Oscar Levant claimed a spot on my mother's middlebrow bookshelf with Memoirs of an Amnesiac which interested me not at all because I figured it lacked dirty parts. My loss, as I discovered yesterday at the final performance Good Night, Oscar.
Sean Hayes really did earn that Tony Award. I leapt to my feet after he played a long excerpt from "Rhapsody In Blue," From balcony seating, you could see him nimbly tickle those ivories as well as hear Gershwin's Jazz Age masterpiece played with panache if not virtuosity . How many actors could do that? I almost admired Hayes's musical talent more than his impersonation of Levant which retained a touch of Jack from Will and Grace, or perhaps that was just the impeccable timing he displayed both on television and the stage.
Cleverly constructed and staged, Good Night, Oscar condenses what appears to have been a lifetime of misery, neuroses and envy into 90 minutes of non-stop, entertaining exhumation. Playwright Doug Wright uses one of Levant's many appearances on Tonight Starring Jack Paar to explore the ethics of juicing the ratings by booking a guest in the throes of prescription drug withdrawal, a discussion that seems hopelessly naive since the advent of reality television and its critical role in electing a nightmare president. Fortunately, Levant's self-deprecating wit managed only to keep America awake past bedtime. I suspect his memoirs may keep me up past mine.
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