The Lingering Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson (pictured) died this week. He wrote many highly regarded plays — “Balm in Gilead,” a 1965 drama set in a cafe favored by addicts and prostitutes; “The Hot L Baltimore,” a 1973 drama set in a run-down hotel; and “Burn This,” a 1987 drama that featured a shot-from-guns entrance by John Malkovich. But I will always associate Wilson with “Fifth of July,” part of his Talley trilogy. I didn’t see the 1978 off-Broadway production, at Circle Rep, that starred William Hurt and Jeff Daniels, but I did see the 1980 Broadway production, with Daniels, Christopher Reeve, and, in my favorite of her roles, Swoosie Kurtz as a pill-popping whack job. I suppose it wasn’t a perfect play, but, having just moved to New York, I found it full of everything I sought in the city: sensitivity, gayness, drugs: plus the lingering ghost of Tennessee Williams, whom I also met that year. Wilson was the type of artist that New York used to be full of. But they now live in New Jersey (where Wilson died), so I don’t run into them as much.
