Side Man: A Little Off-Key
Zachary Scott Theatre Center Kleberg Stage, through June 22
Running Time: 1 hr, 30 min
I’m not a complete anti-TV snob; I’m not about to condemn the whole medium on the basis of its unwatchable sitcoms and reality backwash. But if you give me a choice between watching even great TV and going out to see live theatre, I’ll pick the play every time. Why? For one thing, you can tape a TV show and watch it later; you could never fully capture a night of theatre on video or film. It’s not meant to absorb the extra distance that those media create. For me, the central beauty of theatre lies in its directness, a sort of mainlining between actors and audience that’s only possible when they’re in the same room.
Side Man, the Tony Award-winning play by Warren Leight, experiments with this concept of theatrical distance, with mixed results. The play’s plot centers on a group of jazz musicians who, over the course of their careers, find themselves brushed aside by changing music trends. Where once they toured “60 weeks a year,” enjoying unlimited opportunities due to their musical versatility — sidemen can solo, play backup, harmonize, anything a band requires — they now face extinction because of rock & roll. In Side Man, Leight attempts to illustrate the professional marginalization these men experience while also showing how they’ve brushed aside their own families for the love of their craft.
To explore this conflict’s many facets, Leight has employed a narrator: Clifford, the son of sideman Gene Glimmer. Clifford addresses the audience directly through most of the play, creating a narrative screen through which we view the jazzmen’s unique lifestyle. Through Clifford’s “straight” eyes, we witness the musicians’ casual attitude toward drugs and unemployment, listen to their sideways financial logic, and become familiar with their superstitions and justifications. Leight’s play shines in its ability to bring to life this fascinating world. And in the Zachary Scott Theatre Center’s production, director Dave Steakley handles the play’s group scenes with a naturalistic hand, conducting the overlapping conversations and monologue “solos” like a good bandleader. But while the narrator serves as a tour guide in the musicians’ world, he also creates a frustrating distance from the action; through much of the production, I felt like I was watching TV, eternally outside, viewing the events through glass. Though Leight may have created this effect intentionally to make the audience feel left out the way the musicians’ family members do, it made me feel disconnected from the story and characters on stage.
There is one moment in which this effect dissolves, with lovely results. In Act II, horn player Al (Les McGehee) plays a recording of trumpet player Clifford Brown for the other musicians backstage at a concert, while 10-year-old Clifford (Tom Huston) simultaneously watches TV all alone at home, waiting for Dad (the excellent Marco Perella). No words are spoken, but the audience is able to feel, at the same time, both the musicians’ hopeless reverence for Brown’s magical playing and the resulting loneliness of a child. While the rest of Side Man‘s impact is dulled by the distance that Leight has created between viewer and actor, this scene provides a sharp example of live theatre’s power to pierce the heart of a moment, when an audience and cast is able to truly share it.
This article appears in June 6 • 2003.