Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?

Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? is a play by Terrence McNally.

Production history

Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, on January 7, 1971. Directed by Larry Arrick, the cast featured Robert Drivas as Tommy Flowers, Barbara Damashek, James Naughton and Henry Winkler.[1] The play next was produced at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on August 11, 1971.[1]

The play opened Off-Broadway at the Eastside Playhouse on October 7, 1971 and closed on December 12 after 78 performances. It was directed by Jacques Levy and the cast featured Robert Drivas (Tommy Flowers), Kathleen Dabney (Nedda Lemon), F. Murray Abraham (The Men), Marion Paone (The Women), Wallace Rooney and Barbara Worthington. Sally Kirkland was a replacement for Kathleen Dabney.[1][2] Alan Eichler was the press representative.[3]

The play was presented at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stockbridge, Massachusetts in June - July 2, 2006.[4][5]

Overview

The play focuses on Tommy Flowers, a "social misfit", a "zany, dangerous rebel." The play takes place in the time when there were clear divisions between Youth and Age, Rules and Freedom.[6] There is a "running commentary" about the 1960s/early 1970s "free love sexual liberation."[7] Tommy's homosexuality eventually becomes obvious through the course of the play.

Critical response

Otis L. Guernsey wrote that the play was a highlight of the Off-Broadway season, about a "30 year old child of the 1950s adrift in the stormy sea of New York in the 1970s."[8]

Emmanuel Sampath Nelson (Professor of English at State University of New York College at Cortland) wrote that the play was a "disappointment" to many reviewers. John Simon (reviewing in The New York Times) is quoted as writing "the play is dragged out beyond any shape or structuring...there is a desperation about this kind of writing...bizarrness mistaking itself ...for an original voice."[7] Nelson wrote that the play "continues his [McNally] exploration of power relations."

Thomas S. Hischak (Professor of Theatre State University of New York at Cortland) wrote that the play was "one of the liveliest offerings of the off-Broadway season... a breezy, frustrating, joyous ode to aimlessness by a playwright who was coming into his own."[9]

Toby Zinman commented on the character of "Tommy": "Tommy is empty when it comes to any intelligence in dealing with life as well as any passionate respect for anything other than self-interest."[10]

gollark: The whatnow?
gollark: I see.
gollark: See, money can be exchanged for goods and services, and $70000 may allow purchase of MANY goods and services.
gollark: <@345023088045457410> Is that a car or something? Have you considered buying a lower priced product?
gollark: YouTube provides discovery (requiring huge scale and network effects) and advertising money (a troubling social problem).

References
  1. McNally, Terrence. "Script" Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? (books.google.com), Dramatists Play Service, Inc., Jan 1, 1972, ISBN 0822212412, pp.5-6
  2. Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? Internet Off-Broadway Database, accessed April 26, 2014
  3. http://www.lortel.org/Archives/Production/2940
  4. Sommer, Elyse. "A CurtainUp Berkshires Review" curtainup.com, June 29, 2006
  5. Bergman, J. Peter. Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? berkshirebrightfocus.com, July 7, 2006, accessed March 1, 2016
  6. Rossi, Carl A. "Review. "Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?" at Berkshire Theatre Festival" theatermirror.com, accessed March 1, 2016
  7. Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath "Critical Reception", Contemporary Gay American Poets and Playwrights: An A-to-Z Guide, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003, ISBN 0313322325, pp. 297-304
  8. Guernsey, Otis L. "Off-Broadway 1971-72 Season", Curtain Times: The New York Theatre, 1965-1987, Hal Leonard Corporation, 1987, ISBN 0936839244, p. 228
  9. Hischak, Thomas S. "Act One: 1969-1975", American Theatre : A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1969-2000: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1969-2000, Oxford University Press, USA, 2001, ISBN 0195352556, p. 36
  10. Zinman, Toby Silverman. "The Early Plays of Terrence McNally", Terrence McNally: A Casebook, Routledge, 2014 (first published in 1997), ISBN 1135596050, p. 33
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