‘Up the Nile’: All About a Failing Alliance That Works With Others

In a marriage that could only be made in Hollywood, a dissolute, alcohol-sodden British writer is being teamed with a hack scribe fresh out of episodic TV. George Bush and Patrick J. Buchanan probably have more love for each other than these two. Their assignment: Deliver a script for an epic movie on the Pharoahs. Yesterday.

Could this be playwright Anne Taylor’s worst nightmare?

“Well, it is a farce, so maybe that’s the next best thing,” a bemused Taylor says about her comedy, “Up the Nile,” now in previews at Burbank’s Victory Theatre before its March 26 opening.

Taylor, who has written everything from public television documentaries to a 10-minute play that was nearly accepted for this year’s Humana Festival at Louisville’s Actors’ Theatre, tends to shy away from partners--and assures her guest that “Up the Nile,” her first full-length play, is nowhere near autobiographical.

“This is about a partnership that’s failing,” Taylor says. “I was reading a book about writers who drink, and one chapter really stuck out for me. William Faulkner was near the end of his career, really desperate for work. Howard Hawks hired him to write “Land of the Pharoahs,” with Harry Kurnitz, who was a veteran screenwriter--but, after all, no William Faulkner. It was a huge bomb.

“I thought, ‘Wow, what a situation.’ You know you’re an artist, but so drunk that you can’t control yourself, and sinking fast. I don’t know Southern gentlemen, so I changed him to a British writer named Edward Butler.”

Although Taylor may write on her own, she’s finding that theater is about working with others--especially her director, Maria Gobetti, who has been artistic co-director with Tom Ormeny since the Victory began in 1980.

“This kind of farce marks a real departure for this theater,” Gobetti says, “although we’ve done many, many comedies. Anne hasn’t written a mathematically precise farce in the style of the French. She mixes farce with high, sophisticated comedy.

“We’re still in rewrites right now, and Anne is really open to suggestions, which a fairly new playwright might reject out of defensiveness or insecurity. Since we do only new plays here, I can appreciate this kind of rapport, which doesn’t always happen.”

After slogging through some spec scripts for episodic television, Taylor grew fatigued at the “constraining formats, the jokes, jokes, jokes. I decided to write something where characters could really live--and, especially, I wrote something that I want to see performed. And it’s happening. I mean, right now, I am beyond high.”

“Up the Nile” plays indefinitely at the Victory Theatre, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank, at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $15 to $17. Call (818) 841-5421.