Mondays are sparse on Broadway, but I’d go through withdrawal symptoms without a play to see. I was scheduled to see a new musical called Hands on a Hardbody, based on the little-seen film about a truck dealership’s marathon promotion, but it failed to attract much of an audience and closed two weeks ago.
Instead, it was back to off-Broadway, to Ensemble Studio Theatre far on the West Side of town, for a new play, Finks, by Joe Gilford. He is the son of Jack Gilford (Cabaret, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Cracker Jack commercials) and his wife Madeline, both of whom got caught in the devastating vise of the show business blacklist of the 1950s.
That is the subject of Finks, a fictional drama about a politically active singer-dancer and a nightclub comic who get called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, asked to name the names of other Communist sympathizers in a cabal called the Actors’ Faction.
It is a fascinating, dark chapter in our history that is naturally dramatic, and an important story to tell younger generations, although Gilford demonstrates no particular personal insights on the subject and Finks goes exactly where you expect it to.