Premiere of The Fourth Wall
A.R. (Albert Ramsdell) Gurney is another one of Buffalo’s native sons (and a Nichols graduate) whose life has led to an internationally famed career. Born in 1930, he is considered one of America’s most prolific contemporary playwrights, as evidenced by the fact that his collected works cover five volumes. Known especially for his work reflecting the classic American culture of the middle-class WASP, his plays Scenes from an American Life and The Dining Room have brought the interior life of Buffalo to the world—three acts at a time.
The Fourth Wall seems as though Gurney is parodying himself as he turns his classic themes in upon themselves. Lead character Peggy becomes convinced that there’s a world beyond the limits of her knowledge and that she is being watched, begins the show by discussing how she has arranged her living room as if it were a proscenium stage as a result of her paranoia.
Kavinoky Theater, 320 Porter Avenue, Buffalo, 14201, 716.829.7668
Tickets: $32, $28/Senior, $10/with student ID. Opens January 5th. Performances run Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00 PM, Saturdays at 4:00 and 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:00 PM. http://www.kavinokytheatre.com
The play then spends a great deal of its time attempting to reach out to the world beyond, to explore its own limits, and succeeds in creating innumerable theatrical in-jokes. Other characters get drawn into the fray, as Peggy’s husband becomes concerned and brings in first an old friend, and then a theater professor to ‘exorcise’ the living room/stage. “Wacky” is the word most frequently used to describe the ensuing results. Yet there are serious elements of the play as well; at the time, Gurney was outraged with the rise of conservative Republicanism, which is also reflected in Peggy’s near-mythic quest throughout.
In staging this work of Gurney’s, the Kavinoky Theater brings the heart and mind of one of one of our best-known artists back home. Gurney once stated in an interview that the opportunity to work at Tanglewood let him know that he “was better than he thought he was”—a classic Buffalo sentiment heard time and again. The rest of the world, of course, knows it by now as well. This is a terrific chance for Buffalo audiences to be treated to the local premiere of a nationally recognized production from one of our own.