Ridiculous: The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam

Rating:
Summary: The Letter, Not the Spirit
Review: A disappointment. Kaufman gets the facts, but misses the spirit. To be sure, any biographer of Ludlam is up against a lot. The main problem is that a lot of the man's art existed "at the vanishing point," that is to say, in performance. Ludlam was above all, an inspired actor, and acting (HIS acting) and style took precedence over everything (he gave the world no great plays, and his company consisted of weak, noncompetive actors). Capturing a performance in words is very difficult, and Kaufman has no aptitude for it. Further,he is too much the fan. Though he acknowledges all of CL's personal and professional faults, his admiration always guides the direction of the book and we never quite get the man whole, or any explanation of why we should admire him. The most one can say is that Kaufman has gathered the information necessary for others to assess Ludlam's quality and his contribution to theatre.

Rating:
Summary: A Thorough and Moving Account
Review: A disappointment. Kaufman gets the facts, but misses the spirit. To be sure, any biographer of Ludlam is up against a lot. The main problem is that a lot of the man's art existed "at the vanishing point," that is to say, in performance. Ludlam was above all, an inspired actor, and acting (HIS acting) and style took precedence over everything (he gave the world no great plays, and his company consisted of weak, noncompetive actors). Capturing a performance in words is very difficult, and Kaufman has no aptitude for it. Further,he is too much the fan. Though he acknowledges all of CL's personal and professional faults, his admiration always guides the direction of the book and we never quite get the man whole, or any explanation of why we should admire him. The most one can say is that Kaufman has gathered the information necessary for others to assess Ludlam's quality and his contribution to theatre.

Rating:
Summary: A Thorough and Moving Account
Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Ludlam's life. The author does a terrific job explaining the origins of both Ludlam's talent and his powerful (and often exasperating) personality. Of course, the book can't be as much fun as the shows were, but it is nonetheless an exciting and full account of one of the true originals of our theatrical times. I do agree with the reviewer who says that a postscript about the Ridiculous post-Ludlam would have been nice, but the book still deserves the highest praise for capturing a tricky subject so clearly.

Rating:
Summary: Art Imitates Life
Review: Reading this book reminded me of sitting in the cramped Sheridan Square theatre watching Ludlam and his cronies perform--sometimes the performances were magical, but just as often I was more frustrated than excited by the all-too evident rough edges. There are problems with this book that should have been addressed by the editor, just as a more objective director could have improved some of those ridiculous Ridiculous evenings.

The design, which eschews traditional punctutation such as indented paragraphs, is difficult and unpleasant to read, because it doesn't allow the narrtive to flow. Much of the writing is repetitous, as Ludlam's passive-agressive directing technique is detailed again and again for each show.

But the biggest flaw is a lack of an epilogue to update the lives of the book's vivid "supporting cast" (Black-Eyed Susan, Lola Pashalinski, Bill Vehr, the late Christopher Scott, and most important, Everett Quinton, who became an icon of the off-off-Broadway movement himself with his later perfomances in Irma Vep and Camille. Are they still performing or are they out of the business? (P.S. Pashalinski was just in a theatre piece about the changing lives of actresses.) I know that the book is about the life of Ludlam and not the ridiculous theatre movement in general, but this reader felt cheated by the amount of time spent getting to know Ludlam's actors in print, only to have them disappear at the book's final scene, the memorial performance.

Also needed is information about about the few shows that the Ridiculous produced after Ludlam. It would be fascinating to know just how many performances of Irma Vep (one of the most wonderful nights in New York theatre this show biz addict ever experienced) are given today, or if Ludlam's Die Fledermaus is still in the rep at Santa Fe or elsewhere. These are big questions, because Ludlam has been dead for fifteen years, and his light is dimming, in spite of his influence on Tony Kushner (and who is performing his epic Angels in America lately, much less Ludlam's Turds in Hell?) and Charles Busch (who had his biggest success in years as the author of a mainstream comedy where he didn't even perform, much less wear fish nets).

And finally, like many biographies, you end up wondering why someone didn't haul off and smack Ludlam--he's that exasperating, and ultimately, not the kind of person you want to may want to spend a lot of time with. But in spite of the book's flaws, I am grateful to Kaufman for catching the excitement of Ludlam's life and times.