DIARY OF A MAD PLAYWRIGHT

by James Kirkwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 1989

The late Kirkwood (Hit Me With a Rainbow, 1980; Some Kind of Hero, 1975: A Chorus Line) describes life in an Iron Maiden--i.e., as a playwright on the road doing rewrites for two giant egos--and is splendidly painbinding. That a writer should ever put himself through the agonies Kirkwood brought upon himself is stupefying. But here was the situation: he came up with an inspired romp called Legends!, a nonmusical stage comedy that featured two old Hollywood stars beating each other witless for two acts--say Crawford and Davis or the de Havilland sisters. Kirkwood eventually wooed Mary Martin out of retirement at 74 and pitted her against her friend Carol Channing, two real-life legends who were ready to tear off each other's wigs in mock battle. But these grand giants had fragile egos, as if the decades of risk-taking, audience pandering, adrenalin liftoffs, and adulation had severely undermined emotional growth. They were mentally chaotic 17-year-olds. Mary was st) breakable, even after the show ended, that she couldn't remember her lines--and Carol didn't mind beating her up about it, right on stage in midperformance. This was solved for awhile by giving Mary an earplug radio into which her lines were fed by the prompter. However, Carol never knew whether Mary was listening to her or her earplug--and then Mary started getting voices of cabdrivers and dispatchers. It was a year of horror. The director, from England, went home and never returned aside from one stopover, while the two leads grew sloppier. One producer died, another came down with AIDS. The show was robbed of $140,000 by a theater-owner in Portland. Feuds laid high-voltage lines everywhere. City by city, the reviews were dreadful. Mary threatened to quit hourly and step out from under the tremendous castle of glass balanced upon her name. Things got worse. The show never broke even. It closed. And, we might add, the playwright died, after summoning up once inure the Medusa's head that had paralyzed him for a year and showing us its features. ""What I did for love!"" as Kirkwood wrote in his book for A Chorus Line.

Pub Date: July 28, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION