May

10

Zero Hour with Zero MostelZero Hour At the DR2 Theatre

Play directed by Piper Laurie

For those unfortunately unacquainted with the great comedic actor, Zero Mostel, who died in 1977, at only 62, he is best known for his portrayal of beloved comic characters such as Tevye onstage in Fiddler on the Roof, Ulysses in Ulysses in Nighttown, Pseudolus both onstage and onscreen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the rhinoceros in Ionesco's Rhinoceros, and, especially, thanks to frequent plays on TCM and elsewhere on late-night TV, and the schvanz-faux producer Max Bialystok in the original film version of The Producers. Blacklisted during the 1950s, his staunch testimony before the now-infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was well-publicized. Among his many encomia, he was a Tony and Obie award recipient. More than that, he was the independent comic genius who had merely to walk down the street for one to break out into grins of anticipation.

Under the capable direction of actress/director Piper Laurie, and with subtle lighting mood painting by Jason Arnold, the outsize life-force of Zero Mostel, born Samuel Joel Mostel, is brought again to feisty, hilarious life by writer/performer Jim Brochu. It is a 2-hour tour de force, as Brochu peoples the stage with theatre greats, HUAC betrayers, stage performers, people just a few moons behind us, but living still in the Brobdingnagian life of Broadway. Brochu says in his bio that he "was born six miles and 30 years from the Brooklyn house where Zero was born" in 1915.

Among Brochu's many acting credits and plaudits, we found most amusing the fact that due to his having appeared as a dancing raisin for a Post breakfast cereal, and as a lemon from outer space for soap product Palmolive, along with being a petulant peach for Hawaiiian Del Monte, he earned the nutritiously enviable title of "Most versatile fruit in show business." More important than his chops as victuals, however, is the artful way he looks disarmingly like the great Zero, sounds like him, and weaves a remarkably accurate picture of Mostel's episode-stuffed life into a nonstop fascination for the audience to drink in.

One of his tantrums, in a rare departure from picturesque and pointed hilarity, concerns the harsh lives of the actors and artists caught in the no-win vise of HUAC's congressional inquisitions. Anent one of those who blabbered away with names of men and women who may not even have been communists at all, Jerome Robbins, Mostel quips, "Loose Lips [Robbins] was the Babe Ruth of stool pigeons."

Certainly, beyond the chuckle and guffaw quotient to be had in the art studio of the great Tevye and Pseudolus, a master of "how butterflies look when they are resting," the life of this showbiz comic-kazi deftly chronicles for us the life of New York's artistic, martial, societal and proscenium pages for the decades during which he created mirth and merriment from the '20s until his regrettably premature death in 1977, during Philadelphia rehearsals for the new play The Merchant (in which Zero played a re-imagined version of Shakespeare's Shylock). Diagnosed with a mild respiratory disorder that should have spelled no danger, on September 8, 1977, Mostel complained of dizziness and lost consciousness. Attending physicians were unable to revive him. It was later decided that he had suffered an aortic aneurysm.

Jim Brochu shows us the Falstaffian "Z" (to friends), before the decline into lesser billing for handsome pay cheques. The play doesn't go there, though. Brochu's encyclopedic biographic familiarity and embodiment of the great Zero brings the marvelous funnyman to life for two rich hours. Director Piper Laurie, herself an honored actress, sculptress and performer, masterminds a flawless show, not for a second boring or overdone.

It disabused us of one of our all-time personal favorites: We always thought he got his name because his father looked at him one day and uttered the Yiddish malediction, "Vet zein ah gornischt!" (You'll be a … nothing.) Apparently, in truth, his nickname came straight from…his agent.

For the L.A. production of Zero Hour, Brochu was nominated for Best Solo Performance by the L.A. Drama Critics; ZH was also awarded 2006 Best Play by the L.A. Ovations. His caricature was installed on Sardi's storied walls in 2001, a tribute to his 40-plus years as a playwright and performer par excellence.


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