Dire Octopus

By T.E. Kalem

DEAR DADDY by Denis Cannan

Some family reunions turn into harpoon fests. That is precisely what happens in this seriocomic British play that is having its U.S. premiere under the auspices of the Philadelphia Drama Guild at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theater. All the characters are moving targets, and the barbs are fast, furious and maliciously funny. Bernard (Joseph Maher), the father and pivotal figure of the play, is in a double state of decline: carking middle age and advancing penury.

In palmier days, when Bernard was a critic and early TV celebrity, he had put aside trust funds for his three children. They have gathered to sign over their inheritance in the presence of Bernard's second wife Mary (Jo Henderson), whose once adulterous love for "Daddy" has long since guttered out. The children accuse Bernard of omnivorous selfishness, of stunting and warping their personalities, throttling them with quotations and flaying them with a rampant self-pity.

All too terribly true. What they fail to say is that unlike Caliban, Bernard is a monster of sly and surpassing charm, and, like Prospero, his magic wand is the English tongue. He ends a characteristic diatribe on the erosion of the English class structure with the observation that "soon there'll be more photographers than people to be photographed." On the effects of alimony, he reflects bitterly: "Idle men produced an age of elegance. Idle women merely multiply hairdressers."

The children, for their part, are a rather unappetizing lot. Billy (Jack Gilpin), the elder son, is a do-nothing, want-to-do-nothing who cadges alimony money from his mother Delia (Pauline Flanagan), Bernard's first wife. Delia, who is drying out in a nearby sanatorium, pops in long enough to fall off the wagon and pour a kettle of scalding rage on Bernard.

Daughter Gillian (Ellen Parker) is a venomous feminist whose speeding on the liberation freeways has brought her an abortion and several emotional casualties. As for Younger Son Charles (Robert Burns), he is something of a militant prig, spared the worst of Bernard's blight through the harmonious offices of his wife-to-be's parents. This girl, Gwen (Jessica Drake), is mocked by the family for her lack of sophistication, but she is a judgment on them in the simplicity of her goodness.

In an exemplary cast, Joseph Maher masterfully conveys the joy and the juice of the play's language. The speeches vary from the fuming arias of a John Osborne to the wryly caustic asides of a Simon Gray (Otherwise Engaged), and Maher enthralls the playgoers with the subtle nuances of a tone of voice.

--By T.E. Kalem

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