Raspy portrayal of George Burns falls flat

It's a bit ironic that "Say Goodnight Gracie" stopped by The Smith Center just about the time it was announced Hal Holbrook was canceling his scheduled "Mark Twain Tonight" at Artemus Ham Hall (due to a sudden movie offer). Both shows are monologues that give us life through the eyes of a celebrity.

But, wow, what a difference. Holbrook (who's performed his production here several times) disappears into his character. At evening's end you feel as if you've shared a chummy chat in the living room of Samuel Clemens.

But union actor Alan Safier as legendary comic and Academy Award-winning actor George Burns doesn't fool you for a second.

His phony gray hair, falsely hunched back, and studied mannerisms suggest an actor trying to impersonate. It's no surprise at the curtain call when we discover the performer to be much younger than Burns (the entertainer lived to be 100, and Rupert Holmes' script gives us the elderly man looking back on his life).

Safier and director Michael White picked the wrong kind of character for this kind of mimicry. Burns' jokes were not necessarily the kind of things that would appear funny on paper. So much of his appeal had to do with how he got us to look at him as an intimate friend. Like Jack Benny (Burns' best bud), Burns could make you laugh by just staring at the screen. And when in his later years he began talking about personal details of his sometimes difficult life, you felt as if he were a dear uncle you wanted to caress. (He wasn't self-pitying, though.) I never stopped chuckling with him through old radio shows, television, stand-up and films. And I never quite knew why. It certainly wasn't verbal cleverness. He had that "it" factor that made me putty in his hands.

Safier's all verbal. His raspy voice (was Burns ever raspy?) makes him difficult to listen to, and many of Holmes' jokes fall flat. A good portion, no doubt, are straight out of Burns' mouth; but without that "it" factor, flat's forever flat.

There were some fascinating screen montages of Burns' work with wife Gracie Allen, and fans of the legend were given plenty of juicy facts to mull over (such as how Burns decided he should be straight man to Gracie, how they slowly fell in love, and the secret to why Gracie always wore long-sleeved blouses). Safier also gets a lot of mileage out of the play's poignant parts.

But this production was a lost opportunity. It's a reminder of the many traps inherent in portraying a character whose persona is known by millions.

One last regret: The Troesh Studio has all of its chairs on one-level surface. When you have 13 rows, with 18 seats across, that makes for a lot of head straining. I have to admit that several times I settled for staring at the two big heads in front of me. Who knows, maybe during that time, Safier was exceptional.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.