Bergen, Hamill triumph in 'Six Lessons'

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- Veteran thespians Polly Bergen and Mark Hamill are doing a welcome star turn together on Broadway in "Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks," a new play by Richard Alfieri that may not jerk tears but is guaranteed to dampen a few eyes.

This most enjoyable production at the Belasco Theater is a wonderful combination of comedy and bittersweet drama that suits the talents of Bergen and Hamill to a tee. It explores the nature of friendship between a lonely widow and a younger gay man who can't seem to establish lasting relationships with his own sex. The subject matter has been dramatized before, but Alfieri's touch is light enough to make it seem fresh.

Bergen brings more than 50 years experience as a stage, screen, radio, and television actress (she's also been a much-recorded vocalist and author) to the role of Lily Harrison, a 72-year-old coping with solitude and threatening health problems in a retirement condo in St. Petersburg Beach, Fla.

Lily is a beautiful, brave, and resourceful woman who is determined to find one last measure of happiness to make up for a disastrous marriage. So natural is Bergen's acting that it seems almost effortless, and the actress insists on understatement in a role that could easily have been overplayed.

Hamill, who gained fame as "Star War's" Luke Skywalker, has played the title role in "The Elephant Man," Mozart in "Amadeus," and Tony Hart in "Harrigan 'n Hart" on Broadway plus writing, producing and directing for films and television. He gives the role of wise-cracking dance instructor Michael Minetti an angry, astringent edge natural to victims of discrimination and losers in the game of love.

Michael has fled New York and the diminishing job opportunities open to an aging Broadway chorus boy for a less stressful life in Florida's la-la land. In contrast to Bergen, Hamill plays this somewhat flamboyant role to the hilt, but that is consonant with Michael's character.

Lily has survived marriage to a Southern Baptist minister who disapproved of most of the innocent pleasures of life she enjoyed as a young woman, such as dancing. Pretending not to know how to dance, she hires Michael to teach her in six lessons in six weeks, each session devoted to a dance style -- fox trot, waltz, tango, cha-cha, jitterbug, and disco.

Michael immediately suspects Lily knows more about dance than she lets on and that she has lied about her age, making herself four years younger. Lily immediately sees that behind Michael's personality mix of high humor and queenly disdain lurks a soul that has known torment. Their tempers flair when they are caught in lies, and after their secrets are painfully revealed, they reconcile.

Then, as the sun disappears spectacularly into the Gulf of Mexico just beyond the picture window of Lily's apartment, this odd couple find absolution in mutual affection based on sincere regard for each other's needs.

It may be a melancholy ending, but Bergen and Hamill are fine enough actors not to let the action subside into bathos. "Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks" is sentimental enough as it is, which possibly limits its audience to an older generation of theater-goers. Plays in this vein are not likely to have a long shelf life on Broadway where big musical brassiness and comedic triviality are the current coin of the realm.

However, the play was tried out successfully at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles and the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, and has already had a run in Berlin. It will open shortly in Vienna, and productions already are planned for Essen, Koblenz and Hamburg in Germany. A tour of Austria and Switzerland will begin in the fall of 2004.

Alfieri is adapting the play for film production by Universal Pictures, in case you don't see it on Broadway.

Arthur Allan Seidelman, a stage and screen director with sterling credits, has managed the Broadway production of this two-actor play with admirable dexterity, making up for the absence of a larger cast that might have enriched the action. As it is, we never meet Ida, Lily's interfering downstairs neighbor, or her son, John, who may be the man for whom Michael has been saving himself.

Roy Christopher has designed a condo interior that is realistic in every detail, and Ron Ruzika has devised the lighting and the sunset effects. Helen Butler's costumes are gold coast contemporary, and her gowns for Bergen are particularly complimentary though hardly what a minister's widow might wear. The dance sequences choreographed by Kay Cole are flattering but not flashy.