Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine

I can't wait for the movie version of Warren Leight's Side Man. Many plays make for very awkward, stagy films, but Leight's wonderful ode to jazz musicians and their tumultuous offstage lives, I think, will translate beautifully. It seems that way because Leight writes his characters not unlike the 1950s heyday of the motion picture, where actors were given great dialogue that seemed a little larger than life but true to their natures, not to mention that it was great to listen to from an audience perspective. Side Man, for all its theatrical devices (omniscient narrator, minimal scene changes), had a well-rounded quality that made it seem bigger than it was, and those are always the plays that make for terrific films. His latest, Glimmer Glimmer & Shine, now at Manhattan Theater Club's Stage I, is Side Man-lite. Not necessarily a bad thing, but his new effort provides the opposite reaction: Glimmer seems smaller than it is, and it seems that way because it's missing the darker recesses that made Side Man so intriguing. The milieu is the same, and the talk is just as lively, but the characters don't have too much inner life. Still, Leight can make a play move with supreme ease, even when the material isn't so hot, and the actors bring out much more than you'd expect here.

John Spencer, always a welcome presence in any medium, plays Martin, a chain-smoking ex-trumpeter who is slowly dying due to his ragtag lifestyle of take-out, booze and drugs, which he has led for years. He is a confidante of Jordan (Scott Cohen), an attractive, 30-ish trombone player who sees Martin as an unlikely role model simply in the way Martin has lived a full life. Not necessarily the one Jordan wants, but he admires his tenacity and refusal to apologize for his actions.

One day, at a gig in Greenwich, CT, Jordan's band performs a wedding and he runs into Delia (Seana Kofoed), a well-to-do, slightly uppity girl of privilege. Delia, it turns out, is the daughter of Martin's fraternal twin brother Daniel (Brian Kerwin), who has given up the jazz life to be a wealthy businessman, complete with condos and expensive gifts. Delia was never aware of her uncle Martin, as Daniel has cut off contact completely, mainly out of respect for Delia's mother, who hated their music lifestyle. Delia and Jordan begin a tryst and become involved, even though the family secrets continue to unfold, and she is engaged to another man, something Jordan doesn't know about. Martin and Daniel meet up again, and their unyielding relationship is tested, though Martin is quickly running out of time.

The play unfolds in a very straight-forward fashion, as do the performances, which is both very good and disappointing. On the plus side, the play never overemphasizes or makes any bones about its smallness, and the four actors are equally up to the challenge. But the play never evolves into anything more than a trifle, either. There is nobody in this show as indelible as Frank Wood's conflicted father in Side Man, whose beautifully off-center portrayal never gave you all the answers but left you with enough to chew on. Also, the Martin-Daniel relationship was far more believable than the Delia-Jordan one. Cohen and Kofoed are quite good together, but their courtship doesn't quite convince. This could be because Leight, despite his often rich dialogue, never makes Delia and Jordan more than working class-meets-rich-girl archetypes. The scenes about his inability to keep up with her financially ring especially false. The theme of opposites attracting is never resolved satisfactorily either, even at the weirdly inconclusive and extraneous finale.

Kerwin does some nice work with a fairly cut-and-dried character (his bit about Lawrence Welk misintroducing a Duke Ellington number is wonderful), and Spencer rightfully dominates the tale. A whiz with monologues, he ingratiates you into the life of Martin without begging for sympathy for his condition or resorting to unnecessary pathos. If Leight does have a nice gift, it is telling sentimental stories without an abundance of syrupy silliness.

As with his past work, Leight's prose is as easy to listen to as ever, and director Evan Yionoulis stages with appropriate restraint. But he might want to try a different environment before people start carping about a lack of variety. Glimmer hits most of the right notes, but where Side Man was unquestionably a symphony, this one registers more as a finely-tuned garage band.