N.Y. Sits Up, Takes Notice of ‘Film Society’

July isn’t the best month to open a serious play in New York, but Jon Robin Baitz can’t complain about the reception of his “The Film Society” last week at Second Stages.

First seen at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in 1987, this is the story of a malleable prep school teacher (Nathan Lane) who hardens into a despot as the system delivers him into the headmaster’s chair. The setting is South Africa in the early ‘70s, and the political overtones are obvious.

A bit too obvious for Variety’s Richard Hummler, who thought that Baitz had laid on his metaphor with a “heavy trowel,” with his villains too villainous and his hero lacking “a proper antagonist.”

Yet Hummler admired Baitz’s “slashingly angry, original dialogue” and his ability to create “high-voltage scenes of conflict.” In time, he predicted, Baitz “will be a major voice.”

Conversely, Frank Rich of the New York Times praised Baitz for not telling his story simplistically--for his “ability to embrace political and moral dilemmas that might easily be reduced to blacks and whites.” Baitz wasn’t Athol Fugard yet, and John Tillinger’s production was “enervated” (except for Lane), but here was “a talent to watch.”

Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press had no reservations at all. He found the play “a provocative look at the depressing metamorphosis of an ordinary man into a monster. Baitz is a strong, forceful writer, terrific at conjuring up pictures of South African life. His next work will be watched even more closely.”

Nobody mentioned--perhaps nobody realized--that “The Film Society” had already had successful productions in Los Angeles and London. Until it’s been done in New York, it hasn’t been done.

Horton Foote’s new play opens Sept. 20 at the Pittsburgh Playhouse--”The Habitation of Dragons,” another chapter in Foote’s ongoing saga of a Texas clan. This has 20 characters and is described as the biggest production in the Playhouse’s 14-year history. In contrast, Edward Albee’s new “Marriage Play,” opening Dec. 9 at the Cocoanut Grove Playhouse, has only two characters, a man and his wife. They’ll be played by Hal Linden and Rosemary Harris, with Albee directing.