Honor Thy Father

STRANGE MEN write plays. Their heads fill with babbling voices that plague them when they eat, distract them when they speak and "tsk" when they make love. No matter how many plays a man writes, some of these internal voices refuse to die. They are his "family" voices, the voices of growing up.

Hugh Leonard writes plays by listening to the voices in his head. Like most of his other works, Da is autobiographical, but it does more than bring to life the childhood memories of a middle-aged playwright: it beautifully recreates a father, typical in his unworldliness, his humility, and the sincerity of his love for his only son, Charlie.

"Love," sad to say, has become a modern-day cliche. Writing about love has turned into the pasttime of high school poets. The literary romance with love that bloomed more than a century ago has withered, replaced by triteness and a suspicion of sincerity. Yet Da, advertised as "an irresistible comedy" portrays paternal--and filial--love with remarkable realism and sensitivity. Da is irresistible because its love has charmisma: it is cheery and optimistic, cute and funny, honest and poignant. Superbly acted by Barnard Hughes, who played the title role 549 times of Broadway before hitting the road, this version of Da exemplifies the work of a master playwright who not only listened to the voices in his head but understood their meaning as well.

Two generations ago, Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town, a play that captures the earnestness and innocence of Americans trapped in towns with one drugstore, one doctor, one minister and one cemetary; towns like the Irish hamlet where Charlie lives with his mother and father. But for all its simplicity, Our Town is imbued with the super-natural: in the cemetary that overlooks the town, a host of the dead assemble to discuss life. One of the dead, a woman named Emily, barters with the play's narrator for the chance to watch herself relive one day of her life, her twelfth birthday. The experience drains, even tortures her, and she shakes much the way we shiver when watching films of John Kennedy. Not only is Emily helpless to change the past, but her warm memories of childhood are blown cold as she watches her own young ghost let priceless moments lapse unnoticed.

The living mix with the dead in Da as well. Charlie, a middle-aged playwright, returns to his Irish homestead to bury his Da, his father. He tries desperately to destroy all his memories of the man, anxious to forget even the happy moments in a frustrating childhood. But hounded by the playwrights' curse, he cannot ignore the voices of the past. Charlie hears the voices so clearly that, as in Our Town, they climb again into their bodies. Soon his Da is smoking in an arm chair, his mother baking in the kitchen, and he, as a teenager, reading at the kitchen table.

Reality assumes wild forms as present and past collide and then split apart like memories bouncing off the walls of the brain. Each scene is Charlie's remembrance of incidents of his youth--his last good book, his first good job, his parents' first and last fight, his first sex. Charlie Now (age 45) and Young Charlie (age 17) waltz together on stage. They bicker. The elder blames the younger for childhood failures and gets taunted in return for his failure in maturity.

BUT DA IS the heart of the play, a gardener who can't say no to friends or enemies. Irrepressible in death, refusing to leave his son in peace, Da represents sheer goodness--sweetness--in a world that feeds on bitterness and evil. It is no coincidence that Da's death occurs in 1968, a year that symbolizes terrifying, violent upheaval.

The secret to Da lies deeper, however, than his bumpkin mannerisms or even his placid gentility. His ignorance serves as a shield against the violent onslaught of painful knowledge. In Da's world, where rosebush cuttings and fresh peaches take first priority, knowledge can only oppress. By reinforcing the suffering of the lower class, teaching them about a better way of life they can never have, this knowledge ultimately spurs Charlie to leave Ireland for London and middle class success as a writer. But Da remains blissful in his ignorance.

Da's life represents one ideal of the 1960's: he is sensitive to the land, to flowers and fruit, ignorant of political reality, forever optimistic, and certain that sincere love will cure all evils. It is a seductive philosophy.

But Charlie rejects his father's loving attitude, risking cynicism to confront reality. Yet Da whispers inescapably in his ear, whining a little, laughing a little, somehow a step behind and a step ahead.

It is tempting to call this Da a family company. Hughes optioned Da several years ago, plucking it off his agent's desk. When it came time to cast the national company (after winning a handful of Tonys on Broadway) he ensured that both his wife Helen--who plays Charlie's mother, Da's wife--and his daughter Laura--who acts the town tart--were cast alongside him. Their talent merits his nepotism. Indeed, only Tom Crawley's performance as the elder Charlie seems weak; more likely he simply is overwhelmed by Hughes' Da.

Shuffling about the stage, doing business with his pipe, playing with a mimed dog, recoiling from a searing tea pot, Hughes gives Da even more life than Leonard wrote into the script. At times, he recalls Uncle Ernie of My Three Sons; at others he is Shakespeare's Falstaff. But throughout, Hughes' twinkly eyes and subtle, vaporous quality make him the perfect embodiment of one of Hugh Leonard's bothersome voices.

NEAR THE PLAY'S END, Charlie turns to the grinning ghost of his father.

"What was it like," he asks.

"What?"

"Dying," pursues Charlie.

A raised eyebrow.

"I didn't care for it," says Da.

Charming.