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The Tavern
by George M. Cohan
DIRECTED BY GREGORY SALATA
Saturday, May 16 @ 2:00 and 7:30
Sunday, May 17 @ 2:00
Monday, May 18 @ 7:30
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| OVERVIEW |
On a dark and stormy night in a lonely tavern in the early 1800s, there gathers a peculiar group of people ? the proprietor and his household, a strange itinerant woman, the Governor and his family, and a mysterious vagabond. When it is revealed that a thief may be on the loose, suspicions abound and nobody is what they seem. The vagabond, one of Cohan?s most famous roles, seems to know all the answers, for a quite unexpected reason. Refashioned from an earnest play by Cora Dick Gantt, Cohan delivers a spot-on parody of the classic dark house melodrama.
?Laughter treads upon the heels of old fashioned thrills.? Chicago Daily Tribune
?A novel and uncommonly amusing entertainment.? Boston Daily Globe |
| CAST/CREW |
JAMES PRENDERGAST+
Lamson, the Governor
JOHN PLUMPIS+
The Sheriff
NORA CHESTER+
Mrs. Lamson
E. Sara Barnes
Production Stage Manager
Amir Khosrowpour+
Original Music by
+TACT Company Member
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| DRAMATURGY |
When The Tavern first premiered in 1920, it was billed by producer George M. Cohan as ?The Cora Dick Gantt Play,? and many who saw the first production mistakenly assumed this meant the play was by Ms. Gantt. Perceptive audiences, however, should have been clued that something was up, particularly since Cohan?s own name was in a font five times the size of Gantt?s credit in the original playbill. When Gantt sat bewildered through the first night of the play, she reportedly recognized one line of some eight words as identical to the script she had written. The story began in 1920 when George M. Cohan, the most popular actor/producer of his era, came across a manuscript called The Choice of a Superman. According to The Boston Daily Globe, the Cora Dick Gantt script was ?a profound psychological sex study in which the principal character commits murder in the first act and then with his immense wealth buys up everybody in the cast to keep the dark deed a secret.? Ms. Gantt, a stenographer for the Y.M.C.A. in her early-40?s, had sent the manuscript unsolicited to Broadway producer Arthur Hopkins. Hopkins rejected the script, but found it an incredibly bizarre and offbeat piece of writing unlike any he had ever read before, odd enough that he thought Cohan might get a laugh out of it. Cohan got much more ? The Tavern became one of his most successful plays, both as a playwright and as an actor.
At the point he received the script, Cohan?s career was at a crossroads. Born in 1878, Cohan grew up in the theater with a family variety act called the Four Cohans. Beginning in obscurity and rising to stardom, Cohan graduated to starring roles through a combination of natural talent and backbreaking work. More than an actor, singer, and dancer, he became a playwright, producer, and composer - a Renaissance man for WWI-era Broadway. Cohan is best remembered today for composing numerous patriotic songs that dominated Tin Pan Alley, such as ?You?re a Grand Old Flag,? ?Yankee Doodle Boy,? ?Give My Regards to Broadway,? and the rousing war anthem ?Over There.? Cohan and his family claimed he was born on the 4th of July, questionable since his birth certificate reads the 3rd of July, but his promoted self-image as America?s child was the vehicle that drove Cohan to stardom. Aside from establishing the prototype for the modern American musical, Cohan also had a keen interest in straight plays, especially farce and comedy. When he received the script for The Choice of a Superman in 1919, however, his theatrical life was in dire trouble.
Cohan had a melodramatic flair for announcing his retirement from the theater in grand fashion, then announcing his grand return a few weeks later, a trick he pulled multiple times. The latest fiasco was more serious, however, a brutal war with Actor?s Equity which Cohan was destined to lose. As an actor-producer who prided himself on treating his employees well, Cohan held deep antipathy for the concept of a union that would have the gall to tell him what to do. In disgust, Cohan refused to join the union and sided with the producers, criticizing them when they eventually caved in to Equity demands. For the rest of his life, Cohan refused to join Equity, although he often employed Equity actors. Upset and disgruntled, Cohan briefly considered moving to London to produce theater outside of Equity?s line of fire. Yet after reading The Choice of a Superman, Cohan grew curiously obsessed with the play. He felt the script had a distinctive quality that he could not quite put his finger on (Cohan referred to it as ?the god-damnedest play I?ve ever read in my life?). Especially enamored with the character of the Vagabond, Cohan was unable to restrain himself any further. He offered Gantt $40,000 for the complete rights to the play, including the right to make any revisions he deemed necessary. Gantt thought highly of her play and was opposed to alterations, but she liked $40,000 better, and Cohan suddenly found himself with a project that brought renewed vigor into his professional life, quelling his anger over the Equity organized actor?s strike.
Speculating on the elusive quality that drew Cohan to the play, Gantt?s inexperience as a writer undoubtedly led to an unpolished play with moments of amateurish brilliance, a kind of unintentional poetry. Gantt?s Vagabond is a darker character, a Mac the Knife type charmer that women swoon over, despite the fact that he murders the absurdly named Drylust, the fianc?e to Julia Dedhart. Julia is engaged to Drylust, who she despises, for his money. Eve Dedhart, Julia?s mother, is the Vagabond?s lover from twenty years ago, and she coincidentally just also happens to arrive at the tavern. At the end of the play, the Vagabond confesses the murder within hearing distance of a policeman, but the policeman refuses to arrest him after recognizing him as Stephen Allen, the richest man in the world, a title that apparently guarantees his innocence. The Vagabond gets off free and leaves the tavern to marry Violet, a prostitute he just met at the beginning of the play. The plot is clearly inane and practically impossible to make heads or tails of, and the entire thing is punctuated by Gantt?s feminist commentary on the lowly place of women in society, pushed and shoved around by men in loveless relationships. The only couple that even hints at love is Davy, the teenage son of the tavern keeper, and the tavern worker, Mary. Mary, driven out into a raging snowstorm by the Vagabond, dies for the sole purpose of providing a scapegoat for Drylust?s murder (the policeman reasons she must be the murderer because the only explanation for her running off into the snowstorm is to escape the law). Reading the plot summary, it is hardly surprising Cohan eventually threw the entire thing in the waste bin and started from the top (in Cohan?s autobiography, he amusingly refers to the play?s lobotomy as ?sprinkling the Cohan salt and pepper all over the script,? a deliberate understatement). What Cohan emerged with was inspired and one of the first of its kind ? a burlesque of a melodrama, better defined today as ?camp.?
Like a magician, Cohan had transformed a melodrama into a satire so rich it took critics and audiences by surprise. Arnold Daly, the actor Cohan approached to play the Vagabond, almost quit the play once he read the ending?s surprise revelation and realized the play was not the serious drama he thought it to be. Once the play premiered in Atlantic City to rave reviews, Daly had a change of heart and realized what Cohan had accomplished. Cohan and John Meehan, who staged the play, started subtly and worked up to the madcap conclusion, making a play that at first appeared genuine and then unraveled into organized chaos. One clever touch was the use of incongruous costumes and props. The play was seemingly set in the early 19th century, but there were bits and pieces of clothing from various times and places. One character, Virginia, enters the play wearing the clothes of a peasant, and later emerges in a gown worth several hundred dollars. Yet while Atlantic City loved it, New York was simply confused.
For whatever reason, the New York critics failed at first to recognize the play as intentional camp, at least not until the nonsensical end of the play, which they thought unsuited to the grave tone of the first act. Daly was criticized for being too old for the role, exactly the point in Cohan?s mind since the ludicrous casting was part of the fun. Only a few critics understood Cohan?s intent, foremost among them Life drama critic Robert Benchley, who entered the fray of overdramatic exuberance himself by declaring, ?There can no longer be any doubt that George M. Cohan is the greatest man in the world?And if George M. Cohan will run for President, this department will be dedicated to his service.?
Audiences came anyway, according to Cohan out of ?sheer curiosity?to see for themselves whether or not any play could possibly be as bad as the New York critics had declared this one.? If any doubt was left in people?s minds about the play, Cohan soon put it to rest by explicitly rebilling the play as a satire (he also took away Gantt?s credit). When Daly left the play to pursue other roles, Cohan himself stepped in, turning the Vagabond into one of his most celebrated roles. He performed on Broadway for over a year, and continued playing the role on tour afterwards. Recognizing a virtuoso comic role to die for, Cohan revived the play ten years later in 1930, reprising his role. Even at the end of his career, Cohan couldn?t escape The Tavern, and his last completed show was a 1940 sequel called The Return of the Vagabond, a flop that folded after seven performances and proved a disappointing coda to The Tavern?s history.
Luckily, Cohan?s legacy did not end with his last play. Diagnosed with abdominal cancer, Cohan spent the last few months of his life advising the production of Yankee Doodle Dandy, a 1942 Best Actor Academy Award winning bio-pic of Cohan starring James Cagney. Cohan was able to see the film before he died, and praised Cagney?s performance. Deeply moved to see such a loving tribute to his life and work, Cohan finally passed away on November 5, 1942. Since his death, he has been the subject of a 1968 musical, George M!, starring Joel Grey, and, in 1959, Cohan was memorialized with a bronze statue in Times Square. Deservedly honored and remembered for his contributions to musical comedy and his songwriting career, Cohan?s masterwork, The Tavern, has been largely overshadowed. It is remarkable today to see a work predicting the kind of absurdist satire normally associated with The Marx Brothers or, later, Monty Python. There are moments in The Tavern that are far ahead of their time, misunderstood if one takes the play as gravely serious. The Vagabond sometimes speaks in non-sequitors and preposterous plot revelations abound, delightful bits of silliness that make for extreme good fun. Most unusually, the Vagabond speaks in meta-fictional flights of fancy, ably commenting on the theatrical experience itself, unseen at the time outside of Shakespeare?s comments on the theater in moments such as the scene with the players in Hamlet. Since the 1920 production and the 1930 revival, The Tavern has cropped up from time to time in smaller productions, notably in a 1962 Off-Broadway show directed by Ellis Raab of the Association of Producing Artists. Since then, the most recent revival has been an experimental production at the Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles. This praised 1993 revival, featuring a wonderful ensemble cast including Lindsay Crouse and Allan Arbus, rotated the parts among the actors on any given evening. Since one would never know who would be playing which part and how the chemistry between actors would change at each performance, the production managed to capture a vitality and unpredictable kind of lunacy that captured the spirit of Cohan?s original. Now, in 2009, TACT is thrilled to bring The Tavern to a new audience and share a unique theatrical experience devised by a certifiable titanic of 20th century American entertainment.
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