Ever since I saw him as the blue furry alien transformed into piano playing Mr Right as Mac in “Earth Girls are Easy” I have adored Jeff Goldblum. Maybe it’s because he is so dark and tall, maybe because he always plays an intellectual, super smart but sensitive and geeky kind of guy (how many dinosaur films have I watched to see him?). He’s not a conventional film star heart throb, but I like him. And I was sorely disappointed when I couldn’t get tickets to see him in “Speed the Plow” at the Old Vic a couple of years ago.
Anyway, as a birthday treat my best mate bought tickets for us to go and see him at the Vaudeville Theatre in the Strand in 1970 play by Neil Simon called “Prisoner of Second Avenue”. The fact that the critics had universally panned the production did not deter us. She had promised me seats so close to the front that I would be almost close enough to reach and touch him….
So. After a hard day in front of the PC we travelled up to London. Dodging through the crowds in Covent Garden we sought an air conditioned bolt hole and drank perfect mojitos (thank you bar staff at Henry’s – we now know how to produce them ourselves!).
In a nutshell, the story is as follows: Living in a high rise apartment with noisy neighbours in a hot and smelly New York, Mel can’t sleep. His patient wife tries to help him but he is distraught and won’t say why – but he is raging at the unfairness of life and the worrying prospect of losing his job. A few days later, their apartment is burgled and he admits that he has been made redundant. He loses control and has a nervous breakdown. His wife gets a job and is busy, he stays at home while seeing a doctor regularly. His brother and sisters visit to offer (financial) help. Over time, Mel starts to get better but then his wife loses her job and appears to lose control and go through a similar breakdown to Mel’s – raging at the lack of water and electricity.
It wasn’t the best play that I have seen but it was OK. Jeff was a comic genius as he portrayed with passion and real feeling the sort of frustration that can hit all of us when we wonder why we work so hard in order to buy a lot of things that we really don’t need. And why life continues to deal us bad luck and hardship. His wife constantly refers to the idea of breaking out of the rat race and moving to the country to do something different. There were some great lines (“You are making yourself old working so hard to get me better, by the time I am recovered I will be too young for you” and “How can a company in a huge great building with marble and gargoyles go bust?”). There were numerous laugh out loud moments – especially in the second half.
Did I like it more because I was finally seeing Mr Goldblum in the flesh? Probably. But I really did empathise with both the main characters, enjoyed the jokes, felt touched by the portrayed rawness of the despair at a world gone mad and want to see what happened as the play progressed. It got better as the evening wore on. And the themes of this 1970 play seemed just as relevant today.
Sadly, my mate thought it was awful. She would have cut and run before the second half. But she dutifully sat by me and watched as much as she could during the second half. But the “dreadful relative” scene was really too much for her and she waited outside for me during the final 20 minutes.
