Here are a few things helpful to know before arriving at the Broadhurst Theatre: “Frankie and Johnny” is the title of a folk song and American songbook standard that Elvis recorded in 1966 for a hit record that accompanied a terrible movie. In it, Frankie kills her lover, Johnny, for cheating on her. “Clair de Lune” is the famous piano piece written by Claude Debussy. It is also the French term for moonlight. And, finally, in the original, off-Broadway production of Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune, in 1987, Frankie was played by Kathy Bates.
On West 44th Street today, in the play’s second Broadway revival, Audra McDonald is the female star. (Her Broadway predecessor was Edie Falco.) McDonald is a wonderful an actor as she is a singer, and it’s a pleasure to watch her work. But in a play about two lonely, sad, middle-aged people, a man who is desperate for love and a woman who has given up on it, it is helpful to recognize that the role was originated not by one of Broadway’s great leading ladies but by one whose body shape renders her not conventionally attractive.
Kathy Bates, in other words—and even 30-years-ago Kathy Bates—is a woman who, with the right styling and affect, could be seen as a woman resigned to her loneliness. Audra, like most women typically referred to by only their first names, does not.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★ review here.]
This may go toward explaining why this impeccably performed production of McNally’s sweet, sad, and funny play, crisply staged by Arin Arbus, can feel nevertheless a bit sodden. For all the virtuosity on display, I’m not sure that we ever truly believe the characters, believe that these people are as lonely, and as needy, as the script requires them to be.
It opens in the darkness, with Johnny (Michael Shannon, with that cubist bust of a face) and Frankie in bed in darkness. We hear them before we see them: loud, vigorous, athletic sex. It ends, and it’s clear Frankie is ready for him to go. Their first date-turned-one night stand is over, and she’s wants her dingy, one-room apartment to herself. But Johnny won’t go. He’s a talker, but he’s also a romantic. Over the next two overnight hours—in that clair from the lune—he’ll attempt to convince Frankie why they belong together, and she’ll try to get him to leave.
The pair met at work, the kind of blue-collar, working-class work that used to exist in Manhattan back when the play was written and is still set: Johnny’s a short-order cook and Frankie’s a waitress. He thinks the coincidence of their names and the song is a sign they belong together; so is the coincidence of their Allentown youths, so are a series of other coincidences. It’s unclear whether these details of his life are entirely true, or whether he’s a con artist. Clearly, as he says repeatedly, he’s there to get what he wants.
Johnny is a rough character. He’s also sweet, maybe. To what degree he is each remains, through most of the play, unclear. Near the end of the first act, as Frankie insists that he goes and he warns that even if he does he’ll just be back. In a 2019 play, that would be the moment when he turns terrifying. Here, though, by the end of the act he has won Frankie over, mostly. If this is a year for revived toxic masculinity on Broadway—Burn This is down the block, at the Hudson—Johnny’s, unlike Pale’s next door, is toxic masculinity with a heart of gold. He wins over the girl, with the help of a smarmy late-night DJ and some well-timed airplay for Debussy, and we’re left feeling, remarkably enough, hopeful.
And yet that hope doesn’t quite translate into feeling moved. Johnny, as played by the estimable Shannon, is a charmer, but he’s also overbearing, relentless, and slightly frightening. He wants to be in love, sure, and you can see how that might be attractive to someone. But not to Audra.
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune opened May 30, 2019, at the Broadhurst Theatre and runs through August 25. Tickets and information: frankieandjohnnybroadway.com
