Fear of Flopping

By R. Z. S.

RICH & FAMOUS by JOHN GUARE

The serious student dreams of forgetting test answers; the supersalesman of sample cases that will not open; the victorious general of gum balls in his muskets. In order to succeed, one must dream of failure. This new off-Broadway play by John Guare (House of Blue Leaves) is about a desperate playwright named Bing Ringling (William Atherton). He is too busy writing flops to dream. The critical notices for his latest efforts are on the order of, "The next time we read this author's name it should be on the obituary page."

The review of his life is even worse.

A Svengali-like collaborator (they are working on a musical version of the Iliad and the Odyssey) sells Bing out for a bigger name. His addled, overattentive parents come to believe he is someone else, rather than their disappointing son. An old childhood, friend, now a rich and famous movie star, even upstages Bing's suicide attempt with a dive from a Broadway billboard. The star has sold the rights to his death.

The reason that Bing is put through these torments is never quite clear and not very pertinent. Attention is constantly riveted not on what Playwright Guare has in mind but on his parade of freak characters, described as a collection of "Black People, White People, Straight People, Gay People ... The Spirit of the Entire Divine Comedy."

They are the cast of the too-too divine comedy that Ringling must wander through. Atherton hits the right note of hapless affability, but it is still only one note. All of the other roles are played by Ron Leibman and Anita Gillette, whose talents for mimicry and mime relieve a good deal of the script's bittersweet sentimentality and soft-core cynicism. Even evoked as burlesque, the brooding comic spirit of Dante is not suited to the underworld of show business, where the principal sin is usually self-delusion rather than pride.

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