The Whole Show

In the years that I have had the distinct pleasure of seeing my work being performed in Los Angeles, I have always had the greatest respect for Sylvie Drake’s perceptive and, in my case, supportive reviews. So it was the more surprising to suffer the indignity of my play, “Acapulco,” casually dismissed as sex, sex, sex, when it is about anything but sex. It is a comedy about human behavior, as witness the audience who, on the night Drake was in, laughed from beginning to end, although this was omitted from the review.

Not to actually arrive until nearly 17 minutes late in this play of one hour and 15 minutes means that the references that are actually sowed in the beginning of the play have no corresponding note in the latecomers’ minds--and in my plays the beginning moments are crucial to the tone, stance and climate of the whole.

The scene is set at the top of the play, when not only is a climactic scene missed--which does a lot to explain the protagonist’s character--but a tour de force of acting in a cameo by the redoubtable Chandra Lee. To then review the play is to have lost the animus of the play and to witness only its aftereffect. I have no doubt that, had Drake seen the whole play, her dismissive review would have been written in an entirely different manner.

STEVEN BERKOFF

Playwright, “Acapulco”