Happy Hangover

By T.E. Kalem

FIFTH OF JULY by Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson possesses something that any pol might envy. He controls the wacko constituency--weirdos, crazies and freaks. Fifth of July is a redo of his The Hot l Baltimore, transported to a creaky ancestral house in Lebanon, Mo. Aunt Sally (Mary Carver), wooed and won in Wilson's romantic drama, Talley's Folly, has come back 30-odd years later to scatter her late husband's ashes. On hand are some of the walking wounded of the intoxicant wars of the '60s.

Sally's nephew Ken (Christopher Reeve), who now owns the Talley place, is perched on crutches, having lost both legs in Viet Nam. Through the marvel of commercial casting, cinema's Superman has become a homosexual cripple. Reeve gives his role the old college try--fervent amateurism. Ken's lover is Jed (Jeff Daniels), a horticulture nut. Ken's sister June (Joyce Reehling) has sedated her radicalism with bread baking, and her 13-year-old daughter (Amy Wright) is stoned on sexual voyeurism.

Apt credentials for the loony bin are also flashed by John and Gwen Landis (Jonathan Hogan and Swoosie Kurtz), who want to buy the Talley place. Gwen is a vivacious twit who used to bomb her father's banks and now blitzes audiences with her pop singing. Kurtz delivers her lines with a sly acidic malice that heralds the second coming of Eve Arden.

There are plenty of funny moments in this happy hangover of a play, but in groping for satire, Wilson achieves parody. Satire demands moral passion; Fifth of July has no fire on its breath, only a tart tongue in its cheek.

--By T.E. Kalem

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