Just Say No
Both aspects of his personality are on display in Just Say No, a scabrous satire of the era when Ronald Reagan ran the country and Ed Koch ran New York (into the ground, some might say). Zak optimistically calls this off-Broadway failure “a play ahead of its time,” but today it seems more in need of resuscitation than rediscovery. To Kramer, the Reagan-Koch years seem the epitome of political corruption and moral hypocrisy, a time when AIDS ran rampant while the dictators of public policy did nothing to stop it, fearful of offending religious right-wingers and of revealing the homosexuality of highly placed persons.
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This urgent anger permeates Just Say No, but rather than making the play feel timely it makes it seem odd and out of touch–like the diatribe of a die-hard cold warrior still ranting against Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. Steeped in the culture of 1980s Washington and New York, the work is peppered with references to figures and events long passed from the public mind: allusions abound not only to Koch and the Reagans but to Ed Meese, Gary Hart, Rock Hudson, Roy Cohn, Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Profumo scandal, alleged ties between the movie industry and the mob, the Supreme Court’s Bowers v. Hardwick decision, and the Vicki Morgan murder case. Even viewers old enough to recognize these allusions may have trouble remembering what they mean–or may not want to revisit that awful era. And younger audiences are likely to be left in the dark unless they avail themselves of the reading list in the program.
But the laughter is less forthcoming at other times, despite high-energy, generally amusing performances by actors who play their roles to the hilt and beyond. Alexandra Billings’s whiplash timing and haughty elegance bring out both the meanness and the charisma of Nancy Reagan…I mean, Mrs. Potentate. Marc Silvia is marvelously manic as Foppy, transformed from lapdog to attack dog by his anger at the Potentates’ AIDS policy (is this Kramer’s spoof of himself?). Alison Halstead’s sharp delivery helps make the African-American lesbian Electra seem more than a token. Nathan Rankin gives an impressively physical performance as Herman, who’s in perpetual heat, while David Mersault offers an uncanny impersonation of Koch at his most arrogant, alternately snarling and fawning as the mayor (“You can call me May….How’m I doin’?”). Amy Farrington and Benjamin Sprunger are attractive and likable as Trudi and Gilbert–comic ingenues in the classic mold, though she’s clad in chains and leather and he’s clad in, well, nearly nothing. The only weak link is onetime Olympic diver Greg Louganis, whose wide-eyed, swishy Junior needs to come across as either a little less ingenuous or a lot younger.
