Call me crazy but I was expecting to see a play when I walked into the Minetta Lane Theatre to see “Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell”. It was disappointing to get only a reading. Five performers take a stab at mining Gray’s poignant elegant and funny diaries - organized into love, adventure, journals, family but in the end the show gets a free ride of audience good will that it didn’t quite earn.
My expectations were raised by the interesting stage set with floor to cavernous ceiling hanging manuscript pages as a backdrop and stacks of Gray's signature black and white notebooks. The problem may have been that the director and actors also thought it was a play. How else to explain the cast's curious synchronized but pointless running around on stage to reposition themselves amid the piled up notebooks in between readings?
During each reading the other actors sit around on stage watching, randomly emoting, and sometimes draping an arm around a shoulder. It felt like we were eavesdropping on a graduate school drama seminar. It was confusing and distracting to watch Kathleen Chalfant (love) more visibly emotional when listening to the other actors. Hazelle Goodman (adventure), was fun and interesting to watch perhaps because she’s a young African American woman channeling a middle aged New England Wasp. Ain Gordon (journals), who looks like a young Eric Bogosian, gets to read from a table, with a microphone, a glass of water, a grade school note book and a small yellow boom box. He fell short of tapping Gray's funny dead pan insights and he seemed more like a grieving relative. Frank Gordon (family) has a frumpy demeanor that felt comfortably close to Gray's persona. Josh Lucas a guest performer came on stage late in the performance and he seemed like a guest -a talented good looking actor but he added nothing. If you are going to a have a guest performer why not stick in a larger than life character actor who brings a wild contrast and change of pace?
A production based on the work of Spalding Gray has a presold market of people, like me, who looked forward to each new work, as the next episode in a, frequently hilarious, serialized journey with that unique performance artist in whatever direction his life had just taken. Although after Swimming To Cambodia his material seemed less and less spontaneous and more and more like it was being lived to generate itself. Then there was the taint of cringing discomfort as he shared the details of the painful end of his long term relationship with life and creative partner Renee and his affair that eventually ended the marriage.
An audience of Gray fans at a reading of his work in 2007 can still feel the spirit and hear the voice of this wonderful writer and performer we lost in 2004. At the end the cast turns to face a projected photo of Gray and joins the audience in a tribute of applause - an image that says it all about this show.
