Gilda Radner (Jordan Kai Burnett, left) greets Gene Wilder (Jonathan Randell Silver) for the first time in Cary Gitter’s Gene and Gilda.
If only the romance of Gilda Radner and Gene Wilder were as straightforward as two comic icons collaborating on a professional project and eventually falling in love. For Wilder and Radner, it wasn’t nearly that simple. Cary Gitter’s Gene and Gilda provides the backstory of how these talented individuals managed a complex personal magnetism, bolstering each other’s confidence and respective on-screen personas, that morphed into a deep love.
Wilder (Silver, left) has a nervous collapse while Radner (Burnett) tries to assess what’s happening. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Gitter’s script, based loosely on fact, begins with Wilder’s appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, sometimes in the 1980s. Cavett (The Interviewer, whose voice we only hear) is probing Wilder, already a film star from The Producers, Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and Blazing Saddles, about Radner (Jordan Kai Burnett), one of the founding cast members of Saturday Night Live. Wilder strongly resists, and Cavett, forewarned about raising the topic, should have declined to push the issue—but he presses on. Director Joe Brancato places Gilda (a figment of Wilder’s imagination) in his direct line of vision, while The Interviewer competes for Wilder’s attention, repeatedly reminding him that they are “live.” When Gilda nudges him to discuss their life together, Wilder eventually relents, and the history of a fortuitous film casting that spins into an affair—and more—unfolds.
Their first film together, Hanky Panky (1981), might have been a box-office flop, but it catalyzed how a married woman and a twice-divorced man, both of whose comic exteriors masked real hang-ups, connected emotionally and intimately. Silver’s Wilder credibly reflects his rawness at Radner’s death and renders his reticence to discuss her comprehensible. He also projects Wilder’s vulnerability as a man-child for whom humor is a shield. His childhood comfort handkerchief, which he carries around with him as a security item, for example, might be seen as a prop for comic effect; nevertheless, it satisfies Wilder’s emotional needs when he is anxious, fearful, or otherwise insecure. Burnett’s Radner is equally susceptible to emotional excess and impulsiveness, plunging from relationship to relationship without having resolved the previous one.
Radner readily quips to Wilder when he puts the brakes on her advances and intimacy, but she is far more serious and assertive when she thinks she is being undermined by a bad script. Although she has rewritten one scene to highlight her comic flair, Wilder rejects her intervention out of hand. When he reads her version, and agrees that it is better, the professional turns the corner into what might become a personal one.
Gene: Look—what can I do to make it up to you, huh?
Gilda: Make what up to me? Your vast underestimation of my talent?
Gene: Right. That.
Gilda: Hmm. Let’s see. Well, you could ... take me to dinner.
Gene: You’re wearing a wedding ring. …
Gilda: I meant a get-to-know-you dinner. Isn’t that what costars are supposed to do to improve their chemistry or whatever?
Gene: I have a feeling our chemistry might blow up the laboratory.
The play’s technical team (Jose Santiago, lighting design, Christian Fleming, set design, Max Silverman, sound and music, and Brian Pacelli, projections) have created a semi-surreal, Back to the Future-esque environment. Amid a plethora of TV screens, a simple set with utilitarian, modern furniture, and the annoying voice of an insistent Interviewer, Radner magically appears and, with her split-second retorts to Gene’s observations (for instance, the not trivial presence of her wedding ring), sweeps Wilder off his feet.
Radner (Burnett, left) and Wilder (Silver) share a tender moment.
More than the costumes themselves, the hair and wig design by Bobbie Zlotnick—Gene’s mass of cascading blonde ringlets and Gilda’s unmanageable mane of frizzy black hair protruding from either side of her expression-filled face (sometimes partially reined in by a hairband)—provides effective auxiliaries to the couple’s idiosyncratic quirkiness. Unsuspecting audience members, especially those who watched Radner’s films and Saturday Night Live, might be shocked to see Radner remove the frizzy mop-wig to reveal lovely dark brown hair. Kudos to Zlotnick for her careful tonsorial renderings.
While the pair are wildly funny with their repartee, what begins as flirtation and blossoms into a loving relationship and marriage becomes heartbreaking—especially when Radner’s attempts at pregnancy and health issues come to the fore. Gene and Gilda is a comedy whose ending is tragic, and yet there is a level of redemption as Wilder pulls his life together and deals with her passing without emotionally shutting down. Gitter’s play showcases two gifted and sensitive souls as they are best remembered—in their prime and at their funniest.
Gene and Gilda runs at Theater A 59E59 (59 East 59th St.) through Sept. 7. Evening performances are Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m.; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. For more information, or to purchase tickets, call (646) 892-7999) or visit 59e59.org.
Playwright: Cary Gitter
Director: Joe Brancato
Lighting Design: Jose Santiago
Set Design: Christian Fleming
Sound & Original Music: Max Silverman
Costume Design: Gregory Gale
Projections: Brian Pacelli
Hair, Wig & Makeup Design: Bobbie Zlotnick
