It's common courtesy not to speak ill of the dead. Happily, a return to Gore Vidal's sturdy old political drama The Best Man stirs no nasty impulse. With a clutch of new cast members who are the equal or even better than their predecessors and James Earl Jones in fighting trim, it's an amiable night of the theater that has moved up a notch in my estimation. (Here's a link to my original review on April 2. )
This show, which opened on Broadway in March of 1960 and was set at the presidential convention in Philly that same year, shows two candidates going at each other to gain advantage in a deadlocked vote where neither one has enough support to gain their party's nomination. John Larroquette, that increasingly valuable stage actor, is the intellectual Easterner. John Stamos is the wily, good-looking, more conservative plain talker who has dug up dirt on Larroquette's nervous breakdown and wants to smear him out of the race. Stamos's role was originally played by Eric McCormack, who handled the wily subterfuge and gay subtext better. However, Stamos's take provides a clearer contrast to the classics-quoting Larroquette and brings a slight George W. Bush aura, which sets off their showdown nicely.
Cybill Shepherd has stepped in for Candice Bergen as Larroquette's estranged wife back in the saddle for the sake of the campaign. Neither women was wholly comfortable on stage though that would surely come with time. Where Bergin played the wife as thoroughly uncomfortable at every moment, Shepherd uses her cool reserve to show a woman who has made her decision and will live with it; she may not like the situation but she's up to the task. Kristin Davis has a hoot as the wife of Stamos. But the biggest contrast is Elizabeth Ashley who steps in for the great but fragile Angela Lansbury. Lansbury was shaky physically and that gave her role a grand old dame vibe, whereas Ashley gets more mileage out of the Southern belle, a flighty woman who has a steely reserve and serious points to make amidst her fluttering.
All in all, the cast changes are fun and have reinvigorated and re-imagined (modestly) a light entertainment, the sort of show Broadway turned out with ease once upon. Vidal's play deals with timeless issues of race and politics and morality and what it takes to win and whether you can sell your soul for victory and still do good. But mostly it just wants to have fun.
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