Hiss the Father

Lemon Sky is one of those plays about a sensitive adolescent living in a troubled family under the wrathful eye of a callous and cruel parent (usually the father) who subsequently becomes a sensitive young playwright who writes plays like Lemon Sky. When such a play comes from the heart, it can be lyrically powerful. Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie is the classic example. A first-rate drama of this kind opened off-Broadway a few weeks ago, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, and deservedly won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as the best American play of the season.

Lemon Sky is an indifferent sample of the genre, possibly because it comes mainly from Playwright Lanford Wilson's larynx. His hero, Alan, is a compulsive monologist who alternates between flip quips and narcissistic arias of self-pity. The interspersing of frequent asides and stream-of-consciousness speeches creates the undramatic effect of a man too busy commenting on his life to live it. As Alan, Christopher Walken handles these technical devices with an admirable fluidity, and makes the boy more humanly vulnerable than his words. In the hiss-the-father department, Charles Durning fashions an equally well-shaded portrait of a smarmy hypocrite, instant bully and moral ferret.

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