Divorce Jitters

By T.E.Kalem

PAST TENSE by Jack Zeman

This is a play of sweet and sour memories: 21 years of shared experiences between Emily (Barbara Feldon) and Ralph Michaelson (Laurence Luckinbill). They exchange acid legal briefs about the past, his ten years of alcoholism, her refrigerated emotions. He is an ad man glad to land a new account; she gnawingly wants to settle an old account. Their reminiscences grow tender as they conjure up growing children and the death of a toddler son. In a sudden access of intimacy, past desire becomes present lovemaking -- yet the play's defect is that Emily and Ralph seem to be separating simply because they have run out of things to do.

Past Tense is a chameleon play that depends very much on the coloration added by the principals. Those who saw George Grizzard and Barbara Baxley perform the drama in its U.S. premiere at the Hartford Stage Company in 1977, under the direction of Paul Weidner, will be hard put to it to recognize the version that skitters across the stage of Manhattan's Circle in the Square.

Grizzard's Ralph was an eternal Lit le Boy Blue but capable of last-ditch courage; Luckinbill is simply an animated puppet dangling jerkily from unseen strings. Baxley's Emily was managerial yet vulnerable; Feldon is as crisp as a fresh ice cube and just about as cool whenever she melts. Under Weidner, pauses became gravamens of a lost chord of happiness. Theodore Mann directs Past Tense as if he were presiding over a domestic roller derby. It is a valuable reminder that the play you see is not always the one the au thor actually wrote.

-- T.E. Kalem

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