By Jane McKell
Middle Ground’s national touring Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune is as beautifully crafted as Debussy’s music in the title - played pianissimo with intensity and distance.
Terrence McNally’s observant, bittersweet comedy portrays an overnight, first-date between middle-aged, damaged losers Frankie (Kelly McGillis), a waitress in a New York diner, and Johnny (Rolf Saxon) the newly-hired, short order chef.
McGillis plays to perfection Frankie, a failed actress who considers herself a simple person. Saxon’s utterly convincing Johnny is an ex-con who keeps a complete works of Shakespeare in his locker. Hardened by life’s disappointments, they are unlikely candidates for romance.
Although the script is steeped in New York culture, a combination of McNalley’s writing, Lunney’s direction, and McGillis and Saxon’s performances has us laughing and crying in all the right places. The production bravely begins as the couple’s love-making shudders into post coitus - Frankie wants to be alone while Johnny wants to linger and talk. Flatteringly to both luminaries - with successes in huge films such as Witness, The Accused and Top Gun in McGillis’ case and Saxon’s Mission Impossible and Entrapment - the audience is transported by two utterly convincing character actors to become a fly on the wall in the former’s dowdy one-roomed city apartment.
As the night unfolds, Frankie and Johnny tentatively reveal themselves and several coincidences to each other - Johnny has found his soul mate but Frankie is far more cautious as they stumble, fall and start all over again. Directed and designed with meticulous detail by Michael Lunney, this production is a touchy-feely silk purse full of affecting, re-affirming goodies, but make sure your purse has a hanky in it.