Jacqueline Susann famously once said about the celebrated author Philip Roth, “He’s a good writer, but I wouldn’t want to shake hands with him.” (And this coming from the author of Valley of the Dolls and The Love Machine!) She supposedly made the remark after reading Portnoy’s Complaint, Roth’s novel which described in great detail the masturbatory practices of its title character. One can only assume that if she saw the new stage adaptation of Roth’s 1995 National Book Award-winning novel Sabbath’s Theater, she wouldn’t have wanted to even be in the same room as him.
Adapted by actor John Turturro in collaboration with New Yorker writer Ariel Levy, the theater piece features the actor as Sabbath, an arthritic, 64-year-old former puppeteer whose life relentlessly revolves around carnal pursuits. He describes these lascivious adventures to us with much profane detail, even as he spirals emotionally downward into thoughts of suicide that are perversely encouraged by the ghost of his late mother.
Although acclaimed by many as Roth’s finest novel, it’s a divisive work for obvious reasons. But there’s no doubting the love that Turturro, a longtime friend of Roth (who died in 2018), has for it, or the boldness of his decision to co-create the piece in which he bares all both literally and figuratively.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
But for all the reverence with which the book has been adapted, it stubbornly resists dramatization. The play, which uses only actual passages from the novel, employs an episodic, non-chronological stream-of-consciousness style that is far more effective on the page than the stage. Much of it is indeed amusing, thanks to Roth’s darkly acerbic wit that pushes the envelope at every opportunity, and the relish with which Turturro — who doesn’t physically resemble the character as described in the book, but entertainingly conveys his gleeful moral turpitude — and his co-stars Elizabeth Marvel and Jason Kravits, each playing a variety of roles, go through their frequently licentious paces.
But for all the actors’ skills, the evening has the feel of a staged reading. A physically dynamic one, to be sure, beginning with Turturro and Marvel (playing Sabbath’s longtime, fiercely sexual Croation mistress Drenka) loudly producing the sounds of copulation after which they’re seen entangled together in a state of physical exhaustion. Not to mention the scene in which Sabbath vigorously masturbates at his wife’s grave, culminating in an animated video projection amusingly depicting the tangible results. (Now there’s something you probably haven’t seen onstage before.)
After a short while, however, the evening staged by Jo Bonney proves wearisome despite Roth’s singular ability to render any human activity, even a periodontal examination, in erotic terms. Such episodes as Sabbath having phone sex with a student which leads to the end of his teaching career, or getting caught stealing the panties of his best friend’s teenage daughter, come across as merely tawdry here, lacking the verbal depth and nuance of the novel.
There are many laugh-out-loud lines, including Sabbath’s taking umbrage at his wife’s friends celebration of Lorena Bobbit after she cut off her unfaithful husband’s penis. “Surely she could have registered her protest some other way!” he insists. Or when he’s happily contemplating suicide and joining the list of the “peerless bunch” who will have preceded him, including Rothko, Hemingway, Gorky, and Primo Levi. “I’d be the first puppeteer!” he exults.
Turturro expertly manages the difficult feat of making Sabbath endearing even at his most self-absorbed and loathsome, while Marvel is nothing less than a force of nature in her multiple roles and Kravits provides expert support playing characters ranging from a 100-year-old man to Drenka’s cuckolded husband. But for all the efforts of everyone involved, Sabbath’s Theater, despite its title, proves most suited to the printed page.
