More Talleys

By Gerald Clarke

A TALE TOLD by Lanford Wilson

Many writers have focused on a place, a time or a family. But few have been so specific--or so obsessed--as Lanford Wilson is in his saga of the Talley family of Lebanon, Mo. Talley's Folly took place on July 4, 1944, and Fifth of July opened on the same night, 33 years later. Now the third of the series, which began a three-week run off-Broadway last week, returns to Independence Day 1944, with the action of A Tale Told supposedly unfolding at the same time as that of Talley's Folly. While Matt Friedman and Sally Talley, the hero and heroine of that earlier play, are trysting down by the boat-house--unseen here, of course--the rest of the Talleys are in the big house up the hill, demonstrating as best they can that hate is as strong a bond as love.

Buddy (Timothy Shelton), one of the two Talley sons, has been granted a 72-hour leave from the Italian campaign to be with his apparently dying grandfather, the senile patriarch of the clan (Fritz Weaver). Buddy's wife Olive (Patricia Wettig) and his mother (Helen Stenborg) are busy preparing Christmas dinner--to make up for the one Buddy missed in December; and his Aunt Charlotte (Elizabeth Sturges) is sitting by herself, uttering bitter and angry comments about everyone and everything, as usual.

Though only her brother, Buddy's father (Michael Higgins), knows it, Charlotte is dying of cancer. Asleep, unheard and unseen in a bedroom is Olive and Buddy's daughter June, who will be one of the chief characters of Fifth of July along with her yet-to-be-brother Kenneth.

The Talleys exude homespun Americanism, right down to the two stars in the window, which indicate two men at war: Buddy's younger brother Timmy is a Marine fighting in the central Pacific.

Behind the cornbread and strawberry-jam fac,ade, however, is a cancer: the founder of the fortune, who cannot even control his own bodily functions, has wrapped his legacy in black shrouds of suspicion and hostility, with vicious attacks on his daughter Charlotte and her brother. Soon it becomes clear that the old man is neither dying nor senile--just mean.

Unfortunately, that is about all that A Tale Told does make clear. Talley's Folly was a slight but charming romance, a one-act waltz for two characters. Fifth of July, which is still running on Broadway, is the hilarious but moving story of the Talleys today, with Kenneth, the inheritor of that big house, coming to terms with the fact that he left both legs behind in Viet Nam. But the newest play, which should have been the first, chronologically, just meanders, with no discernible destination. A telegram announces the death of Timmy, for instance, and Timmy's ghost (David Ferry) appears onstage to explain in interminable detail how he was blown to pieces on Saipan. Shakespeare pulled the same corny trick in Hamlet, but his ghost had a purpose. Wilson's does not.

Indeed, the only thing that is obvious in this well-directed, well-acted play is that Lanford Wilson is a very talented writer. His dialogue is sharp, and his characters have color and life: he just does not know what he wants them to do and where he wants them to go. The Talleys continue to fascinate, however. Perhaps they will return to celebrate another Fourth of July. --By Gerald Clarke

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