Early on the morning of October 21, 1938 Dorothy Hale, a struggling actress, was found on the sidewalk in front of New York’s swank Hampshire House, presumably having leaped from her 16th floor apartment. Shortly thereafter, the celebrated Clare Booth Luce, successful Broadway playwright, wife of publishing tycoon Henry Luce, internationally laden with honors and on a first name basis with all the power brokers, commissioned the unknown painter wife of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, to paint a remembrance portrait of her friend Dorothy Hale. All the famous, glittering folk have faded into the dust of history but the Kahlo painting remains, a vivid lance thrust into today from that half remembered time. Why was Clare Booth Luce a friend of Dorothy? Was it indeed a suicide? Or a well concealed murder? Who were Dorothy’s other friends? In fact, who paid the rent and why? Certainly not Dorothy.
Playwright Myra Bairstow has spent ten years delving into these obscurities and mysteries and piecing together the facts, along with an array of plausible, devastating assumptions and conclusions, resulting in a distinctly odd kettle of fish with distinctly disagreeable odors that do not spare any of the big names she drops. If it were only a question of name dropping for reflected glory Ms. Bairstow would not shine as much even as her fish stew, but her play leans heavily on the gilded, accepted images of these latter day luminaries and thereby she hangs her tale. She ladles out her gorgeous gossip in a limp first act, then gets down to fireworks for a rouser of a second.
Not three weeks after Dorothy Hale’s death, the Kahlo painting is finished and lives are hanging in the balance. Dorothy had obviously been the paramour at Hampshire House of President Roosevelt’s most trusted, most powerful confidant, Harry Hopkins. Harry, much older than Dorothy, has changed from lover to suitor: he wants to marry her. Although such a marriage would solve all her problems and benefit Harry’s political plans, she demurs; another man has come into her life, handsome, romantic, married. Mitch, a news writer for the Luce publications, enemies of the administration in Washington.
Playwright Bairstow sees plots and stains until everybody is ensnared and Dorothy’s life is in jeopardy. Clare Booth Luce had an early play in which two actresses. Rosamond Pinchot and Dorothy Hale became friends and later both actresses committed suicide. Were there connections? To whom? Bairstow lets this red herring muddle the stew. Clare Booth Luce met her own paramour every week in Dorothy’s apartment, the head of the Communist muscle in the United States, Earl Bridges, anathema in more ways than one to her husband and a dangerous story for her in every way. Harry Hopkins is shocked and furious when Mitch comes out with the story that Hopkins has been given the green light to go for the presidency, a tid bit he told Dorothy. Frank, the doorman, tells other bits and pieces to Frida Kahlo, who absorbs it all and puts it into her painting’s aura. Clare Booth Luce hates the painting and invents an unsubstantiated suicde note Dorothy left for her. Enough?
Nicholas Martin-Smith is very likeable as the doorman enamored of Dorothy Hale. Purva Bedi makes a splendid Frida Kahlo, weaving her tales into her painting. Patrick Boll is matinee idol to the life as Dorothy’s Mitch, her other amour. Laura Koffman is pretty and pallid as Dorothy, dead and alive. Mark La Mura as Harry Hopkins has far more good looks and sex appeal that the cadaverous original. And Dina Ann Comolli turns the deeply complex, sophisticated Clare Booth Luce into a petulant Westchester ditz. Director Pamela Hall moves her people adequately, turns up the heat when she finds the meat, but is not aided by the strange set delivered from designer Josh Iacovelli. Rebecca Bernstein’s costumes are conventional except for perilous female headgear. If dish is your dish, revel, no matter your political preference. History is written --sometimes painted—by survivors, such as Frida Kahlo.
St. Luke’s Theater, 308 W. 46th St. Tues-Sun 7 pm, Mat Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm, Tickets, Ticketmaster.