The set is better than the play. John Lee Beatty’s design for Key Largo, the revamped version of Maxwell Anderson’s 1946 drama now running at the Geffen, is a thing of beauty. With its looming walls, big staircase, and seedy, weather-beaten look, it creates the perfect atmosphere for the story that unfolds in the lobby of a cheap hotel in the Florida Keys. The tourists who frequented the hotel, most of whom came down from the north to sport-fish for marlin, are long gone. Replacing them are four unwanted guests: Johnny Rocco (Andy Garcia), Curly (Louis Mustillo), Toots (Stephen Borrello), and Gaye Dawn (Joely Fisher). The first three are gangsters, the fourth is a blowsy hooker, Rocco’s sometime girlfriend. They have forced themselves into the hotel, making virtual prisoners of its aged, blind owner, Mr D’Alcala (Tony Plana), and his nice-looking daughter Nora (Rose McIver). Rocco and his stooges have decided that the Key Largo Hotel is the best place to conclude a drug deal (having sailed from Cuba with a load of heroin). Keeping the D’Alcalas at bay is easy for the heavily armed hoods, but they are discomfited when a stranger enters. He is Frank McCloud (Danny Pino), a WWII major on an idealistic mission: to visit the relatives of all those soldiers who were killed under his command in a skirmish in the mountains of Italy. One of those soldiers was Mr D’Alcala’s son. It’s good (McCloud), versus evil (Rocco) after that, with the final confrontation (a shoot-out) delayed by a hurricane (terrific sound and light effects), and the visit of the local sheriff (Richard Riehle), who turns out to be something of a crook himself. McCloud, ridden with guilt over his tactical mistakes during that Italian fire-fight (which caused so many fatalities), is slow to stand up to Rocco—until Nora goes to work on him. This gutsy gal (Lauren Bacall in the movie version of the play) gets her feistiness from her father-in-law who, blind as he is, takes a swing at Rocco. It’s she who not only falls in love with Frank but motivates him to snap out of his funk and become a hero. My problems with the play are many. Garcia, who co-wrote this modernized Key Largo and turned it into a vehicle for himself, comes off as a caricature: a big, loud, flamboyant thug we’ve seen before in numberless movies and TV shows. His moronic henchmen are familiar and dreary types, as well. And the love affair between McCloud and Rosa isn’t terribly believable, owing to a lack of chemistry between them. Key Largo’s story, which was fresh and powerful in 1946—and two years later in the John Huston movie—seems creaky and contrived today. But it does look good up there on the Geffen stage, thanks to John Lee Beatty’s wizardry.
