Theatre in Review: Act One (Lincoln Center Theater/Vivian Beaumont Theater)

	Santino Fotana, Tony Shaloub. Photo: Joan Marcus

The first goosebump moment in James Lapine's stage adaptation of Moss Hart's memoir, Act One -- and by no means the last -- comes just before intermission. Hart, an aspiring playwright with only one ignominious failure to his credit, has, unbelievably, just shaken hands on a deal to have the great Sam Harris, partner of George M. Cohan and Irving Berlin, produce his play Once in a Lifetime, with George S. Kaufman, the leading hitmaker of the day, as coauthor and director. The stunned young man stumbles out of Harris' office and into Times Square. As he does, all the familiar electric signs from the Broadway theatres fly in, a harbinger of the glittering future he can't quite yet believe belongs to him. It's a simple, stunning gesture, and it is exactly the kind of moment we expect from a dramatized version of Act One.

And therein lies the challenge taken on by the very brave Lapine and his creative team: to create a satisfying stage version of a book that, for virtually every theatre professional and many a fan, has become a sacred text. And not just them: Act One speaks to every mixed-up and talented young person who ever dreamed of taking the big city by storm. Hart draws a harrowing picture of a childhood marked by poverty and presided over by ineffectual parents. He brilliantly evokes the magical effect his early theatre-going experiences had for him. And his account of Once in a Lifetime's rocky road to Broadway is a real nail-biter, building to a cliffhanger ending in which the play is finally fixed only four days before it opens in New York.

It's all the more ironic, then, that a play that is in large part about the fixing of a play has obvious construction issues of its own. Simply put, Act One has problems with, well, Act I. The second act is so gripping, funny, and emotionally binding, however, that it's easy to overlook the fact that you have to traverse acres of exposition to get there. Helping us through these passages is a stageful of appealing actors and one of the most stunning production designs of the season.

The first act of Act One is all exposition all the time, cramming 16 years of Hart's life into 90 minutes. Lapine gives us the Hart family, immigrants from England, packed into a Bronx tenement, sharing space with roomers for extra income. We see young Moss toiling at a grueling and odiferous job for a furrier; landing an office job for a two-bit producer of touring companies; and gaining experience as a tummler at a Catskills resort, throwing together revues starring the supremely untalented clientele. He forms fast friendships with other theatrical tyros, including Dore Schary, who will one day run MGM, and Edward Chodorov, who himself will one day become a hit Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter. And we experience Moss' baptism of fire as a playwright, as the author of a Western potboiler, The Beloved Bandit -- with that title, how good could it be? -- which falls apart during its Rochester tryout.

This last episode is populated by such colorful, if long-forgotten, Broadway characters as the director Priestly Morrison and the producer Mrs. Henry B. Harris, but, like everything else in the first half of Act One, they tend to pass by in a blur, exiting before we have had time to make their acquaintance. There are simply too many characters and situations to be accounted for, and much of the audience's time is spent watching a series of entrances and exits. Lapine does take care to establish young Moss' relationship with his Aunt Kate, the most influential adult of his childhood. His mother's sister, she appears to have simply chosen to ignore her threadbare surroundings, carefully tending her money, contributing little or nothing to the family, and generally swanning around their crowded tenement like a minor Windsor on a tour of a Commonwealth nation. Naturally, she irritated the adults around her, but to Moss she was a godsend; every Thursday, he cut class to join her at an uptown theatre for a matinee. "The theatre is not so much a profession as a disease," the older, wiser Hart comments to us, and we see Aunt Kate exposing him to the virus from the upper reaches of the balcony.

But it isn't until after the intermission that Act One becomes the delirious tale of theatrical triumph snatched from the jaws of defeat that has gripped the imaginations of readers for decades. The young, ebullient, eager-to-please Hart makes a strange collaborator for the middle-aged Kaufman, with his icy manner and repertoire of obsessive-compulsive tics. (If an interloper actually manages to shake his hand, Kaufman hightails it to the restroom at the first opportunity for a good wash. Any display of emotion sends him heading for the nearest exit.) Kaufman is a genius at taking a line, or an entire act, apart and putting back together, and, ironically, Moss blossoms under the older man's critical gaze.

Then the terrors really begin. A pair of tryouts in Atlantic City and Brighton Beach reveal that Once in a Lifetime is not Broadway-ready. A summer of intensive work follows, with Moss moving into Kaufman's Upper East Side townhouse to work day and night. Meanwhile, the pressure builds. Beatrice, Kaufman's wife, throws a cocktail party, introducing the terrified Moss to the likes of Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, and Alexander Woollcott. Moss' mother, convinced her son is already a success, starts spending money the family doesn't have. And when the Philadelphia engagement reveals a play that is, in Kaufman's words, only "70% there," the moment comes for a desperate, relentless Moss to convince his flagging colleagues that a solution is still possible, coming up with a new third act that involves junking the $20,000 set (in Depression dollars) that had just been added to the production.

It helps enormously that Act One is in the hands of three superb performers. Tony Shalhoub, looking sleek and well-tailored, is the older Hart, looking back on his youth with a glint of amusement in his eye, and he also plays his father, Barnett, baffled by the pace of life in America. But the actor really shines as Kaufman, his face framed in round, thick spectacles, his thinning hair teased up into the remains of a pompadour, his voice transformed into a kind of low-pitched whine, and his physical stance designed to avoid any human contact. Watching him prepare to work on a script is a play in itself: He carefully sharpens a couple of pencils, clears his throat a few times, and, after a little nervous hesitation, diagnoses the trouble with the scene under consideration. He continues, mumbling along as he reads, then, seizing a pencil, crosses out two whole pages, laughing as he does it.

Shalhoub's is not the only hat trick in Act One. Andrea Martin is charming as Aunt Kate, who is batty, yet serenely confident in every circumstance, until Barnett throws her out, and we feel the terror of her dispossession. In another deeply touching moment, the adult Moss takes Kate to the theatre, stopping her as she prepares to climb to the balcony, informing her that they are now the kind of people who sit in orchestra seats. She is a riot as Frieda Fishbein, Moss' agent, especially when informing the producer, Sam Harris, that there are only two things to do in Philadelphia -- visit the Liberty Bell and get drunk -- and she isn't a history fan. And she cuts a thoroughly glamorous figure as Beatrice Kaufman, who takes Moss under her wing and is stung to discover that he can fight back when she starts to lose faith in his play.

The lively supporting cast offers any number of tasty moments. Mimi Lieber is a sweet presence as Moss' downtrodden mother. Will LeBow amuses both as Moss' penny-pinching first producer and as a nakedly hostile Woollcott, who endures cocktail parties by reading a book. Chuck Cooper is convincing both as the actor Charles Gilpin, famous for The Emperor Jones, and a society-loving Langston Hughes. Bob Stillman plays with a fine period flavor as both Priestly Morrison and Sam Harris. Matthew Saldivar hams it up amusingly as the Irish tenor star of The Beloved Bandit. Amy Warren is a suitably wisecracking Dorothy Parker. And Bill Army, Will Brill, and Steven Kaplan make a fine Greek chorus as Moss' friends.

It all unfolds on Beowulf Boritt's stunning tri-level turntable set, which whirls by, revealing a series of tenements, townhouses, hotel rooms, and theatre interiors. It is an astonishingly detailed creation that, in its constant movement, evokes the headlong nature of Moss' great theatrical adventure. It is lit with loving detail and absolutely no fussiness by Ken Billington. Jane Greenwood's costumes are impeccable period creations, authentic down to the last button. Dan Moses Schreier's complex sound design melds a wide variety of effects -- including applause, voiceovers, and rain and thunder -- to add an extra dimension to the play's narrative power. This is the kind of production that only Lincoln Center Theater can manage these days, and everything about it is first-class.

There's one more instance where a theatre marquee appears to great effect. It is the New York opening of Once in a Lifetime, and left alone for a moment, Moss watches as the Music Box Theatre sign flies in, bearing the name of the play and both authors, and he quietly realizes that the dream that has driven him all his life is suddenly, finally within his grasp. By then it is clear that, for all their difficulty in getting there, Lapine and company have delivered an Act One that is worthy of its source material. You might see many a more seamless evening of theatre this season, but I very much doubt you will find one so filled with love.--David Barbour