Let the Show Begin

CULTURE WARS REVISITED IN "COCKTAIL HOUR"

You can watch A.R. Gurney’s “The Cocktail hour” at Live Theatre Workshop as a witty play about embarrassing your own family. Or you can watch it as insightful commentary on the culture war that severely damaged America’s proud WASP aristocracy.

Or, for those feeling a bit more cynical, you can see “The Cocktail Hour” as a tattered remnant of a failed populist attempt to make the United States a fertile land for the dreams and dreamers of various cultural minorities.

Wikipedia quotes Gurney: "The play tries to work within the traditions of a comedy of manners, and simultaneously challenge those traditions as outmoded if not destructive.”

Less somber commentary also declares the play (especially the first act) to be hilarious. Certainly we can say the LTW production directed by Rhonda Hallquist is solid no matter which angle you prefer.

Michael Woodson as Bradley, the prototypical patrician, is particularly good. Full of bristle and faith in divine providence, Bradley finds further reassurance in his family’s daily traditional observance of the cocktail hour.

If maybe this ritual gets stretched into the cocktail-two-or-three hours, well, a person must be prepared to adapt to the unexpected.

All this drinking takes place in “the 1970s,” which isn’t much of a clue really as the early 1970s were quite a bit different from the later 1970s, when it appeared the rising tide of liberal ideology was about to become a tsunami of sexually uninhibited, chain-smoking multi-cultural drug abusers painting everything in bright colors and giving away all their material wealth.

Since then, cooler heads have prevailed.

There have been a few accommodations to various minority groups but for the most part, corporate wealth has reasserted itself, pushed the teeming riff-raff back outside and sealed up all the castle cracks so the unwashed can’t return.

Let’s say this “Cocktail Hour” is set in 1975, in upstate New York (Buffalo is the playwright’s own hometown). Bradley is a true believer in the WASP values of rewarding the rich for living responsible lives. Loyal wife Ann (Carlisle Ellis) looks at the feminist movement a little warily, preferring her comfortable life to anything more chancy.

On the other hand, daughter Nina (Shanna Brock) who grew up doing all the right things, is willing to reject her comfortable life and move to Cleveland to work with an organization that cares for the city’s canine population.

It is the somewhat older son, John (Chris Moseley), who has written a play that takes his privileged parents to task for feeling…so privileged.

From our vantage point in time, nearly 40 years later, we can see how John’s tell-all attitude is adolescent foolishness. These days, money is clearly where it’s at. Happiness lies in encouraging others to help you become more wealthy.

There are no more crossroads of helping others vs. helping oneself. Let the dreamers keep on dreaming if they want to, but the truly responsible person stays focused on the bank account. Or if you prefer: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“The Cocktail Hour” continues through June 3 at Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway Blvd., with performances at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $18, with various discounts available. For details and reservations, 520-327-4242, or visit www.livetheatreworkshop.org