Rocket to the Moon by Clifford Odets in Revival

L-R: Ned Eisenberg and Marilyn Matarrese in ROCKET TO THE MOON.

In 1938, in the wake of the Great Depression and with Nazism and Fascism on the rise, the world appeared to be on the brink of collapse.  In the same year, Clifford Odets’s personal life was also imploding: his wife had filed for divorce and the Group Theatre, the collective which already had produced five of his plays, seemed to be falling apart.  And it was then that Odets wrote Rocket to the Moon, which was staged that year by the Group Theater and opened to mixed reviews at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway.

Surely it is no coincidence that the play, also set in 1938 in New York City, relates the tale of Ben Stark (Ned Eisenberg), a struggling dentist whose own marriage and career are in similar distress.  Dental patients are difficult to come by when people must choose between dental treatment and putting food on the table to feed their families.  (Dental treatment will lose out every time.)  Phil Cooper (Larry Bull), another struggling dentist who sublets space from Stark is in similar dire straits.  He is an incipient alcoholic who hasn’t paid his rent for several months, which only serves to worsen Stark’s position.

Mr. Prince (Jonathan Hadary), Stark’s wealthy and idiosyncratic father-in-law has generously offered to fund Stark’s purchase of more modern dental equipment and a move uptown to posher quarters, an offer that Stark, who always had big dreams, is inclined to accept.  But Stark’s wife, Belle (Marilyn Matarresse), who is largely estranged from her own father, is more reluctant to accept the offer.  There is a deep bond of friendship and affection between her and her husband – they have been married for a decade and endured the loss of a child together – but their relationship lacks passion and she never shared her husband’s grand ambitions.

When Stark hires Cleo Singer (Katie McClellan), a vibrant girl half his age, to be his dental assistant, the emptiness of Stark’s life is brought into sharper focus.  His practice is failing and he is stuck in a loveless marriage.  Cleo claims to have fallen in love with him and he has fallen for her.  Should he leave his wife and take a “rocket to the moon” with Cleo?  Or is he just suffering from a temporary mid-life crisis that will fade with time?

The situation is confounded even further by Mr. Prince’s falling in love with Cleo himself and by her being lusted after as well by Willy Wax (Lou Liberatore), one of Stark’s smarmier patients.  Rounding out the cast is Walter “Frenchy” Jensen (Michael Keyloun), a podiatrist from down the hall whose role is more that of the cynical outsider who is eager to comment on the world’s foibles while reluctant to commit himself.

L-R: Jonathan Hadary and Katie McClellan in ROCKET TO THE MOON.

The basic theme of Rocket to the Moon is one of “settling.”  Belle is overt about it: she is prepared to settle because “half a loaf is better than none.”  Mr. Prince, despite his wealth, is resentful about the fact that, under pressure from his own deceased wife (Belle’s mother), he settled for a business career rather than pursuing his dream of acting – which goes a long way toward explaining his encouragement of Stark to follow his own dream no matter the cost and his estrangement from his own daughter.  Cleo refuses to settle for the reality of her own impoverished life and conjures up a world of lies and fantasy instead.  And it is Stark’s personal crisis – whether or not to settle for the life he has with Belle and a middling dental practice or to give it all up to take a risky shot at greater happiness with Cleo – that is at the core of the play.

Rocket to the Moon has not been revived nearly as often as some of Odets’s better-known works including Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing and Golden Boy, despite the fact that Odets’s son, Walt, came to see it as his father’s “magnum opus” and the playwright Arthur Miller considered it to be Odets’s best play.  Fortunately that oversight is now being corrected by a wonderful revival by The Peccadillo Theater Company at Theatre at St. Clements on West 46th Street in midtown Manhattan.

In this production, Ned Eisenberg does a fine job in depicting Stark’s general ambivalence toward life, his weakness, submissiveness, and indecisiveness - but also his fundamental decency (he provides dental care for WPA workers at discount rates simply because they need it and most of his patients turn out to be family members in for free cleanings).  Katie McClellan plays her role with just the right mixture of youthful naivete and abandon while Jonathan Hadary is absolutely delightful as the quirky Mr. Prince.  But I thought that best of all was Marilyn Matarresse who managed to convey an extraordinary range of emotions – her resentment toward her father for his treatment of her mother, her ambivalent feelings toward her husband, her persistent despondency over the loss of her child, her rigidity, her stubbornness, and her underlying sense of insecurity.

Baba Brinkman in Rap Guide to Religion at Soho Playhouse

I used to think rap

was a whole lot of crap

and I didn’t wanna go

down to Soho

just to see some lame hip-hop show.

But then when I finally made a decision

to actually see A Rap Guide to Religion

at the Soho Playhouse on Vandam Street,

I found that rap had a really great beat

and I thought that the show itself was neat

And its rapper-performer especially sweet.

In fact, it totally changed my opinion

of this generation’s musical vision

and I no longer view rap with scorn and derision.

And it’s all due to one guy whose name’s Baba Brinkman -

a likable dude who’ll sure make you think, man.

A Canadian atheist rapper who’s white –

a really odd combo – but he still turned out right.

He not only performs but wrote the whole show

and there don’t seem to be anything he don’t know.

He’s a big fan of Darwin

and thinks that hisTheory of Evolution

delivers the very best solution

to why everything turns out as it does:

like why honeybees buzz

and ducklings have fuzz

and why roses have thorns

and rhinos have horns

and why you have fingers and why you have toes

and the size of your butt

and the shape of your nose…

But that isn’t all ‘cause he also explains

all sorts of stuff ‘bout our human brains,

like why it should be that we try to maintain

that suffering and pain

are somehow related to some God Above

and go hand-in-glove

with Divine Love.

And here’s the answer: it’s not teleology,

It’s just biology.

There’s no supernatural direction.

It’s all just a function of natural selection.

It’s the fittest who survive

and we all want to stay alive

and have lots of offspring to populate our hive.

And that’s just fine.

There’s no need to explain anything by intelligent design.

But Brinkman has lots more about which to rap

like God in the Gaps

(where Yahweh is hiding

or maybe it’s Zeus or even Poseiden)

and Theory of Mind and the historical value of believing

(even if it turned out to be self-deceiving).

But the show’s not a paean to atheism,

Nor an attack on believing as mere superstition.

Brinkman, in short, is no Christopher Hitchens

who spent half his life complainin’ and bitchin’

about everything wrong that he saw in religion

and he’s not like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins

who just went on talkin’ and talkin’ and talkin’

about all of the evil and harm that’s been done

by every religion under the sun.

No, that’s not Brinkman’s style, he’s not abusive

(despite his persistence

in denying God’s existence).

He’s much more inclusive

and concedes that religion (at least in the past)

served a worthwhile purpose (that may no longer last)

by strengthening the communal ties

that enabled societies to survive

and their members to thrive.

OK, here is the bottom line:

this is a show that’s really fine.

If you see it, you’ll not only learn a lot but you’ll have fun.

So don’t walk, run

down to the Soho Playhouse before it’s too late

‘cause this is a show that’s really great!