The Living Theater lives! In 1960 I came upon The Living Theater, the premiere avant-garde theater in this country at the time. They were performing Jack Gelber's play The Connection. I worked there for three years, and it was quite a flashback to the past, theatrically and as a reality, to see the new production of that play resurrected and directed by Judith Malina. The play is a slice of sleazy life -a real jump back to a cigarette-filled theater with a bunch of doomed outcasts as they wait for their heroin connection -- plus a terrific jazz quartet. Scenes alternate between the junkies telling their stories and really good jazz numbers, led by sax-player Rene McLean, whose father Jackie was the sax-player in the 1960 production.
Wow! What a trip! Jim Dunn's set is so real that you are there, and Malina has given it all the proper flavor of the time. The moral of the play? Try your best not to be a junkie - it's a miserable life.
