WE’VE GOT TO GET OURSELVES BACK TO THE GARDEN
When The Sheen Center announced Ed. Weinberger’s new play The Journals of Adam and Eve starring Hal Linden and Marilu Henner, I thought it was a perfect trinity, a legendary event not to be missed, and in the end it was. Weinberger’s sardonic script, an adaptation of Mark Twain’s short story Eve’s Diary, plays on easy grounds the world’s first love story, the first couple, the first date, and so on. The author, whose career has spanned more than 65 years (The Mary Tyler Moore Show; Taxi) employs his famous one-liners and buoyant sweet shtick that granted him nine Emmys, three Golden Globes, and a Peabody to get our attention.
When Hal Linden walked on stage, introducing himself as a worried Adam who’s only a day old and already has the serious job of naming everything God created – “He was God, so who was I to argue” – I couldn’t help thinking that the man is 93 years old (he looks 80 at most) and a montage of the roles he played on stage and television kept popping in my mind. Linden is delightful; his simple, very human charm and distinctive comedic delivery are all intact.
Adam feels alone and overwhelmed, a perfect time to introduce the next legend, Marilu Henner as Eve. Henner’s presence was exceptionally feline, the tone of her lines alternating smoothly between provocative languor and witty, quick punctuations like “You have 12 ribs on each side. I have 12 ribs on each side. Nobody is missing a damn rib!” As the play shifts between first-person narrative and dialogue, her body reacted to every word that she and Linden delivered, sometimes imperceptibly. While most bios seem super-inflated, hers is actually spot-on: She does indeed have the “energy of a teenager, the wisdom of a sage, and the memory of a superhero” (the superstar and novelist has one of the few cases of highly superior autobiographical memory [HSAM] in the world).
Dressed elegantly, neither too formal nor too casual, Linden and Henner referred to their scripts from adjoining music stands. As Adam and Eve, they love each other and they argue, like all couples; Adam loses his erection in the first “sexual pas de deux” with Eve and as in a dance duet, there is an adagio at first, under the shade of a laurel roof, a solo variation for him “This has never happened to me before,” a solo variation for her “I decided to take matters into my own hands”; and a coda in which both actors display their virtuosity.
Amy Anders Corcoran, the director, and Travis Seminara, the lighting designer, didn’t have much room to show their skills since the event was more a dramatized reading than a play. Weinberger is a skillful master of timeless traditional lines between masculine and feminine. A bit too safe for my taste but nevertheless The Journals of Adam and Eve is a lighthearted and life-affirming piece.
photo by Paul Aphisit
The Journals of Adam and Eve: The World’s First Love Story
Loreto Theater at the Sheen Center, 18 Bleecker St
Wed-Sat at 7; Wed, Sat & Sun at 2
ends on July 28, 2024
for tickets ($39-$99), visit OvationTix
