Saturday, January 31, 2004

By Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Virginia Woolf "split the atom," said Michael Cunningham, author of "The Hours," in his Monday appearance at the Drue Heinz Lecture Series: "She showed us that the inner life is as vast as the universe."

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Timmy Cleary (Joe Delafield) talks with his mother Nettie (Carole Monferdini) in "The Subject Was Roses". Click photo for larger image.

That's what playwright Frank Gilroy attempts in "The Subject Was Roses," his 1964 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning drama, now given an honorable, careful revival at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. Not that Gilroy takes us right into the heart, mind and spirit of his characters, as Woolf does with the special interior access granted the novelist. Gilroy doesn't paint interior landscapes so much as dramatize the external interactions from which we can intuit upheavals, as a geologist reconstructs history from rock formations.

"Roses" is not without plot. It is spring, 1946, and Timmy Cleary, 21, has just returned from World War II to the Bronx apartment of his parents, Nettie and John. Through seven scenes over 2 1/2 days, we watch them try to recover their past lives and discover what is irrevocably new.

In one sense, nothing much happens. In another, the stresses they undergo are dramatic enough that they could spiral into emotional melodrama. But that's not Gilroy's way. What is most telling in "Roses" is often what's not said, and nothing so distinguishes director Rob Ruggiero's scrupulous production as how it avoids emotional exaggeration.

What does happen, though, is enough for three such ordinary people to suggest broad human experience. That said, "Roses" is still a small play, a resolutely tight-lipped family drama that flirts with tragedy but settles for something else.

And here, a pause. While it's all right for me to discuss the final scenes of "Hamlet," assuming you already know that the prince dies, critical tact requires that I not reveal what happens in a new play. But what about "Roses"? It is not often seen, but it was a famous play in its day and the movie is pretty well known. So I am going to discuss the ending. If preserving whatever small suspense the play generates is important to you, stop reading here.

	"The Subject Was Roses" Where: Pittsburgh Public Theater at O'Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Downtown. When: Through Feb. 22 . Tues. through Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 and 7 p.m.; some exceptions. Tickets: $12-$46. 412-316-1600.

The end of "Roses" is important less in plot terms than in what it says about Gilroy's achievement. Much of the play feels like a smaller version of "Death of a Salesman," since the most compelling figure is that of the father, a self-deluding man whose idea of dialogue is a string of ultimatums. We can understand his disappointments -- unable to fight in World War I, envious of those who won World War II, jealous of the greater business success of others, frustrated in his marriage. But he puts up a huge defensive wall of bluster. He's riding for a fall.

Instead, Gilroy allows him to learn something from his son. In their predictable but feeling confrontation -- the emotional heart of the play -- the play turns toward accommodation. A cease-fire is declared, if not exactly a peace.

So Gilroy doesn't reach for the cleansing tumult of tragedy. No volcano explodes in his characters' interior landscape. They get on with life, disappointments included.

The acting offers much to savor. Ross Bickell refuses to let the father become a monster. The crags are there, but there's always something frightened within him that then breaks thrillingly in the big scene with his son and justifies the relaxation of the ending.

Carole Monferdini's mother is even more contained. Both she and Timmy have the advantage of being able to express irony. She also gets to express her dissatisfactions directly. But she still has emotional secrets, which provide a sad depth for her smiles of accommodation.

Joe Delafield is a sweet Timmy. Although Gilroy never lets him explore his war experience, through his shining exterior we see clearly his joint inheritance -- his mother's sensitivity, his father's truculence and his own terse determination to take control of his own life.

Whether or not this is one of the "essential" plays that dramatize the American story, as Public Theater artistic director Ted Pappas claims, is a matter of taste. To me, even though I acknowledge its larger implications, it seems just another solid American family drama.

As such, it will trigger different responses in different people. I was certainly confronted with thoughts of my own parents, as well as an uncle and an aunt. Small can be satisfying, though it remains small.

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