Moon Under Miami
In John Guare’s exquisite comedy-drama Six Degrees of Separation, a young man pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier cons his way into the home of a starstruck art collector, proving that even upper-class sophisticates can be had if you drop the right names. Eventually “Paul Poitier,” as the poseur calls himself, is exposed–betrayed in part by his self-delusion–but only after considerable damage has been done.
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Now Guare and Remains Theatre artistic director Neel Keller have attempted an imposture almost as foolhardy as Paul Poitier’s. Called Moon Under Miami, it’s a mess masquerading as a play. Workshopped over the years at various east-coast theaters with Keller’s involvement, Guare’s toothless, laboriously vulgar spoof of congressional corruption and the society that spawns it is finally receiving its world premiere at Remains under Keller’s direction. To bankroll the project–because ready money is as reliable a friend in the arts as in politics–Remains capitalized on the celebrity of Guare and pop artist Red Grooms, who was commissioned to design the set. A special committee, headed by Museum of Contemporary Art board chairman Allen Turner and Art Institute of Chicago vice chairman Stanley Freehling, raised a reported $125,000 to “offer John Guare and Red Grooms a home for this show,” in Keller’s words. Paul Poitier never had it so good–and precious private, corporate, and foundation philanthropy has never been more misused.
Meanwhile the play lacks the qualities that distinguish Guare’s best work–the eccentric but credible characterizations and compassionate yet sardonic absurdist humor that enrich The House of Blue Leaves, Landscape of the Body, and Atlantic City as well as Six Degrees. Some sequences do convey Guare’s quirkiness–the goofy operetta courtship of Otis and Corleen, for example, and several 1930s-style song parodies, including the title tune, an homage to Alfred Newman’s classic “Moon of Manakoora” amusingly sung by three women in green mermaid gowns. But they’re few and far between, stranded in a script as swampy as the gator-infested jungle depicted in Grooms’s backdrop painting.
