Theater Review - 'Abbie' - Abbie Hoffman’s Passions in ‘Abbie’ - Review
The actor and educator Bern Cohen looks a lot like the political activist Abbie Hoffman, whom he portrays in “Abbie,” the one-man show he wrote and helped produce, now at the West End Theater. So much so, according to the production’s publicity material, that Mr. Cohen, a former high school principal who has acted in feature films, was arrested in the 1970s in Ohio, where he was mistaken for Hoffman. In visual terms, you couldn’t ask for a better meeting of subject and performer. Hoffman (1936-1989) — a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; a founder, with Jerry Rubin and others, of the Youth International Party (the Yippies); and one of the Vietnam war protesters charged with conspiring to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago — has been portrayed in, among other films, “Steal This Movie” (2000) and “Chicago 10” (2007). As distinctively American in his independence as, say, Mark Twain or Tallulah Bankhead (who have been subjects of one-person Broadway shows), Hoffman is ripe for a stage portrait. His “Steal This Book,” a guide to street scams, is a pungently humorous how-to, while his 1980 memoir, “Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture,” is a comparatively sober account of his life and passionate beliefs. His greatest gift was for staging radical political provocations, like dropping loose bills from the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange to the crowded floor below. “Abbie,” framed as a 1987 talk by Hoffman in the “West End Theater Sociology Lecture Series,” studiously covers essential details: his upbringing in Worcester, Mass.; the influences of the philosopher Herbert Marcuse and the psychologist Abraham Maslow at Brandeis; his embrace of activism as a graduate student at Berkeley; the Yippie years; his life underground in upstate New York and in New Hope, Pa., where he fought the incursion of nuclear-power interests. Directed with workmanlike pacing by Thomas Caruso, the production benefits from video images assembled by Morgan Paul Freeman. As for Mr. Cohen, he evokes the anxiety of living as a fugitive under surveillance, but largely sidesteps the bipolar disorder — and depression — that might have led to Hoffman’s suicide in 1989. Mr. Cohen also lacks the insolent, comic panache that was Hoffman’s trademark. “Abbie” is heartfelt, but its worthy subject demands more range and a stronger current of energy. -- http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/theater/reviews/13abbie.html Via InstaFetch -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
