From left, Matt de Rogatis is Roy, Ryan McCartan is Cletis, and Dan Amboyer is Ray in the Ruth Stage production of James McLure’s Lone Star.
The ambitious and curious Ruth Stage has resurrected Lone Star by James McLure, a one-act that was first presented Off-Broadway in 1979 on a double bill with McLure’s Pvt. Wars. The play Lone Star is not to be confused with John Sayles’s 1996 movie Lone Star, although, by a strange coincidence, the late character actor Leo Burmester appeared in both the play and the film.
McLure’s original version focused on two brothers, Roy and Ray, good ol’ boys in the nowhere town of Maynard, Texas, and a nerdy third male character. It played, and still does, to stereotypes of rural Texas and redneck inhabitants for comic effect, like Greater Tuna but without cross-dressing. Ray (Dan Amboyer) is an ex-gridiron star who, unlike Roy, escaped serving in the Vietnam War because of his “football knee.” He is now a mechanic working on cars, including his brother’s 1959 pink Thunderbird convertible, which is Roy’s pride and served as a chick magnet in their youth.
Ana Isabelle plays Elizabeth, Roy’s wife, in a new adaptation of Lone Star.
For this production, though, star Matt de Rogatis and director Joe Rosario have secured the rights to expand the play by drawing on Laundry and Bourbon, a one-act that McLure wrote to precede Lone Star. In the original, Roy’s wife, Elizabeth (Ana Isabelle), banters with two other women, but here the material becomes ruminations for Elizabeth about romance, love, and memory, accompanied by playing guitar and singing.
Although the prologue is tonally unlike what follows, tenuous connections remain. Elizabeth confesses fond experiences with the notorious Thunderbird: “I remember us making love for the first time,” she says. “Really slow and gentle. God. He was gentle then. He taught me my body. I’d never really felt with my body before.” Now, however, Roy (de Rogatis) has drifted away from her. She can manage his infidelities (“Any man worthwhile is gonna look at another woman. That’s natural.”), but she has come to feel trapped and is prepared to leave him:
There ain’t nothing out there but the highway and the road up to the house. … There’s nothing to see. … I was hoping to see a 1959 pink Thunderbird convertible come over that hill.
The segment goes on too long, and it’s a relief when McLure’s original, testosterone-fueled comedy revs up its engine and hits the road. De Rogatis as Roy embodies a dog-tagged veteran, damaged, autocratic, and devoted to booze. At the entrance to a rural dive bar that has a neon sign advertising Lone Star beer, a screen door patched with duct tape, and old Texas license plates hammered on the wall (superb design by Matthew Imhoff), Roy is approaching an alcoholic stupor. Ray arrives to tell him all the problems the aging Thunderbird has. The byplay between drunk and dimwit provides plenty of laughs—a sequence where Roy tries to demonstrate to Ray how to sneak up on an enemy is a gem—and both actors sink their teeth into the parts, as when they discuss candy bars:
Cletis gives Ray some bad automotive news in McLure’s comedy. Photographs by Miles Skalli.
Roy: You talk for shit. It ain’t “they Mars Bars.” It’s “this Mars Bar” or “that Mars Bar” or “his Mars Bars” or “her Mars bars.”
Ray: What if she only has one?
Roy: Then it’s Mar Bar. She has one Mar Bar.
Dan Amboyer as Ray, gentle, bashful and a bit forlorn, has the edge. Though possessed of an action-hero physique, his comic skill blossoms throughout, noticeably when discussing Roy’s mistaking an old woman for a bowling alley. Roy’s explanation has only a speck of intelligence, but somehow Amboyer’s Ray—his mind working slowly but surely—seizes on it, and his face brightens.
Midway through their interaction a new personality bursts on the scene with incredible energy: Cletis Fullernoy (Ryan McCartan), a goofball whom Roy despises. Cletis seems a bit childish and effeminate, and McCartan makes a physical feast of Cletis’s twitches: putting his hands on his hips, then quickly dropping them, he shows that Cletis is always conscious of presenting himself as butch as possible. Formerly a perennial stooge bullied by Roy, he now owns a car dealership in Oklahoma—enough reason for Roy to hate him. But Cletis has a private message for Ray, and it’s bad news—although it gives Amboyer even more comic fodder to run with.
An awkward final moment when Elizabeth and Roy reconcile only underlines the tonal incongruity between the original play and the interpolations. Fortunately, the fun of McLure’s Lone Star still holds up, as does the portrayal of a damaged war veteran.
The Ruth Stage production of James McLure’s Lone Star plays through Dec. 23 at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Wednesday and Sunday. For tickets and information call the Theatre Row box office at (212) 714-2442, ext. 45, or visit ruthstage.org.
Playwright: James McClure
Direction: Joe Rosario
Sets: Matthew Imhoff
Lighting: Christian Specht
Sound Design: Thomas Correa
