It has, in Arthur Allan Seidelman, an Emmy-award winning director; and it has an impressive-sounding cast of two: Billy Zane (Titanic, Dead Calm) and Claire Bloom, the distinguished actress whose illustrious career spans 60 years of heavyweight roles. It even has Craig Revel Horwood, the panellist of the BBC One show Strictly Come Dancing, known for his Simon Cowell-esque savagery, as its choreographer. But none of it is enough to save the British premiere of Richard Alfieri’s bland, mawkish play, which opened in Los Angeles in 2001 and went on, despite an unenthusiastic reception on Broadway, to become an inexplicable international hit.
Lily, the elderly, moneyed widow of a minister, hires gay, middle-aged dance teacher Michael to give her lessons in her Florida apartment. Barely have they introduced themselves before Michael has cracked a joke about hookers and called Lily a “tight-assed old biddy” while she, despite the limp, flapping wrist that Zane clearly believes is theatrical shorthand for homosexuality, has enquired about his wife. It’s nauseatingly obvious that these two lonely souls are going to melt one another’s hearts and forge an oh-so-special bond of friendship.
And so it proves in the other six predictable scenes that follow, each one repeating the pattern: a mild clash of temperaments, a little soul-baring, some light flirting and finally a few minutes of awkward tango, waltz or foxtrot among Lily’s wicker furniture.
There’s the odd revelation or telephone call from an irascible neighbour by way of punctuation, but otherwise the monotony is unbroken.
Seidelman’s production is too clumsy, and the play too mechanical and sentimentally manipulative to be touching. Nor is it especially funny, unless you find the calculated incongruity of Bloom’s uptight Lily swearing, or Zane’s sharp-tongued Michael calling her “a seductive slut”, intrinsically amusing. Alfieri lards on the platitudes about dance as an expression of freedom and a means of emotional and physical connection, and life passing by like a landscape glimpsed fleetingly from a train window. There’s even a climactic sunset to underline the encroaching sense of Lily’s mortality; it’s garish and like everything else here, it doesn’t look remotely real.
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As for the performances, Zane doesn’t entirely convince as the ex-Broadway hoofer Michael claims to be, but he does manage a few smooth moves and some even smoother charm. Bloom, on the other hand, flounces about, tosses her hair and often looks decidedly uncomfortable. Both of them have a habit, when Seidelman’s direction fails them, which happens regularly, of planting their hands on their hips for emphasis. They are working appreciably hard at generating some odd-couple chemistry; but the effort involved is all too obvious.
Yet how could it be otherwise when Alfieri’s lame writing gives them so little to work with? This play is tooth-rottingly sweet right through to its sickly soft centre. And whatever steps Zane and Bloom essay, it, and the production, remain irretrievably flatfooted.
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