FINGERNAILS BLUE AS FLOWERS by RONALD RIBMAN
LAKE OF THE WOODS by STEVE TESICH
The first of the Manhattan theaters being built in new office skyscrapers has opened, and it is a house of good omen. The American Place Theater is a triumph of spare, tactful architectural design and welcome proof of the theater's knack for survival even in periods of adversity.
Would that the two one-acters with which the house makes its debut showed similar qualities. Despite fitful laughter, both plays have a Cassandra complex. Their common theme has been constantly drummed in recent seasons—woe is me, woe is you, woe is America. Such plays are loaded with enough dolorous symbols to break the back of Melville's whale. To compound their disadvantages, both playwrights seem wedded to the fallacy that drama is some kind of nonstop talk show.
Of these two slight offerings, Ronald Ribman's is the slighter. He has kept whatever he wanted to say in Fingernails Blue as Flowers so skillfully concealed as to make it the dramatic equivalent of the perfect crime. At a guess, its Jamaica resort-hotel setting and tycoon hero stand for the sappingly corruptive effect of the affluent society on all stages and ages of U.S. man.
A more coherent imagery knits together Steve Tesich's play. Lake of the Woods is Western desert land. All that roams over it now is a cartoon of Kit Carson (Will Hussung). The hero, Winnebago (Hal Holbrook), though Indian by name, is really our old friend the emotionally parched middle-aged American. He has wandered into this wasteland thinking it a fisherman's dream. It is of course the familiar American Dream, bathetically symbolized by Winnebago's dying daughter.
Holbrook gives one of his finest performances and almost redeems the evening. Like a sourdough of the emotions, he pans the symbolic sludge for golden nuggets of truth, humor and perplexed humanity.