A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
The Odyssey Theatre
Thru May 1
RECOMMENDED
John Updike once called Mickey Mouse “the most persistent and pervasive figure of American popular culture in his century.” The mouse came into being in 1928, birthed by a young animator named Walt Disney. For years, Disney personally gave voice to this cartoon character he created; later, his empire flourishing, he strove to project an image of himself as a benevolent American granddad, appearing in millions of American homes every weekday via the TV program, The Mouseketeers. Watching the show every evening became a ritual for millions of kids, and the Disney brand grew ubiquitous.
But somewhere along the way Disney’s squeaky-clean persona got tarnished. For years there were rumors — that he was a racist, a Jew hater, a pal of Joe McCarthy, a Nazi. Many of these troubling assertions were popularized by writer Marc Eliot in a 1996 biography, Walt Disney, Hollywood’s Dark Prince. Since then, they’ve been disputed by other biographers – Neal Gabler for one — and by people who worked at Disney Studios, some of them Jewish or people of color.
I went scurrying for information about Disney after attending the West Coast premiere of Lucas Hnath’s 2013 play, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, which is directed by Peter Richards at the Odyssey Theatre. In it, Disney is portrayed as a relentlessly egomaniacal individual who values nothing beyond what might personally benefit him or serve to aggrandize his image of himself as a perfect mortal, blameless in all things.
A Public Reading is not a biopic, however, despite having Disney as the titled character and the playwright’s import of actual events in Disney’s career as building blocks for his script. Instead, it’s an exploration of the interplay between power and celebrity, an illustration of how the two in tandem can snowball into gross megalomaniacal obsession.
The play is atypically set up as the reading of a screenplay that Disney (Kevin Ashworth) has written about his life, an effort prompted by the real — but publicly denied — anxiety about his imminent demise (He’s coughing blood). The script is read by himself, his brother Roy (Thomas Piper), his daughter (Brittney Bertier) and his son-in-law (Cory Washington). Most of the time the performers are seated at a table. The show’s central dynamic is the interchange between Walt and Roy, who is as sane and humane as Walt is deranged and perverse.
One manifestation of this perversity is Walt’s trumpeted insistence of his own infallibility, except when things go wrong, at which point he blames either Roy, or Roy’s son or some other unfortunate person — and insists they take the blame. Sometimes the blunder can be huge and public, as with the 1941 animators’ strike for better wages and conditions (The historical Disney may not have been a Nazi but yes, he was a right-wing Republican and responded to the strike by firing 14 animators, including Art Babbitt, the creator of Goofy.) In Hnath’s play, Walt insists that Roy be the public fall guy for his own anti-union crap.
Another sequence recalls the brouhaha over the 1958 nature film Wild Wilderness, a Disney production which filmed a group of lemmings leaping into the Arctic in an act of mass suicide. Suicide by lemmings is a longtime myth, one that Disney (and many others) had bought into. But lemmings are not biologically programmed to leap to their deaths, so, to make that happen, they had to be prompted by the crew. The story came out, and it grew to a public relations nightmare.
Both incidents form the basis of “chapters” in Walt’s screenplay. Each time a problem arises, Walt rants and raves, while Roy cowers (until he doesn’t). This makes A Public Reading almost entirely Walt’s show. Indeed, what makes the play intriguing, despite static elements, is this portrait of megalomania — its depiction, in the extreme, of the behavior of someone who rejects our commonly shared reality and brashly creates one more palatable to his taste. And here Ashworth delivers: his portrayal is as persuasive as if some malicious malignant spirit has inhabited his body and consumed whatever soul the demented Walt might once have possessed. His eyes gleam madly. His sentences snap. He fairly twitches with irritation and self-righteousness throughout.
As Roy, Piper is fittingly timorous and deferential, calling up the image of a deer in the headlights. Bertier scores a halcyon moment when, as Walt’s long-suffering daughter, she confronts him with all his past abuse. Washington’s supplicating son-in-law serves the plot.
I’m not sure the layout of the venue, which had the audience sitting catty-corner against two walls, best supports the production. I had a great seat for viewing Ashworth and his antics, a perspective that may not have been available to everyone. But the setup had me only now and then noticing Nick Santiago’s projections near the top rear of the playing space.
Scenic designer David Offner’s modest set is nicely embellished with designer Jenine MacDonald’s outsized props — a pill bottle with large colored pills, another labeled “vodka” in big letters, and white handkerchiefs comically smeared with red. Displayed on an easel are Kiff Scholl’s cartoon illustrations, prefacing the content of each chapter. Costume designer Kate Bergh comments on Walt’s eccentricity by colorfully decking him in salmon-colored pants, teal vest, checkered shirt and gold-and-blue polka dot tie.
Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A.; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru May 1. Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission. www.Onstage411.com/Disney
