Ryan Spahn plays John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces. and Linda Purl is his mother in Vivian Neuwirth’s biographical drama Mr. Toole at 59E59 Theaters.
The title character in Vivian Neuwirth’s Mr. Toole is John Kennedy Toole, author of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize novel A Confederacy of Dunces. Known as “Ken” to family and friends, Toole died in 1969, more than a decade before his book was published. Neuwirth knew Toole when she was a student at St. Mary’s Dominican High School in New Orleans, where he taught English. “He was,” she says, “an amazing teacher” with a “theatrical flair.”
In this new play—now occupying a tiny upstairs space at 59E59 Theaters — Neuwirth aims to revivify the compelling figure she remembers. She’s ably supported by leading man Ryan Spahn, who (having recently finished the run of Talene Monahon’s How to Load a Musket) is making his second appearance at 59E59 since the beginning of 2020. This accomplished dramatic actor is doing all he can to lend color and dimension to a lackluster role—a chronically indecisive character—in a humorless script about a southern humorist with a gimlet-eyed view of humanity.
The grieving parents of novelist John Kennedy Toole (Linda Purl and Stephen Schnetzer) confront each other about the past, while one of their late son’s students (Julia Randall) looks on.
A New Orleans native, Toole grew up the sole child in a household of modest means, dominated by his mother, Thelma Ducoing Toole. Thanks to a scholarship for graduate study at Columbia University, he escaped his mother’s tyranny, at least for a while. After a relatively short time in New York, he returned to Louisiana, resuming life as the third member of his parents’ stifling household.
While teaching literature at St. Mary’s, Toole revised the doorstop-sized manuscript of A Confederacy of Dunces under the long-distance supervision of a New York City editor. After the editor lost confidence in the book, dismissing it as pointless, Toole’s self-confidence collapsed. He drove north from New Orleans, to a secluded spot in rural Mississippi, and ended his life by carbon monoxide poisoning.
Mr. Toole is a memory play, reminiscent of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. Sensitively directed by Cat Parker, the production features eye-appealing projections by George Allison that serve as the production’s scenery and evoke the atmosphere of mid-century New Orleans.
Thelma, as written by Neuwirth and played by the superb Linda Purl, has a hectoring manner and delusions of genealogical grandeur that make her almost indistinguishable from Williams’ Amanda Wingfield. “Greetings are important,” she nags. “You can always tell a gentleman by how he greets people.”
“You’re a Ducoing,” she lectures Ken. “Never forget that.”
Ken, like Tom Wingfield, bridles at the day job that limits his time to write. “Why do I have to teach …?” he rants. “I’m suffocating there! … Do you know the horrors of that place?” “That job,” says Thelma (ever so much like Amanda), “is what keeps us from starvation.”
Purl and Thomas G. Waites as the mother and uncle of Mr. Toole. Photographs by Ken Howard.
The first half of Mr. Toole toggles back and forth between the dysfunctional Toole household—with Ken’s childlike father (Stephen Schnetzer) completing the Williams-esque family triangle—and St. Mary’s College, where Ken teaches T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to undergraduate women. His English class includes Lizette (Julia Randall), a fictional figure whose initial admiration for her professor swiftly becomes first love. The second part of the play depicts the grief of those Ken has left behind and Thelma’s attempts to find a publisher for Dunces.
Neuwirth confuses things by making Lizette the play’s narrator. While she’s supposed to be the audience’s lens, Lizette is neither involved nor aware of many of the scenes depicted. At times, the playwright introduces peripheral characters—Ken’s uncle (Thomas G. Waites), an unnamed, presumably fictional love interest of Ken’s (John Ingle), and the novelist Walker Percy (Ingle again)—that muddle the narrative and raise questions that never get answered.
Despite the title, Mr. Toole is Thelma’s story. She’s a mother from hell who makes an almost-saintly effort to redeem the loss of her son by bringing his manuscript to the world’s attention. Unable to find a willing publisher, she finally convinces novelist Walker Percy to read and champion the book. Published initially by Louisiana State University Press (thanks to Percy’s intervention), Dunces was later issued in paperback by the commercial Grove Press and has never been out of print in the four decades since then.
As a play, Mr. Toole cries out for further work. What’s on view at 59E59 Theaters, though, is a polished production—the fulfillment of a playwright’s dream for an Off-Off Broadway premiere.
Produced by Articulate Theatre Company in association with Lagniappe Productions, Mr. Toole runs through March 15 at 59E59 Theaters (59 E. 59th St., between Park and Madison). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. For information and tickets, call (646) 892-7999 or visit 59e59.org.
