The Broadest Wit

ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT, the broadest wit of the twentieth century, returns to abuse and tickle the audience of Howard Teichmann's elegant one man show, Smart Aleck. Peter Boyden brings a lighthearted grace to the stage as the New York Times critic and founder of the Algonquin Round table. He evokes the theater and manners of the twenties and thirties with anecdotes and witticisms and carries off Woollcott's bitchy sexlessness with impeccable style. Introducing himself as "Alexander Woollcott, an American Original," Boyden launches into an amusing biography spiced with puns and literary anecdotes.

Woollcott was born in Redbank, New Jersey in 1887 to a tenacious mother and a slovenly father, and at his mother's insistence, attended Hamilton College. There his flamboyance and decidedly eccentric manner made him the butt of many jokes, until he founded a dramatic society, where his behavior seemed excusable. A "hormonal imbalance" prevented sexual activity, and he readily channeled his energy to food, literary criticism, and the theater. When he graduated he presented himself at the New York Times, and was hired as a staff reporter after six months.

After several years covering hard news, he was promoted to drama critic. He shaped the role, acquiring power and demanding respect. He saw himself as the exclusive arbitor of taste, "the idolater or executioner" of plays and productions. America's entering into the first World War interrupted this period of activity. After a brief turn of duty as a medical orderly, he joined the staff of the newly established Stars and Stripes, and reported the movement of the war from the front lines.

Whipping through Woollcott's early years, Boyden maintains a constant dialogue with the audience. He interjects Woollcott's acerbic, self-deprecatory observations with venomous barbs flung disarmingly into the audience. Boyden weaves together Woollcott's conflicting guises by slipping easily from Woollcotts-as-narrator to Woollcott-on-the-scene, as when he details his reaction to his father's death--a cold identification of a body on a slab; or to his sister's death--a slow, emotional reading of a letter to a mutual friend. This lachrymose, sentimental scene, which closes the first act, strikes an incongruous note amid the witticisms that comprise much of the play.

MUCH OF THE SECOND HALF is devoted to a dramatic reading of Woollcott's criticism, an enviable talent he sharpened on the heads of playwrights, actors, friends, and other critics. Finding himself the butt of a rival's column, Woollcott retorted, "An empty taxi pulled up in front of the theater and George Gene Nathan got out." In a review of a play called Number 7, the playwright, he wrote, "has misjudged by five." In another, he suggested that "the lead actor be gently, but firmly, shot at dawn." Yet, he was as lavish in his praise as he was vicious in his derision. Priding himself on his taste and knowledge, he was the first to champion the "little greatness" of Eugene O'Neill, and to praise the antics of the Marx Brothers. As drama critic, his word could make or break a play, and he took full advantage of the fear he inspired.

He had, by the end of the twenties, firmly established himself as the focal point of a circle of wits who gathered at the brunches he held in his 57th street apartment, dubbed "Wits' End" by Dorothy Parker, Secure in his work, he prospered during the Depression. He travelled frequently, lecturing, observing, collecting anecdotes. Notoriously cheap, he "allowed" members of the organizations sponsoring his lectures to put him up for the night. His cutting rudeness as a guest inspired the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart collaboration, The Man Who Came To Dinner. Woollcott's jabs seemed to delight him as much as they did his audience. Under Boyden's withering glares, they fall artfully in place.

Woollcott's best-remembered enterprise was the founding of the Algonquin Round Table, a grand gathering of playwrights, critics, writers and comics. Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley were all there; the Marx Brothers dropped by occasionally. Sherwood Anderson and Moss Hart were frequently in attendance. Knowing that anything witty would be printed, repeated and quoted, Woolcott directed the conversation toward the four topics that interested him: "Theater, friends, murder and anything else that interests me." The Round Table flourished. Only the flight of New York's sharpest tongues to Hollywood forced it to disband in the late 1930s. Woolcott remained in New York, writing, commenting, and broadcasting his opinions in the CBS show, The Town Crier. He died shortly after signing off the air in 1943.

In a sleek combination of biography and gossip, Howard Teichman has placed Woolcott firmly in his time. His light direction conveys Woolcott's manner and speech, lapsing melodramatically out of character only at the end of the first act. The lighting, by Vincent DiGabriele, is discrete, the set, by Tony Cooper, comfortable and prepossessing. But most important is Peter Boyden's admirable characterization, which he carries with a presence and manner that convey every nuance of the man. Woollcott would have been flattered.