AT THE CENTER OF "THE NAKED Truth," Paul Rudnick's satiric new comedy at the WPA Theater, stands the commanding figure of Nan Bemiss, an upper-middle-class New York society woman. You know the type: Dina Merrill has played her in movies, sometimes for laughs, sometimes as the ferocious other woman. Nan is Greenwich born, Republican bred, an indefatigable doer of good works and perfectly groomed. She looks so bright, shiny and hard that she seems not only to have been washed and set at Elizabeth Arden's, but also glazed like a ham.
As played by Mary Beth Peil with strategically funny abandon, her forehead often furrowed, Nan is the sympathetic, questing innocent in "The Naked Truth." She's also a most unlikely equivalent to the youngish title character in "Jeffrey," Mr. Rudnick's award-winning hit comedy about gay romance in the time of AIDS. Both Nan and Jeffrey yearn for sexual freedom though she, being older and far prissier, doesn't even know what she's missing, at least at first.
The Naked Truth" is the tale of Nan's rocky road to liberation, which begins when she voyages south from the Upper East Side to the SoHo loft of Manhattan's newest, critically acclaimed, outrageous gay photographer, Alex DelFlavio (Victor Slezak). Her mission: to persuade Alex to voluntarily withdraw three sexually explicit photographs from the show that the museum, of which she is a board member, is giving his work.
The stubborn Alex not only refuses but also attacks Nan's values, the way she denies her own sexuality and the mess she has made of her life. Among other things, her husband, Pete (John Cunningham), about to be nominated to head the Republican Party's Presidential ticket, has been openly having an affair with Lynette Marshall (Debra Messing), Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month. Before the first act ends, Alex has somehow persuaded Nan to pose for one of his signature works without her Chanel suit, without even her Jourdan shoes. Not nude, he tells her, but naked.
Mr. Rudnick said in these pages last week that he had been inspired to write "The Naked Truth" after attending an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's controversial photographs, but that he didn't consider censorship the central issue of the play. He's right. Censorship is as peripheral to "The Naked Truth" as Alex DelFlavio, the offending photographer, a sketchily defined, supporting character whose principal function is to speak the author's message. Though a large DelFlavio photograph of an erect black penis dominates much of the play, Mr. Rudnick's message is right out of a supermarket magazine: Get in touch with your feelings.
But there's no need to worry about pious messages in "The Naked Truth." Language, the play's demonstrated subtext, is far more entertaining. Mr. Rudnick is not concerned here with the way language gives form to thought and order to the mind. He's interested in the power with which society invests words to shock, wound, cover up, deny and sexually excite. In its own raffish way, "The Naked Truth" is as obsessed with words as David Ives's "All in the Timing."
Wandering in and out of the second act of "The Naked Truth," set in the museum where Alex's chichi opening-night party is in progress, is one of Mr. Rudnick's more rudely funny running gags: Sister Mary Loyola (Cynthia Darlow), an afflicted nun who can't resist uttering short, furious bursts of obscene words. After each eruption she glances defensively toward heaven as if expecting a thunderbolt. Cassandra (Valarie Pettiford), who is Alex's assistant and a self-described black lesbian ex-convict, also has a language hang-up. She goes berserk when she hears bad French, even Nan's modest "mon Dieu."
Sissy (J. Smith-Cameron), Nan's married daughter and a mini-version of her mother (only worse), is introduced in Act I speaking a long, breathless, very funny monologue composed of cliches culled from fashion magazines, art criticism and psychoanalysis, punctuated by her own apercus. Her enthusiastic response to Alex's loft: "It's raw, it's industrial, it's a space, it's about freedom, it's creative, it's about zoning." Sissy has an uncanny gift for the punishing anticlimax. Yet it's Nan who has the biggest problem with words. Early in the play she avoids thinking about the meaning of "dildo" by describing it as "a rather sweet word" that sounds like "some sort of sea chantey." Once Nan is able both to speak the forbidden words and to embrace their meanings without flinching, she is home free.
Unlike "Jeffrey," which moved easily among a number of locations, "The Naked Truth" must deal with the conventions of a play firmly rooted in two realistic sets, Alex's loft and the museum. There should be reasons for characters to enter, exit or hide to avoid meeting other people. The first act works well, but the second act threatens to become endless. This is in part because neither Mr. Rudnick nor the director, Christopher Ashley (who also directed "Jeffrey"), realizes the full farcical potential of having eight characters coming and going at what should be breakneck speed.
"THE NAKED TRUTH" muddles along in Act II and presents a couple of not very convincing character transformations in order to come to a conclusion. Yet Mr. Rudnick's gift for explosively funny one-, two- and three-liners keeps the audience alert and mostly happy. Even if the central liaison seems downright retro, being so plainly heterosexual, the play's sensibility is hip, urbane and proudly gay.
Ms. Peil is splendid in the central role. Ms. Smith-Cameron is almost as funny as the sincerely bubble-headed Sissy. In Act II James Youmans, the designer, accomplishes something of a miracle by being able to suggest a corner of what seems to be the Guggenheim Museum on the small, deep stage of the WPA Theater. 'Hysterical Blindness'
In "Hysterical Blindness," now at the Vandam Theater, Leslie Jordan, the show's writer and star, blithely recalls his eccentric childhood in Tennessee and his subsequent career in Hollywood, where, it seems, he was often cast as an elf. Though bigger than a Munchkin, Mr. Jordan is a small man of indeterminate age, with a pronounced cowlick and an enormous ambition to please. According to the program, he has appeared in "over 60 national television commercials" and "in every situation comedy known to man," including the current "Hearts Afire." I don't remember seeing him before, but it would be difficult to forget him after "Hysterical Blindness."
Though there are six other performers on the stage, it's Mr. Jordan's show from painless beginning to end: a series of comic and sometimes bittersweet monologues, some of which are acted out, along with songs (gospel and country-and-western) and a little dancing. The subject: growing up mother-fixated, gay and Baptist in a society in which men are supposed to act like men and not go around sniffing the perfume of sweet williams.
The three men and three women who back up Mr. Jordan play various characters in the star's life and, more important, function as a singing chorus. They are good. Joe Patrick Ward's original score is lively, but nothing can beat the old favorite "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," which provides the show with its most rousing moments. Mr. Jordan's mother, whom he professes to love and hate, remains offstage. Among other passing complaints, she suffers from hysterical blindness, caused by having a son who looks "like a trashy, effeminate hoodlum" in his beloved leather jacket.
Mr. Jordan's barbs are never very sharp or mean. His dream of getting even with his mother is to stand in front of her wearing white shoes after Labor Day. He seems to be sincere, well meaning and possibly more gifted as a performer than as a book writer. Carolyne Barry directed the show and Glenn Gordon provides the piano accompaniment. 'Milk And Honey'
The American Jewish Theater's three-sided stage must be one of the most difficult spaces in New York in which to put on any play, much less a revival of "Milk and Honey," Jerry Herman's first (1961) Broadway musical. In this particular production, not only are all entrances and exits made through the audience but some scenes are played in the aisles, always beyond the sightlines of some other part of the house. The central playing area itself is so limited that many members of the audience are within touching distance of the actors a lot of the time. Difficult conditions for performers who are often singing their hearts out.
It would be nice to report that the director, Richard Sabellico, and the actors overcome all these obstacles and that "Milk and Honey" is a triumph. They don't and it isn't.
This revival makes thoroughly professional work look as if it were being seen in an audition. There are some attractive songs ("Shalom," "Milk and Honey," "That Was Yesterday") by the composer-lyricist who went on to write the scores for "Hello, Dolly!" "Mame" and "La Cage aux Folles." The Don Appell book, mainly about a middle-aged American widow who finds love during a two-week tour of Israel, is serviceable but most interesting as an example of innocent Broadway show-making of an earlier era.
All of the refreshingly unmiked voices are good, particularly those of Spiro Malas (who was the lead in the recent Broadway revival of "The Most Happy Fella"), Jeanne Lehmanand Michael Park. Giving performances of real sensitivity are two of the younger cast members, Katy Selverstone and Lori Wilner.
It's time that somebody found the American Jewish Theater a base less ostentatiously threadbare.
Correction: July 24, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
The Sunday View column on the theater page on June 26, reviewing the American Jewish Theater revival of the musical "Milk and Honey," misidentified an actor. James Barbour, who had left the show, returned before it was reviewed; his replacement, Michael Park, did not perform. The Sunday View column on the theater page on June 26, reviewing the American Jewish Theater revival of the musical "Milk and Honey," misidentified an actor. James Bar bour, who had left the show, returned before it was reviewed; his replace ment, Michael Park, did not perform.
