Holden Caulfield's Return

By T.E. Kalem

Mix the wistful, slightly sentimental humor of William Saroyan and the abrasive machine-gun ribaldry of Lenny Bruce. Add to that a mental image of Holden Caulfield as a 30-year-old dropout, and you have the basic tone and temper of Terrence McNally's Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?

Tommy, played with intense virtuosity by Robert Drivas, isn't going anywhere. He grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla., but views that town, and his family, as a deadly bog. He has become an asphalt urchin of Manhattan, where he cunningly cadges an existence off the body of a society that he believes is sick, bloated and dying.

Tommy is more likable than he sounds. He is a Chaplinesque waif who collects other waifs: an English sheep dog named Arnold that seems to be on tranquilizers; an old ham actor who may or may not have toured with Eugene O'Neill's father in The Count of Monte Cristo; a grave-eyed, peach-complexioned girl (Kathleen Dabney) who is wrestling with a cello case full of shoplifted goodies when Tommy meets her in a Bloomingdale's ladies' room. The play is episodic, rather like an urban picaresque novel. Some of the encounters and adventures are wildly hilarious; others are mutely poignant. The play's weakness lies in McNally's tendency to write by free association. Whatever pops into his head, he pops into the play. But the author of Next and Noon is correcting this defect with each succeeding work. At 31, he looks like one of the best bets among up-and-coming U.S. playwrights.

-T.E. Kalem

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.