"Schmucks' at the Wilma

For six years, Roy Smiles worked as a stand-up comic in his native London, and if he'd met with more success on stage, he probably wouldn't have become a playwright. However, in the case of the Wilma's funny, though cluttered production of Schmucks, the line "don't quit your day job" applies.

The premise of Schmucks— like Smiles's Ying Tong last year—leads me to think he really wants a job as "imaginary biographer": Both plays cast historical figures in fictional situations. At least in Schmucks, Smiles gives us a pair of decent comics, pitting the contrasting style of Lenny Bruce (Erik Jensen) against that of Groucho Marx (Ron Crawford) during a fictional meeting in a diner during New York City's 1965 blackout. (Don't worry— Bill Clarke's superb set includes a generator.) Caught between them is the talentless would-be comedian Joe Klein (Ian Alda), who has snagged a gig on the Ed Sullivan show and needs advice on how to improve his routine.

For about 20 minutes, the play offers some semblance of coherence— not to mention consistent humor— as a dissertation on comedy. Klein mimics Woody Allen as he self-deprecates his way through his routine, which Bruce and Groucho then improvise upon in their own styles, vying for Klein's allegiance. Bruce insults Groucho's cigar by calling props "the last refuge of the desperate," to which Groucho scathingly replies, "You take your penis out on stage— what's that say about you?"

But from there, the play's structure deteriorates quickly, as the two comics debate the function of the comic in a free society. Groucho believes a comedian should cheer audiences up through bad times (while getting rich in the process); Bruce counters that a comic should derive his humor from a grudge against society and "make them laugh at their own bigotry and hypocrisy until they're sick."

Meanwhile, Smiles lets the conversation ramble into justifications of prostitution (Caitlin Clouthier as Mary the waitress), discussions about what motivates a person to make others laugh, and the psychological scarring that encouraged comedy as a career. As in Ying Tong, Smiles puts the suffering on stage: Bruce crumbles over a broken heroin needle, and Groucho's guilt forces him to hallucinate the appearance of Harpo (Gary Littman) during a tremendously entertaining clown bit.

Conversation you wouldn't pay to overhear

The actors nail the schtick of their respective characters, and Jensen delivers a nearly unbearable portrayal of self-torture. But Smiles's script pedantically veers through the subject matter in amateurish transitions, which Jiri Zizka's direction can't completely smooth over. One character interrupts another to re-motivate the plot by saying, "Can we get back to what I want to talk about?" Real people at a diner might talk like this, but no one expects to pay money to listen in on their conversations, and not even the most committed naturalist puts rough dialogue on the stage and calls it art.

These meandering, bloated conversations lose sight of Bruce's struggle for free expression, as well as why he invited Groucho to the diner in the first place. Having been arrested 19 times for violating obscenity laws, Lenny needs Groucho to defend him in court. Here finally, buried underneath the humor and wandering conversations, lies a message: the right of one man to speak freely in an open society.

After the Wilma's recent Rock and Roll— which dealt with the struggles of Czech dissidents under a totalitarian regime—Bruce's complaints felt like a bit of a stretch, especially when Smiles dilutes Bruce's case with ludicrous comparisons.

"They killed Jesus for talking," Bruce reminds, while also invoking Socrates— parallels that will probably inspire resentment among all but the most ardent civil libertarians. Christ fought for universal brotherhood, Socrates for greater religious freedom in a democracy; both were put to death by their respective societies. By contrast, Bruce's last arrest came about because he used the word "cocksucker" before a paying audience.

Why ABC dumped Bill Maher

By saddling Bruce's struggle with enough baggage to fill a two-hour play, Smiles trivializes the type of intolerance that still condemns comedians when, like Bruce, they veer away from humor.

For example: When Bill Maher recently appeared at Upper Darby's Tower Theatre, no one gasped at a routine littered with four letter words. But in the aftermath of 9/11, ABC cancelled Maher's show, "Politically Incorrect"— forcing it to another network—after Maher declared that the terrorists flying airplanes in WTC towers were "not cowards."

Like Maher, Bruce believed his country needed him to "expose lies, bullshit, and hypocrisy about everything from the Catholic Church, to race relations to the Vietnam War." And if Smiles hadn't cluttered up this idea, he could have elevated his play into something far greater than a fun experiment in creative biography. He could have reminded us that the boundaries of tolerance still lie in a comic's insistence on telling unspeakable truths.


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