McNally's "Unusual Acts of Devotion' (2nd review)

The late Philadelphia real estate magnate and civic leader Frank Binswanger Sr. used to say that happiness is like a three-legged stool, consisting in equal parts of one’s work, one’s family and one’s community. That formula presumed that you get back from each leg what you invest— or, as the aphorist Frank Tyger put it, "If you want happiness, provide it to others."

To judge from Unusual Acts of Devotion, Terrence McNally agrees with Binswanger about the three-legged stool, but McNally’s preferred components are food, sex and music— specifically, an extensive collection of CDs by Benny Goodman, Edith Piaf, Giuseppe Di Stefano and any other musician capable of delivering instant transcendent pleasure.

McNally here displays a keen sensitivity to the universal human need for stroking, companionship and intimacy, whether gay or straight; but he seems clueless about how people build truly satisfying long-term relationships— either as couples or communities— a process that requires delaying gratification and recognizing that actions have consequences.

But maybe that’s McNally’s point. For a comfortably fixed straight white male who loves his job, like Frank Binswanger (or me), sacrificing short-term delights for long-term rewards is a no-brainer. But society’s outcasts may well view their work, families and communities as sources of oppression rather than joy. If that’s your case, you may well be inclined to live for the moment and grab for whatever gusto passes your way, no matter how that may mess you up. After all, your life wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

A Greenwich Village rooftop party

Unusual Acts of Devotion introduces us to five such cases, whom we meet on the roof of a Greenwich Village apartment house. It’s a stiflingly hot summer night, but two of the tenants, a modestly talented Italian-American clarinetist named Leo (played by Michael Aronov) and his Vermont-transplant wife Nadine (Ana Reeder), have chosen to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary and Nadine’s pregnancy here beneath Manhattan’s gleaming skyscrapers. They don’t appear to have given much advance thought to their impromptu party: No guests seem to have been invited, and Nadine runs back and forth to their apartment to scrounge up food and drinks while Leo runs back and forth for music from his CD collection.

Did I mention that a homicidal maniac is loose in the neighborhood? No matter: Leo rhapsodizes about the glories of living in New York, in the Village and in this faded walkup building in particular; “I’m very glad to be alive at this particular moment in the history of the human race,” he declares, even though the only evidence of any human race beyond their roof is manifested by a police helicopter that disturbs their reverie by shining its searchlight upon them in search of the killer.

Loneliness trumps everything

In due time Leo and Nadine are joined on the roof by other tenants seeking relief from the heat. There’s Chick (Richard Thomas), a bisexual Gray Line tour guide, now desperately seeking companionship (gay or straight) since his lover jumped off this very roof. Josie (Faith Prince), an equally lonely schoolteacher, has just returned from rehab, having suffered a breakdown after losing her job (those heartless bastards at the school district fired her for having an affair with one of her adolescent students). Mrs. Darnell (Viola Harris) is an insufferably crotchety old crone who possesses no apparent redeeming qualities. Traditional societies value their elders for their wisdom and experience, but Mrs. Darnell has no wisdom to transmit, and in any case her self-absorbed younger neighbors wouldn’t listen to her if she did.

In the course of the evening it develops that the four younger characters— all but Mrs. Darnell— have all been involved with each other or are contemplating same. They have discovered that familiar theatrical territory, the “lending library of love,” right here on their roof. For all the diverse and liberated attractions of the great wicked city around them, this foursome might as well live on a desert island. (Chick is so horny that he makes a move on Leo in the midst of Leo’s anniversary shindig— which is understandable, if this roof marks the boundaries of his world.)

Just a few questions

This brief summary may raise some questions in your mind: If it’s so hot outside, why do these people gravitate to the roof instead of to an air-conditioned room? If a killer is loose in the neighborhood, why do these folks run up and down the stairwell and fire escape with such casual alacrity? If Leo loves New York and Greenwich Village so much, why don’t he and Nadine celebrate out on the town instead of up here on the roof? If Leo loves music and makes his living playing the clarinet, why not party with a few of his musician friends instead of a CD player? Doesn’t Leo realize that the ubiquity of portable recorded music at weddings and parties is the greatest single threat to his livelihood? (As a real dance-band clarinetist, also of Italian extraction, once put it to me: “Thank God for the Jews— they’re the only people who still hire live musicians.”) And if Chick is so lonely, why does he hang around this roof instead of cruising the gay bars for which the Village is so famous?

These questions don’t appear to have occurred to McNally’s characters. Nor do they appear to have occurred to McNally. Unusual Acts is the sort of play that makes me want to scream: “What the hell is the matter with these people? Who’s looking at the big picture? Where are the grown-ups?”

Howling lines of dialogue

To his credit, McNally— obviously a more tolerant fellow than I am— refuses to sit in judgment of these dunces. He accepts them on their own fallible terms and empathizes with them. My BSR colleague Steve Cohen contends that McNally speaks through his characters, but what are we to make of lines like “Food and making love can’t hold a candle to sleep,” or “Sleep is a lovely practice for death. The real thing won’t be so bad when it comes along,” or “Public opinion is a part of every relationship”? When one character refers to “stupid rules,” Josie replies, “Most rules are— that’s why we break them.” As profundities go, these belong in the same box with “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Did McNally deliberately set out to write a play about shallow people? Or did he just write a shallow play? Either way, Unusual Acts provides ample food for thought— even for someone like me who found it annoying as hell to sit through— and the work is augmented by a first-rate cast and set.

Oh, yes— you were wondering about that homicidal maniac being hounded by the police? Turns out he wasn’t such a bad dude after all— just a quiet angel of mercy who does his victims a favor by gently putting them out of their misery when they’re too old to taste food or screw or hear music, which is what life is all about. An unusual act of devotion, I guess McNally would call it.

If only the repressive elites who make the rules would leave us to our own devices, McNally’s script implies, the world would be a better place. He may be right, but I personally left the Suzanne Roberts Theatre unpersuaded.


To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.

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