Broadway bets two can draw a crowd

Three new plays explore disparate lives pushed together by music, strife, time, and friendship.

from the June 22, 2007 edition

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Broadway's final entries for the 2007 season all feature unlikely twosomes in unique relationships. "Deuce," "Lovemusik," and "110 in the Shade" spotlight pairs of people who are thrown together and share adventure, love, conflict, and the ravages of time.

Ending her 28-year hiatus from the Great White Way, the legendary Angela Lansbury comes home to the stage, to join another estimable theatre icon, Marian Seldes, in "Deuce." Playing retired women's doubles-team tennis pros, these stalwart ladies chew over past victories and defeats, while speculating on the state of today's sporting world for female athletes.

The entire endeavor unfolds as the pair witnesses a championship tennis match, where the women will be honored for their unbeaten record of accomplishments. In an age when mediocre performance on the court but striking good looks in magazine ads is a formula for success, this duo spars over the changes their former domain has undergone.

While plays built on two-person dialogues can reveal deep secrets and troubling conflicts (see "Doubt"), Terrence McNally's slight scenario offers these veterans little to work with, and their verbal volleys barely manage to reveal the basics of how they truly feel about life's Big Questions. Still, Seldes and Lansbury valiantly keep the ball aloft, using stagecraft that has earned them places in the Broadway Hall of Fame.

When German composer Kurt Weill first meets aspiring singer Lotte Lenya in "Lovemusik," she's cleaning hotel rooms for a living, and sometimes spending the night in them with various men. He's a reclusive introvert brimming with creative talent, aching to break free from the confines of his structured persona.

In yet another example of actors triumphing over underdeveloped material, Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy ignite this passionate affair with real vitality, clinging to the enigmatic qualities Weill's music always sparked.

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