A Streetcar Named Mandelbaum

by Jack Goodstein

"He's a mime?"

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call him a—"

"He's an actor. He doesn't speak," interrupted Seligman the Elder, impatient with the explanation coming from Seligman the Younger. "He's a mime," concluded Seligman the Elder, who, as producing director of the Seligman Group Theatre, prided himself on his attention to facts and logic, in contrast to Seligman the Younger, artistic director of the same, an indulger in dreams and fantasies, too often carried away by emotions.

"Not a mime. No thrusting against imaginary winds. No imprisoning in invisible boxes. No—"

"So, he does what? This actor that doesn't speak, he does what?"

"It's hard to explain. He—"

"It's like charades?"

"Not like charades. He doesn't speak; he communicates."

"He doesn't speak, but he communicates," Elder's mimicked sarcastically. "It's what? Esb?"

"Esb?"

"Esb."

"Oh, Esb. Well maybe something like that. Mental--"

"Mental telegraphy."

"I was going to...," Younger started to protest, thought better of it and nodded in agreement. "Something like that."

"And mental telegraphy, we're going to put in our theatre?"

"Audiences will understand."

"They'll laugh him off the stage. And," he added, "with him, us."

"Audiences—"

"The critics will crucify us. They'll take your Marcel Merlot and--"

"He's not a mime. He's—"

"A disaster. A calamity waiting to happen." The Elder opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the bottle of scotch he kept there for just such disasters and calamities waiting to happen. Into a mug with about two fingers of this morning's coffee lying at the bottom, he poured two fingers from the bottle, lifted it to his lips, and drank. "A calamity waiting to—," he coughed the words along with the newly spiked dregs across the desk at the Younger.

"You see," gloated the Younger, "You don't always need to speak to make you point." And with a toss of the head he rose and exited.

And Mandelbaum an actor who not only had never been known to speak a word onstage or off for that matter was cast as Stanley Kowalski in the Seligman Group Theatre's production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

"He can at least scream something that sounds like Stella?" asked the Elder after the read through at which the actor turned the pages of the script and looked at words but never uttered a sound."

"It will be a primal scream. The mouth will open and out will come—"

"Stella."

"Nothing. Out will come nothing. It will be like that picture. 'The Scream.' Munch."

"The actor on television?"

"The painter."

"Oh," said the Elder without a clue to what the Younger was talking about, "the painter."

"You worry about the numbers. I'll take care of the screaming."

The Elder opened the bottom drawer and reached inside.

It was while blocking the first act that the actor playing Mitch, an Iraqian emigre who looked something like Karl Malden, but sounded something like Rex Harrison, suggested that it might be well if he echoed the mute eloquence that was Mandelbaum.

"Thus underlining the theme of aborted male communication," the Younger explained as the Elder reached once again into the bottom drawer, his own silence a loud echo of that same theme.

When the actress playing Blanche came down with laryngitis on the first day of tech week, too late, the Younger explained, to get a replacement, there was the one obvious solution.

"Postpone the—," agreed the Elder.

"Cut the dialogue. Go with silence."

"But—," the Elder protested.

"Everybody knows the story anyway. They don't need the words."

"But—." The Elder reached for his bottle.

"This is groundbreaking. This is cutting edge. This is—"

"Empty," sighed the Elder tossing the bottle into the waste basket.