'Norman' play reveals Lnewer social attitudes

By Bill Doll

Plain Dealer Theater Critic

What happened at the Kenley Players in Warren Tuesday night may have been a significant event, or at least one whose significance is worth considering.

Oh, I don't mean any sort of theatrical significance. Fluff is fluff and the medium of exchange at Kenley is fluff for laughter, soothing innocuousness in return for warm purrs of contentment from the audience.

What I'm referring to is the subject matter of the comedy "Norman, Is That You?" which rows of neatly coiffed white hair-dos alternating with rows of neatly pressed flowered shirts and sparkling white shoes beamed and chuckled through in Packard Hall.

The subject of the play which John Kenley had produced for Harvey Korman to star in was a homosexual love affair in New York.

Now Kenley is a most astute impressario and is not going around putting things on his stage that will in any conceivable way offend the local folks. So, the fact that he blithely undertakes such a comedy may mean either that homosexuality has become a safe matter for middle aged, middle American entertainment or that discussion of it, at any rate, has moved away from the category of the knee-jerk dangerous.

One way or the other its presence on his stage is a sign of change. Admittedly, the structure of the play indicates that this is a topic greeted still with ambivalence and is to be handled with utmost delicacy. But there it was.

Subject matter aside, Ron Clark and Sam Bobrick's comedy is well-crafted, and decidedly above the average for this category of the mass entertainment genre.

Funny lines, neat characters, plausibly implausible situations, and devoid of inanities. Norman's mother (Norman is a young man in is a young fellow of 23 from Dayton who has moved to the big city) has run away with her husband's brother. Her husband, Norman father, (Harvey Korman in great distress, runs to Norman and decides to move in for a while.

Norman (Robert Browning) has a roommate, named Garson (Don Sparks), and Dad doesn't know the score.

He soon finds out what is what for himself, is shocked, babbles on about what a great ball player Norman was as a boy, and spends the rest of the play trying to straighten Norman out. He buys books on homosexuality, he cajoles, he yells, he weeps, he even hires a call girl to help fix Norman up.

All to no avail. When dad and mom are reunited they reluctantly accept that what is, is. Plays like this always have a theme reiterating some good moral values.

Mother herself states the moral and it is something of a cop-out, but it doesn't condemn and at least it admits the possibility of different sorts of relationships.

Mom says: "I don't approve, I don't like it, but we must be realistic. "In other words, the message is that good old American heterosexuality is far better, but c'est la vie. A cop-out but not a damnation or, worse, a ridicule.

A theme fitted to the views of the audience. Their ambivalence toward the topic requires that the hero, Norman, doesn't look, speak, or dress, or behave as befits the homosexual stereotype, and that he belong to a good, clean All-American family.

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His roommate, on the other hand, also in keeping with the stereotype, has obscure origins and fits the stereotype of the flouncing queen. Garson comes complete with the lisp, the exaggeratedly feminine gestures, and velvet pants.

He is also the most interesting, endearing, and well-played character in the play (if a bit on the insensitive side towards Norman's problem with his father). Don Sparks does a fine job setting out a stereotype that is neither a parody nor ridiculous.

Balancing stereotypes, the authors usually

time come up with a detached, calm view of the subject. The temptation to pander to the darker sides of the attitude towards homosexuality is, however, always there. Unfortunately, for the sake of a few unnecessary cheap laughs, they give in at moments.

Korman, all-man dad, does a tasteless exaggerated drag-queen bit in a dream sequence and there are some unneeded laughs pulled from "tutti-frutti," "tinker bell," and "fairy boat."

But, to their credit, the dad character himself ends up coming off more as the fool in his desperate escapades in favor of heterosexuality. Korman is effective, as is the rest of the cast, though he looks more like a handsome and successful Beverly Hills dermatologist than a schleppy Jewish dry cleaner from Dayton, O.

In other ways Korman is perfect. He has an easy way with his role and, more important in this context, with his audience.