Frankie is a waitress. Johnny’s a cook. After a late night at the diner where they work, they end up in bed in Frankie’s Midtown Manhattan studio apartment.
That’s where we find them in Terrence McNally’s “Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” the latest production at the Gamm Theatre. It’s a two-hander about a one-night stand that becomes something more. The question of what exactly that is is at the heart of the story. There’s a lot of push and pull, sometimes literally, between these two people.
The Gamm’s Associate Artistic Director, Rachel Walshe, directed this production. In a Zoom conversation with her this week, she told me she was drawn to the play for its realistic portrayal of the amount of work it takes for adults to allow others to be part of their lives.
“Connecting to another person, and deciding to allow them to be part of your life, and deciding to join their life, even if it’s temporarily – not even, I don’t even mean marriage – actually takes an extraordinary amount of effort,” she said.
Walshe, also an assistant professor of acting and directing at the University of Rhode Island, sees this as a stark contrast to how she hears younger people talk about relationships.
“You know, they believe in things like love at first sight, there’s a person for everybody, that you should – you shouldn’t change for anybody, right? But I think what ‘Frankie & Johnny’ reminds us is that none of that is actually true,” she said. “That relationships endure, or people connect genuinely, because people put in the work to allow themselves to be changed and to work to change another person.”
The play originally debuted off Broadway over 30 years ago. And while it explores some interesting territory about the reality of adult relationships, the play also shows its age.
One of the core elements of the writing that appears throughout the story is a common trope, which, at best, is dated and, at worst, dangerous. It’s the idea that, when a woman says “no” to something repeatedly, the guy actually really somehow knows she means yes…even when he doesn’t really know her at all. That is one of the central ideas of this play, which comes up not just once or twice, but repeatedly.
Walshe said she sees this aspect of the play as dealing with the walls we put up in relationships.
“I don’t think she means no all the time, because I think she says yes and means no, and she says no and means yes many times in the play. And he does too, right? … What does one do if your armor is strong because you’ve been hurt in the past, and there’s somebody who sees that that is armor? What happens if … that person says, ‘I want your armor down, I want your guard down. Because I know inside there, there is somebody who wants this as much as I want it,’” she said. “Are we supposed to perceive that as harm? And I don’t, I don’t agree. I think this is the complexity and maturity of relationships.”
Ultimately, Walshe says, “plays don’t have any responsibility to actualize some kind of ideals. It’s just – the only responsibility a play has is to be true, right? That’s it, is to be a true experience for us to watch and learn from. And is he complicated and creepy and intense? Sure. Is she saying yes, meaning no, and saying no and meaning yes? And there’s no, it is not my responsibility or the actors’ to say that’s right or wrong. It just is, right?”
I don’t think fictional characters need to be paragons of morality. I love messy characters, because that’s real and interesting. If there were more nuance, or if this theme of “she’s saying no but I know she means yes” came up less frequently, or if I were seeing the events unfold over the course of a few dates, it would have made more sense to me. But as it is, it came off as a tired trope that didn’t resonate with me.
That aside, actors Liliane Klein and Anthony Goes pull off some strong performances and really commit to a lot of funny and raw moments. The set was thoughtfully done, full of details that immediately let you know you’re in a studio apartment in Midtown Manhattan in the 1980s, which is where the whole thing takes place – kudos to set designer Jessica Hill Kidd. They also did something I don’t see very often on stage, which is the actual preparation, cooking and eating of food. Overall, there were a lot of sensory elements that made the setting feel real.
And fair warning: there are scenes of sexual intimacy and some nudity.
“Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” runs through Nov. 30 at The Gamm Theatre.
Want more tips on what to do this weekend in Rhode Island and the South Coast?
This week: Browse tiny artwork at the Providence Art Club, learn about the people who made Lippitt House work, and see artwork at the Narrows Center for the Arts inspired by Fall River’s history as the second-largest cotton manufacturer in the world.
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