Theatre review: Good Night, Oscar

Documenting perhaps the first, definitely not the last, nervous breakdown on live TV, Doug Wright's Good Night, Oscar goes behind the scenes of an episode of The Tonight Show from 1958. Moving from its usual New York home to Hollywood for a week, the show is hoping for a ratings smash, and host Jack Paar (Ben Rappaport) wants to open with one of his own favourite regular guests, who always gets a big audience reaction: Actor and musician Oscar Levant (Sean Hayes,) who's become as well known for his near-the-knuckle witticisms and acerbic comments as he has for his virtuoso piano-playing, where he specialises in the works of his old friend George Gershwin. Oscar is often fashionably late, but with this episode coming from the headquarters Jack has the network head himself, Bob Sarnoff (Richard Katz) pressuring him to find a last-minute replacement.

It's only when Levant's wife June (Rosalie Craig) arrives that Jack finds out the truth: She's secretly had her husband committed to a mental institution, for his OCD and addiction to painkillers; when the TV booking came in, she arranged for him to be signed out for four hours to do the show.

Oscar arrives accompanied by orderly Alvin (Daniel Adeosun,) who’s there to keep him in check, but the addict is canny enough to trick starstruck runner Max (Eric Sirakian) into getting him some painkillers. One overdose later and Oscar is appearing live on the talk show, but even more confused, grouchy and controversial than usual, with Paar goading him into broaching all the taboo subjects Sarnoff has explicitly warned him against. Inevitably he goes too far with a comment about Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe’s marriage, and the complaint calls from viewers start flooding in.

Lisa Peterson’s production showcases Wright’s clever play. Inevitably it’s going to stir up thoughts on television far beyond the 1950s, and the way exploiting people’s mental illness for ratings has become commonplace, with the two men in charge displaying different sides of this: Sarnoff the cautious executive trying to get ratings without putting himself or the network at any risk; Paar ultimately the more sinister character, supposedly Levant’s friend but happy to let him on air when he knows his mental state, and unsubtly push him into making the kind of comment that’ll get him into trouble.

But the play isn’t as heavy-handed as its characters can be, allowing us to see the parallels for ourselves while essentially offering up a character study. It also uses the musician’s famously acidic wit to deliver a lot of laughs without ever feeling as if they’re at his expense – Oscar might be in a lot of physical and emotional pain but the one-liners are as sharp as ever, and if he's the target it's by choice. Wright suggests a lot of Levant’s mental health issues originated with his relationship with Gershwin, who they both agreed was the superior composer. After his early death, Levant dedicated his life to playing his friend’s music, essentially giving up on composing his own. Wright uses the conceit of him having dissociative episodes to show us some of his exchanges with Gershwin (David Burnett) and the complex mix of hero-worship and bitter jealousy that defined their relationship.

Hayes won a Tony Award for playing Levant on Broadway, a fact the publicity’s blurb manages to mention twice in the same sentence, and it’s certainly a star performance full of eccentricity and pathos without feeling like it’s exploiting the character’s multiple mental health issues. It also culminates in a piano performance of “Rhapsody in Blue” that’s as unsettlingly weird as it is virtuosic (Hayes appears to be playing for real and by all accounts is.) It’s that ability to channel the personality into the music as well as the performance that really makes this stand out as a character study, and the play might have benefitted from ending on this high note rather than adding a coda following what everyone else in the story thought of the very public breakdown – still, though, a successful evening at the theatre with a personality as distinctive as Oscar’s own.

Good Night, Oscar by Doug Wright is booking until the 21st of September at the Barbican Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.