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Time Out
London 28 November - 4 December 1980 Nathanael West—who was killed in a car crash on his way to Scott Fitzgerald’s funeral, which must say something about life imitating art—was one of the first to pin the American Dream firmly onto the nightmare map of hell, ‘Miss Lonelyhearts’ (Gate Theatre), perhaps his most bitter satire on New World materialism, traces the terminal career of a newspaper writer who takes on the Lonely Hearts column only to become himself one of the walking wounded he’s supposed to succour. To be sick about it (it’s the only way to be) Miss Lonelyhearts soon finds that beneath its hard-boiled exterior, America is no yolk. Lou Stein’s adaptation is both wisecracking and grotesque, but blunts the vicious satire and, for the first half, leaves the stage rather empty of action. Nevertheless, it boasts two fine performances from Colin Bruce as Miss Lonelyhearts with a Christ complex and, particularly, Joe Praml as the cynical, busybody sub-editor every reporter wishes would get snapped up by a rival rag. Sandy Craig INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE The London Stage By Sheridan Morley At the tiny Gate Theatre above the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill, Lou Stein has a dramatization of Nathanael West’s classic novella “Miss Lonelyhearts.” Seen now, 50 years after first publication, on a stage maybe 12 feet square, playing to a capacity audience of about 30, the story retains a terrible kind of relevance. As the reporter assigned suddenly to be his paper’s resident guru, Colin Bruce has precisely the right air of “Front Page” cynicism tempered with a sudden, awful realization that he is all his readers have, and that if they believe in his then so must he. West’s series of brief and chilly fables for our time convert naturally into blackout sketches, and Stein (who also directs) has left great chucks of the prose intact by the relatively simple device of an onstage narrator. It is a world of gray skies rubbed with soiled erasures, of kites with broken spines, peopled by physical, mental and spiritual cripples still waiting for the iceman, and the tacky surroundings of a West London pub are almost too perfect. Stein is doing some valuable work there in the preservation of American literary drama (last year he did “Winterset”), but “Miss Lonelyhearts” is his greatest success to date, not least because of Joe Praml as the dread features editor Shrike and Elizabeth Richardson as the editor’s formidable wife. THE GUARDIAN Friday, November 28, 1980 This Stein guy has hired some good thesps for the night and they don’t monkey around: I dig this Colin Bruce who plays the sob-sister real edgy and Joe Praml who gives the features editor some class and I am nowise indifferent to one Elizabeth Richardson who is a late entry but who gives this features editor’s wife lotsa style. Michael Billington |
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The Stage Established 1880 Editor: PETER HEPPLE THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1980 West adaptation packed with human incident GATE THEATRE CLUB Miss Lonelyhearts STEPPING IN where even handsomely subsidized theatres would fear to tread, the Gate Theatre Club is presenting Lou Stein’s adaptation of “Miss Lonelyhearts” - no easy task because Nathanael West’s novella is crammed with incident and has a messianic theme which might be thought too overpowering for the confines of the Fringe. But once again this tiny theatre proves its point, not only that American plays and novels yield individual riches but that with ingenuity most difficulties can be overcome. For instance, designer Wallace Heim was clearly not daunted by his task of conveying the atmosphere of an apartment, a bar, a newspaper office and even the wide open spaces, on a stage area smaller than the average kitchen. And Lou Stein, who also directs, has quite brilliantly marshalled the differing stories of the unfortunates who beg for help from the agony columnist, so that they build up to a climax which is deliberately equated with the Crucifixion, as Miss Lonelyhearts dies with the arrows and miseries of the world upon his inadequate shoulders. Written in 1933, “Miss Lonelyhearts” is resolutely of its time, with the shadows of the Depression in the background. Without being political, West depicted the American Dream turning sour in bizarre, almost grotesque terms, and Colin Bruce expertly shows the increasing torture of a man who took his job for a laugh but quickly learns that the answer to economic and emotional suffering cannot be given in a cheerful paragraph in a newspaper. Others who shine in a well-balanced cast are Joe Praml as Lonelyhearts’ tough, cynical boss, John Abbot in an outstanding performance as the crippled meter-reader whose physical agonies are matched by the sexual traumas of his fat wife (Barbara Rosenblat), Eva Lohman as Lonelyhearts’ helpless girlfriend and Alan Barker, who brings a clear-headed incisiveness to the role of the narrator and makes him a character in his own right. Peter Hepple |