Gorky and Bess

By Gerald Clarke

HANG ON TO ME by Maxim Gorky

Music by George Gershwin

Lyrics by Ira Gershwin

What do Maxim Gorky, the founder of Socialist realism, and the Gershwin brothers of Broadway and Hollywood have in common? That was the intriguing question when Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater announced that Director Peter Sellars, the theater world's newest Wunderkind, would make a musical out of Gorky's long, semipolemical play Summerfolk by adding Gershwin songs. After last week's opening of the hybrid, the answer is, alas, all too apparent: Gorky and Gershwin have nothing in common except Sellars himself.

Written in 1904, Summerfolk was prescient about the 1905 revolution in Russia, which was a dress rehearsal for the cataclysm that brought the Bolsheviks to power twelve years later. Reflecting the boredom and despair of the Russian middle class, it is Gorky's most Chekhovian work. It follows, without an obvious plot, the lives and loves of the summer folk who spend their vacations, as always, in cottages in the woods. Sellars, 26, who came to national attention with a production of The Inspector General at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard while he was still an undergraduate there, has said in interviews that Summerfolk's very sprawl and lack of discipline struck him as quintessentially American. He believed that with only a few word changes, it could be set in the U.S. of 1984. That was his first mistake. Despite such up-to-date props as Hustler magazine and barbecue aprons that say KISS THE CHEF, the play remains obdurately Russian and an unmistakable creation of its time.

Sellars' second error, which is almost admirable in its audacity, was to introduce Gershwin to Gorky. Fired last year as director of My One and Only, which brought Gershwin back to Broadway, Sellars apparently wanted to show how he would have directed Gershwin had he been allowed to. In fact, using only two pianos, he and Musical Director Craig Smith stage the songs with charm and style. It is a pleasure to hear little-known works like the title song along with old favorites like Fascinating Rhythm, which is affectingly sung by Marianne Tatum and a group of children. But with very few exceptions, George and Ira seem as uncomfortable in Gorky's play as they would be if they had been invited to the wrong party by the wrong person. In Oh, Lady Be Good!, for instance, Ira's lyrics say it is spring in the city; Gorky's text insists that it is summer in the country.

Almost too bold and imaginative, Hang On to Me offers hints of the wonderful things Sellars may yet do, but does not do in this ungainly production. Although his cast of 26 is skillful and professional, he has wildly miscast some roles. Several of his players are too old for their parts; some are not attractive enough to justify the admiration the play says they capture. The production, with one intermission, runs more than four grueling hours. It would be pleasant to report that Sellars' experiment in cultural detente is a brilliant failure. But that would be only half true.

--By Gerald Clarke