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Screen Play
Set just before an election, SCREEN PLAY envisions a future ruled by a conservative religious majority. The economy is sagging, wars are raging, and culture is in decay. Many Americans have begun to flee to Canada and Mexico as the government struggles to stop pandemic reverse immigration. With a plot borrowed liberally from a classic 1942 American film, SCREEN PLAY is a tale of politics, history, the city of Buffalo, and a love ruined by the Bush-Gore election of 2000.
"The fundamental things may still apply, but they warp and change color as time goes by. In his gleefully partisan new the indefatigable A R Gurney takes on the movie that immortalized the song 'As Time Goes By,' retooling Casablanca for the 21st century. The title of his latest work is simply SCREEN PLAY, but were it actually to make it to movie theaters it would no doubt be called Buffalo. That's Buffalo, NY, which, in Mr Gurney's collegiate caper of a play, set in the year 2015, has become a way station for Americans in a blue state of mind who seek passage across the border into Canada. Rick's Cafe is now a bar named Nick's. And, as in the adored Warner Brothers' classic, it's the place where everybody goes — from Peter Lorre-like parasites who peddle illegal visas to handsome freedom fighters and their beautiful companions, as well as their sneering adversaries, who in this version are not Nazis but politicians of the Christian right. SCREEN PLAY is the third of Mr Gurney's works that deals directly with American politics, following the sincere … O JERUSALEM and the disarming MRS FARNSWORTH. True, the show often brings to mind a vintage Mad magazine movie spoof, with its contented goofiness and satiric swipes at big targets. And, of course, you wait to see how Mr Gurney roasts chestnuts like 'Round up the usual suspects' and 'Here's looking at you, kid.' But the gimmick that is the basis of SCREEN PLAY has a built-in resonance that Mr Gurney amplifies without, for the most part, screeching a sermon. There's a grin-making chutzpah in the very idea of relocating the moral crisis of Casablanca to American shores. For Mr Gurney sees the internal war between cynicism and idealism waged by Humphrey Bogart's hard-bitten romantic Rick as being especially pertinent to today's climate of political fatigue and passivity … For Mr Gurney, being frivolous has become a deadly national epidemic. SCREEN PLAY, it turns out, fights frivolity with frivolity." —Ben Brantley, The New York Times
"The fundamental things may still apply, but they warp and change color as time goes by. In his gleefully partisan new the indefatigable A R Gurney takes on the movie that immortalized the song 'As Time Goes By,' retooling Casablanca for the 21st century. The title of his latest work is simply SCREEN PLAY, but were it actually to make it to movie theaters it would no doubt be called Buffalo. That's Buffalo, NY, which, in Mr Gurney's collegiate caper of a play, set in the year 2015, has become a way station for Americans in a blue state of mind who seek passage across the border into Canada. Rick's Cafe is now a bar named Nick's. And, as in the adored Warner Brothers' classic, it's the place where everybody goes — from Peter Lorre-like parasites who peddle illegal visas to handsome freedom fighters and their beautiful companions, as well as their sneering adversaries, who in this version are not Nazis but politicians of the Christian right. SCREEN PLAY is the third of Mr Gurney's works that deals directly with American politics, following the sincere … O JERUSALEM and the disarming MRS FARNSWORTH. True, the show often brings to mind a vintage Mad magazine movie spoof, with its contented goofiness and satiric swipes at big targets. And, of course, you wait to see how Mr Gurney roasts chestnuts like 'Round up the usual suspects' and 'Here's looking at you, kid.' But the gimmick that is the basis of SCREEN PLAY has a built-in resonance that Mr Gurney amplifies without, for the most part, screeching a sermon. There's a grin-making chutzpah in the very idea of relocating the moral crisis of Casablanca to American shores. For Mr Gurney sees the internal war between cynicism and idealism waged by Humphrey Bogart's hard-bitten romantic Rick as being especially pertinent to today's climate of political fatigue and passivity … For Mr Gurney, being frivolous has become a deadly national epidemic. SCREEN PLAY, it turns out, fights frivolity with frivolity." —Ben Brantley, The New York Times
48 pages, Paperback
Published March 25, 2022
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