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Chelsea: arts&lifestyles THEATER Stars of ‘Deuce’ mesmerize despite trite verbal volleys
Joan Marcus By Scott Harrah Watching Angela Lansbury talk about her illustrious career for 90 minutes would have been far more interesting than this non-play about two fictional former women’s tennis pros. Lansbury — the star of such theatrical classics as “Mame,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Gypsy” — hasn’t been on the stage in 25 years, so it is rather disappointing to see her and fellow stage veteran Marian Seldes doing a show as empty and flimsy as this. “Deuce,” written by the prolific Terrence McNally, was supposed to be a showcase for these two grand dames of the theater, and in some respects it is. Both Lansbury and Seldes are first-rate, and they transcend the non-material here. However, there simply is not much of a show or any real drama. The 81-year-old Lansbury plays Leona Mullen and 78-year-old Seldes portrays Midge Barker, two tennis luminaries who retired in 1976 and have not seen each other in a decade. In the show, they are supposed to be watching a match at the U.S. Open as honorary guests, and they spend much of the time reminiscing about their glory days. The trouble is, McNally gives them such hackneyed dialogue that the entire show ends up being a string of clichés about aging, such as life “goes too fast.” As women that broke ground in the tennis world, these characters ought to have more insightful things to say about their sport and life itself, but McNally gives them nothing more than verbal platitudes with which to work. Regardless of how trite the play gets, Lansbury and Seldes are consistently mesmerizing. There were some absurd reports in the gossip columns that the actresses forgot a few lines in previews, but the two are such professionals here that those reports were obviously unfounded rumors. Lansbury is constantly animated, gesturing wildly and delivering her lines with verve despite their lack of nuance. Seldes matches Lansbury with equal skill and dramatic timing. They chat about how tennis has changed and become much more commercial — athletes did not wear logo-emblazoned uniforms in Leona and Midge’s days. They also gossip about mundane things such as the sex lives of other former pros, who was a lesbian, who wasn’t, their late husbands, and so on. Surely the lives of tennis stars of yesteryear were more interesting than this. There a few additional characters that unsuccessfully try to add some depth to the show. Michael Mulherin plays an admirer who approaches the two, and two journalists (Brian Haley and Joanna P. Adler) fill in the audience on Leona and Midge’s colorful past. The show’s few attempts at humor verge on the vulgar — McNally throws in some pointless lines involving the “f” and “c” word as if it is somehow amusing to see two older women swearing like sailors. However, unlike the bawdy, old-lady sex chatter in “The Golden Girls,” McNally’s dialogue is simply not funny, and this is a bit shocking considering that he penned such deft dramedies as “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” and “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” What is interesting to note is the fact that Seldes did one of her best stage roles only two years ago in another McNally play, “Dedication, or the Stuff of Dreams,” in which she played an elderly theater owner dying of cancer. Lansbury, who is better known to younger audiences as the iconic mystery writer Jessica Fletcher on TV’s “Murder, She Wrote,” has mostly been seen in TV movies the past few years, but she won four Tony awards and had a thriving theatrical career on both sides of the Atlantic long before she ruled the television airwaves. The only reason for seeing “Deuce” is the chance to watch these two mega-legends live, but it is a shame that Lansbury and Seldes had to pair up for such a vapid vehicle.
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DEUCE
