity established by the music bridges, voice-overs, and completely gratuitous film segments. Epic theater it’s not. As for getting that novel on the stage? The jar is broken, the jelly beans are squished into an unsightly blob, and the flavor of the whole is a mess.
When the play eventually does end, it ends where it began, with Schultz lying on a bed wondering if he’s dead. So I guess that makes the play one of those things where the whole of Dutch Schultz’s life passes before his eyes just before he dies. Well, better his eyes than mine. Still uncertain is what Burroughs meant to express by chronicling Schultz’s life. I could see the recurrent themes of sex, drugs, and murder, and also the recurrence of inscrutable images, such as the number 23 and the words “dog biscuit,” but if there was some big picture to be grasped from the novel, I didn’t see it on the stage. It doesn’t translate. What’s left over is a character sketch that is at once comprehensive and superficial, and a production that’s artsy-fartsy but mostly fartsy. Not exactly what Dutch Schultz probably had in mind.
