By Eugene Paul

 

As measured by the money meter, a palpable hit.

 

 

“Who’s that?” my companion whispered, nudging sideways with her chin as the gorgeous, gorgeous creature squeezed by smiling apologetically.  I nodded.  “Yes, it is.  And look over there.”  She slid her eyes four seats over.  Her eyebrows went up.  I nodded, then jerked my head left.   “And there.”

 

This went on during the waiting minutes before the curtain rose. (Curtain! A for real humdinger curtain!)  Everybody, but everybody, who hadn’t been able to scramble to see Pacino – or wouldn’t because of the word out –was desperately catching the show before it closed. Negative press?  Ha.  Twenty-seven producers were happy.  The show showed a profit! Negative press, beating up on playwright Mamet, beating up on director MacKinnon, and especially on Pacino.  And here the house packed. Stylishly packed. (Except for that eight year old kid dead center, flanked by two babes.) China Doll.  China Doll? Whatever it meant to playwright David Mamet certainly did not register with the majority of any of the glitterati present. Warning bells.   Inevitable Lateniks.  More warning bells really meaning it. We hunker down.   Pacino time.

 

And there he is. Not Mickey Ross, the character Mamet created, eccentric, high flying billionaire in his big city penthouse that blared Money, Power, tastefully tasteless emptiness, perfectly nailed by savvy set designer Derek McLane.  No, this is Pacino, wearing canny costume designer Jess Goldstein’s billionaire garb as if it were Salvation Army rejects, peering at us with amused calculation. He knows why we’re here.  And it isn’t for any China Doll.  Does it matter?  It’s all Pacino now.  Does any of the actual Mamet dialogue exist any more? Some of them must be the author’s words or Carson, (Christopher Denham) playing Ross’s confidential factotum would never be able to respond on cue.  There he is, on top of the phone calls, carefully biting his tongue, quick to offer a steady stream of drinks, neat as a pin in absolute contrast to Pacino, a head taller, far handsomer, half Pacino’s age, almost entirely wiped out by Pacino’s presence.

 

 

And Mickey Ross, the billionaire? He’s got Pacino’s practiced drollness down pat, his shrugs, his flying hands, his baggy pants, his undone neckwear, his godawful shoes, his repertoire of brays to whispers, and every Noo Yawk word sprayed out in  calculated  spurts, utterly banal but who cares.  This is Pacino in the sagging flesh, in the pissed off dutifulness of putting on a show he does not want to do, with words he repeats and repeats – surely, Mamet’s not that bad –and behaving any damn way he wants to because we’re here to adore him, regardless.  It’s fifty, sixty years of performing and who can be perfect for fifty, sixty years, every performance all out top flight?  It’s obvious the adulation says they don’t—we don’t?—give a damn, just do your shtick, you’re Pacino.

 

Oh, the play? Well, it’s something about a billionaire who bought his sweetie a 60 million dollar plane, prelude to their May-December nuptials, but she can’t get the plane until he coughs up $6000,000 tax. Peanuts, yeah, but peanuts like that no billionaire worth his salted peanuts just gives up without a lot of weaving and bobbing and dodging. Whereupon the young sweetie goes into hiding. Whoops.

 

Then things get harsh.  Even though the plane is in Canada a U.S. Governor persuades authorities to clamp down.  Then the governor tries to arrest the billionaire for non-payment.  Fishy? Yes.  Payback for past injury? Yes.  And a disappearing girl friend.  This overblown, illogical concoction is a fifteen minute playlet at best blown up to two hours.  But it’s two hours of Pacino.

 

He gets his standing ovation.  Ovation over, everybody goes out, happy.  We overhear one of the young lovelies saying to another, “ Isn’t Passino marvelous?”  Who?

                                                         

China Doll. At the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45^th Street. Through January 31.