A.R. Gurney's "The Grand Manner" at Lincoln Center Theater

Tonight I attended a performance of A.R. Gurney's play, "The Grant Manner", at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center.  I was concerned that I might quickly fall asleep - not because of anything to do with the play, but because I spent the day in unaccustomed physical labor and was truly exhausted - bone tired.  I commented to my theater-going companion that if this play didn't grip me in the first few minutes, I was liable to drift asleep quickly.

But it did grip me, and I didn't fall asleep, and I had a wonderful time for the entire 90 minutes, because this is a very good play, well directed by Mark Lamos, and superbly acted by the four-member ensemble cast of Bobby Steggert, Brenda Wehle, Kate Burton and Boyd Gaines. 

The play is set in 1948, as recollected from the present day.  Bobby Steggert plays "Pete," a Buffalo native who is attending boarding school in New Hampshire.  His father wants him to become a doctor but he's rather intrigued with the theater, and manages to charm his way into getting Dad to pay for him to go to New York City to see Katharine Cornell perform in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra."  And he gets his grandmother, who evidently knows the actress from her days in Buffalo, to write a letter of introduction so he can go backstage and meet the "First Lady of the American Theatre." 

In the opening scene, that meeting takes place.  Cornell is gracious, chats briefly and signs his program, and it's over.  But it's not really over because now, looking back in retrospect, the playwright gives us his revised version of how that post-play meeting might have gone -- and we're off to the races with a cast of three interesting characters - the great Cornell herself, portrayed in "the grand manner" by Kate Burton, Cornell's manager and female lover, Gertrude Macy, played stunningly by Brenda Wehle, and Cornell's gay director and husband, Guthrie McClintic, played with all the requisite swagger and bloviation by the great Boyd Gaines.  A recipe for a stunning evening, and it is. 

I won't say any more about plot spoilers, but will comment that the tech people have done a great job on this, putting together a very convincing old fashioned Broadway green room as the setting, and the pacing is just great.  Costumes perfect for the period, and the whole thing really sings.  I enjoyed it tremendously.