“Zero Hour”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - May 2011

“Performers who overcame the blacklist to return to their former positions in show business are rare; performers who endured the emotional trauma of blacklisting and suffered crippling physical injuries – but rose above them to greater career heights than before – were unique. There is, in fact, only one example: Zero Mostel.”

– Jared Brown

There are three questions here:
1) Is Jim Brochu’s monodrama Zero Hour good theatre?
2) Do you come away knowing more about the life of Zero Mostel?
3) Is Brochu’s performance a passable imitation of this fascinating man?

The answer to the first question is a resounding “Yes!” and on that basis alone I recommend that you get tickets now. This is a very funny and enlightening show and Brochu, who would appear to be the director as well as the playwright and sole performer, throws himself into his role with wit and energy. Brochu received the 2010 Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance and a Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor in a Play for Zero Hour, which ran 14 months and played 238 performances off-Broadway. It is a treat to have it here in the Berkshires!

The second question is much harder to answer for the reason explained in the quotation below from Jared Brown’s biography of Mostel:

“Among his relatives, friends, and co-workers, no two people seem to have formed the same impression of [Mostel]…Even the facts about his life are in dispute…Except for the one generalization agreed upon by all who knew him or saw him perform – that he was wildly extravagantly, formidably bigger than reality, onstage and off, and in every respect: his physical bulk, his attitudes, and his appetites – his life resists neat definition.”

Having perused Brown’s book, Gene Wilder’s autobiography, and seen Brochu’s play, I can tell you right now that their facts about and impressions of the man don’t agree. And they all knew Mostel and had access to primary sources. So the bottom line is that no one will ever really know what is fact and what is fiction in Mostel’s life. He liked to tell stories and he liked to tell different stories to different people. So while you learn a lot about Mostel, the things you learn may or may not have happened, or may not have happened in the order in which Brochu recounts them.

What we do know is that Mostel was born in Brooklyn in 1915 to a devoutly Jewish family. His given name was Samuel Joel and he went by Sammy until his comedy career got underway and his manager dubbed him Zero. He served in the army. He married twice – first unsuccessfully to a Jewish girl and then “till death do us part” to a Catholic named Kate Harkins. Zero and Kate fought and loved fiercely and had two sons. He was a painter all his life – it was his first and his greatest love and the thing that held him together during the McCarthy years when he was blacklisted and couldn’t get work as an actor. His career as a comedian took off like a rocket. His career as an actor took longer to get established but he ultimately won three Tonys for his work – for Rhinoceros in 1961, …Forum in 1962, and Fiddler on the Roof in 1964 – despite having his left leg crushed by the 86th street cross-town bus in 1960. He died on September 8, 1977 in Philadelphia where he was in pre-Broadway try-outs with a show called The Merchant, (based on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice).

Plenty of drama there!

So, is Brochu’s performance a passable imitation of the real Zero? No, and here’s why. Mostel was, as Brown stated, “wildly extravagantly, formidably bigger than reality, onstage and off.” That is what made Mostel unique. Brochu is playing seven shows a week during this three-week run at Barrington Stage, with each performance lasting about 100 minutes during which he is on stage alone and uninterrupted. It is not possible for him to be that big for that long, nor would it really be particularly good theatre. The show is structured as a late-in-life interview Mostel is giving to a New York Times reporter in his artist’s studio. Brochu has wisely built in periods of low and high energy to pace himself and his audience. Like I said, great theatre, but mediocre Mostel.

The other reason why Brochu can’t do a realistic imitation of Zero on stage is because he was incredibly foul-mouthed. Every other word out of his mouth was of the unprintable, four-letter, put-yer-hands-over-the kiddies’-ears variety. In order to create a show that would be broadly marketable, Brochu has had to tone what a conversation with Zero would actually have sounded like.

But with the aid of a bad comb-over and some alarming drawn-on eyebrows Brochu looks a lot like Zero, as you can see from the publicity stills, and since we can no longer have the real thing, this polite imitation is the next best thing. And it gets not only Zero’s remarkable personal story out there, but the important reminder of the dangers of narrow-minded hysteria of the type whipped up by Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

“We were all political, and we [his friends] were all left. But as anybody from that period will tell you, being left was no crime – not until [Joseph] McCarthy showed up and put fear into everybody’s hearts and lives.”

– Jack Gilford, Mostel’s friend and fellow Black-listed comedian

“Informant believed Subject to be an extreme Leftist, and in his opinion, Subject was attempting to bore from within through comedy, a form of the usual Communist technique.”

The second quotation comes from the transcript of an interview with a civilian conducted by Army investigators during Mostel’s time in the service when they were trying to determine whether he was fit to serve as Overseas Entertainment Director in the Special Services branch, NOT from the FBI investigation for HUAC a decade or so later. The seeds were already being planted and, as Gilford said, everyone was a leftist in the Great Depression when the right wing “establishment” seemed to have so dismally failed the American people politically and financially.

Julianne Boyd, Artistic Director of Barrington Stage, noted in her curtain speech that the company has produced several plays dealing with civil liberties – notably Arthur Miller’s The Crucible last fall, and Trumbo a few years back. They will conclude the 2011 season with a play about civil rights activist William Kunstler (1919-1995). In an interesting homophonic coincidence Brochu uses the Yiddish word kinstler – artist – to refer to Mostel early in the play.

It is too bad that Brochu is surrounded with canvases facing away from the audience. I would guess that Mostel’s estate didn’t allow the use of any reproductions of his art work, which is great pity because it would add so much to both the appearance and context of the play if we could see some of the creations that Mostel felt so strongly defined him as a person. But Brochu does create one nice little watercolor during his performance – theoretically a “portrait” of the non-existent interviewer, “Arthur.” I couldn’t paint a picture if you gave me 100 minutes alone in a room! To do it in 90 minutes of non-stop solo acting is nothing short of miraculous. Bravo!

“Once in a while, when I’m confronted by some pompous authority figure who thinks that his job outranks any artistic concerns, I think of Zero and how he might handle the situation: let out a loud fart and then say, “Oops, I beg your pardon…now what was it you were saying?”

– Gene Wilder

Zero Hour will be presented at Barrington Stage Company Stage 2, 36 Linden Street, Pittsfield, from May 18 through June 10. The show runs an hour and forty minutes with no intermission and is suitable for ages 12 and up. Performances Tues-Fri. at 7:30pm, Sat. at 4pm and 8pm, Sunday at 3pm. Tickets: $15-$39. Seniors: $25 all matinees. Youth 18 and under or students with valid ID $15 all performances except Saturday evening.

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