The Reel Truth, As Time Goes By

By Gerald Clarke

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FILM

by CHRISTOPHER DURANG

Myth is not dead. It has just taken a job in the movies. Hitchcock is our Homer, Gone With the Wind is our Iliad, and, taken together, a hundred cowboy movies make up the Odyssey of the Late Show. Hollywood's images have become the myths of the 20th century, and somewhere in the depths of our unconscious are mingled words and pictures from the real and the reel: Abraham Lincoln and Raymond Massey, George Patton and George C. Scott, Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand.

Christopher Durang, 28, is a grandchild of the movie age, and his play, A History of the American Film, is a comic memorial to our movie mania. In a little over two hours, Durang recomposes America's entire cinematic history, from Orphans of the Storm to The Exorcist, including everything in between, from the screwball comedies of the '30s to Elizabeth Taylor screaming at Richard Burton in the '60s. In Durang's hands the familiar images always take an unexpected turn, however, and he proves that there is nothing so funny as the cliche of a different color.

Somewhere about 1942, for example, the play stops at Now, Voyager and the famous love scene in which Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes and hands one to Bette Davis. Durang's Henreid standin, a duplicate of double-breasted elegance, suavely does the same, but his Bette Davis is hilariously different. "I'm sorry," she says, "I don't smoke." The vision" of Henreid nervously puffing two cigarettes is a small jewel of farce.

Later, the theater swells with the sounds of As Time Goes By, and it is Casablanca's turn. But in this revisionist history, Ingrid Bergman does not ask Sam to play it again. Humphrey Bogart sends her off in her airplane telling her that the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but she only complains about that lousy music: "I haven't heard a word anyone has said."

By the end of the spring, playgoers in three cities will have had a chance to hear Durang's words. The play had its premiere at the Hartford Stage Com pany in March. A totally different pro duction, with a separate cast and an other director, was unveiled at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles last month; even while that is still running, a third, also different version will open this week at Washington's Arena Stage.

The Los Angeles production, which is reviewed here and which closes in June, is skillful and energetic. The actors, some of them temporary refugees from the movies they are parodying, assume their ever changing roles with suit able off-center fidelity. Special praise should go to Udana Power, who maintains a wide-eyed innocence through more than 50 years of changing features, and to Roger Robinson, whose five parts include both the piano player from Casablanca and Viola, the archetype of all comic maids. As Viola he is transcendentally ridiculous, bustling ever back ward and sounding alarmingly like a zither that is about to lose its strings.

Director Peter Mark Schifter maintains a fast pace. He wisely realizes that if he relaxes even momentarily, this spirited farce will fall down, like a top that has lost its spin.

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