From left: Marcia Cross, Bryan Batt and Ron Canada star in the world premiere of Tawni O’Dell’s Pay the Writer.
With TV star Marcia Cross and beloved stage actor Bryan Batt in the cast, two Tony winners on the design team, and recognizable names among the producers, Pay the Writer would appear to be a solidly financed production. Yet it has a kind of low-rent look to it and clunky staging.
In most scenes, the set consists of some type of seating—a park bench, a restaurant booth, a living room chair—moved onto the stage, with a backdrop showing assorted buildings (but not the skyline) of whatever city the scene takes place in. The audience can see actors going behind a curtain when they exit the stage, which is especially awkward for outdoor scenes.
In a scene set 45 years earlier, young Cyrus (Garrett Turner, left) shows his manuscript to young Bruston (Miles G. Jackson, right). Photographs by Jeremy Daniel.
A more polished-looking production, though, wouldn’t fix the play’s major flaw: its poorly developed, overly expository script by best-selling novelist Tawni O’Dell. About a dozen different times a character says, “Do you remember ...?” or “I remember ...” and then proceeds to describe in detail something the other person lived through.
Pay the Writer presumably centers on the 45-year friendship between novelist Cyrus Holt (Ron Canada) and his agent Bruston Fischer (Batt), as it both begins and ends with Bruston reflecting on their relationship. But most of the 15-plus scenes are not about them, and the intermissionless two-hour show doesn’t really give a sense of the men’s emotional bond or why they’ve been close friends. The irrelevant title doesn’t refer to the Cyrus–Bruston friendship, either.
Garrett Turner and Miles G. Jackson play Cyrus and Bruston, respectively, in two flashbacks: The first depicts their meeting, when Bruston was a junior editor and Cyrus was trying to get his manuscript read; in the next, 15 years later on a trip to Paris, Cy is already a successful author. A third flashback is set another 10 years later, in L.A. The rest of the play takes place in New York City in the present.
“Batt and Canada, as expected, are excellent; too bad they weren’t given fully fleshed-out characters.”
From the flashbacks, we know that Bruston is the one who encouraged Cyrus to write about his experience in the Vietnam War and that he discouraged Cy from getting involved in the film adaptation of one of his books—and that Bruston was right both times (the Vietnam book turned out to be a “Pulitzer Prize–winning seminal novel about racism in the military”). But they provide only a superficial look at the friendship.
The script is superficial in other respects, including its treatment of Cy’s experience as a Black man (we never actually hear anything about racism in the military) and Bruston’s life as a gay man. There’s just way too much telling, not enough showing—not only about the men’s friendship but also regarding Cy’s relationship with his ex-wife Lola (Cross) and his estranged adult children, his post-traumatic stress disorder, and his womanizing. Some portrayal of his mental health struggles or family life or key points in his or Bruston’s career would be much more worthwhile than pointless scenes with his French translator, Jean Luc (Steven Hauck), or a contrived episode toward the end with another Vietnam veteran.
In some cases there’s a disconnect between what’s said and what’s portrayed. Cy has been married four times, including currently to an unseen, much younger woman, but Canada’s gravitas in the role belies such lechery. He and Lola supposedly are one of those can’t-live-with/can’t-live-without-each-other couples—except they’d had no contact for 20 years, so apparently they can live without each other.
Lola (Cross) and Cy (Canada) have been divorced for about 30 years, but it’s not credible from the way their interactions are written.
Lola lacks personality definition outside of her feelings for Cy, and their children (played by Turner and Danielle J. Summons) are sketched too simplistically for the reunions with their father to feel cathartic. Cross and the other supporting actors can only do so much with so little substance. Batt and Canada, as expected, are excellent; too bad they weren’t given fully fleshed-out characters and authentic emotions so the audience could relish their enacting an odd-couple friendship.
Pay the Writer has lighting design by Christopher Akerlind, costumes by David C. Woolard and scenic design by David Gallo, who have all done far less perfunctory work than here, as their multiple Tony nominations and wins attest. Gallo—or was it director Karen Carpenter?—made a peculiar choice with the set of Cy’s old studio apartment: books cluttering the shelves and floor have been given jackets with oversize lettering, so the audience can see titles like Roots and author names such as Alice Walker and Ralph Ellison (as well as a copy of August Wilson’s play Jitney that’s the size of the OED). As if it says anything that a Black writer owns these canonical books. I don’t think it would be character development if a white person did.
Pay the Writer runs through Sept. 30 at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 W. 42nd St.). Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit paythewriterplay.com.
Playwright: Tawni O’Dell
Director: Karen Carpenter Sets: David Gallo
Costumes: David C. Woolard
Lighting: Christopher Akerlind
Sound: Bill Toles
