I'm not easily shocked but I found the last 30 minutes of the script genuinely shocking. I can't imagine what people made of it in 1976. Heckart's role is bravura, and I can only imagine how wonderful she was*, in effect playing 3 different women in one character. That strange coda must've been harrowing, when she reverts fully to the title character and then abruptly takes on the persona of the Baff (a 4th person). The play has a genuinely theatrical turn in the middle, or probably about 40% of the way in, which is why the placement of the intermission was so debated. Apparently, moving the intermission resulted in one of the quickest hair/costume/make-up changeovers ever, with Heckart required to become a new person in minutes. Levin objected, and if memory served, he restored the intermission in the French text. I'll pull down my copy later this morning. He did adjust the removal of the body, so that no nudity was required.
*over the weekend, a cable station played that awful film version of "Burnt Offerings," in which Heckart has a small role. It was filmed/released circa the same year as the B'way production, and I got an odd glimpse of what she must've been like in/as "Veronica..." |
