Ace in the Hole: Nora Ephron’s “Lucky Guy”

 

By Jennifer Tang

With a star-studded cast headlined by two time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks, I expected Lucky Guy, written by Nora Ephron, to be good. Still, I didn’t want to psych myself up too much for it.  After all, it had already been widely celebrated in the media. Plus, I was going to see only the fifth staging of it, so I worried that things perhaps had not yet settled into the groove. Needless to say, my expectations were not just met. They were surpassed.

Lucky Guy tells the tale of Michael McAlary, a New York City newspaperman who, having paid his dues writing about sports and local issues in Queens, lucks out with a once-in-a-lifetime story. As a result, McAlary is offered the opportunity to be a reporter at the Manhattan office of  Newsday. Through his own tenacity, diligence, and a sprinkling of luck, McAlary builds his reputation and soon becomes a columnist for the New York Daily News–one of his dream jobs. As his career takes off, however, he manages to piss off colleagues, editors and his friends with his lack of grace and graciousness, and an ego matched only by his balooning salary. At the height of his frenzied scramble up to New York newspaper industry, fueled by a bidding war for him between the Daily News and the Post and his own propensity to drink, McAlary winds up in a near fatal car accident on his way home in the wee hours of the morning. Afraid to miss a beat despite the gravity of his accident, McAlary rushes back to work and make some questionable calls in reporting which ultimately result in a libel suit. It is at this low point that he is also diagnosed with colon cancer.

And as if that isn’t enough, McAlary must confront a petition signed by a laundry listof journalists condemning his reporting mistakes. All of it is too much. McAlary begins to doubt his conviction that he’s a top-shelf New York City columnist. It is only through his loyal and supportive wife Alice, that McAlary survives.  McAlary bounces back, and during his fight with colon cancer,  writes a series of columns about the brutal rape of Abner Louima by  a gang of New York cops which earns him the Pulitzer Prize. In accepting this award, McAlary recognizes that his writing and his life as a New York journalist is indebted to the vibrant people, culture, and industry that define the New York newspaper business.

The pacing of the play did well to mirror the pace of the newspaper industry as well as the frenetic life of New York City in the decades between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s. The dialogue, the movement of the actors, the cutting of the scenes move quickly from one to the other, all of it orchestrated for maximum efficiency and punch. Only in scenes of tenderness and contemplation did the action slow down appropriately. On the whole, it was a story that had a place to go, a journey it wanted to take you on, but it was at a pace where it could still look you in the eye.

The set was mobile and malleable, just like New York City tends to feel to those negotiating its dynamics. It was fitting for the production that the pieces that made up the set, the pieces those things that are key to telling the story, are almost always present on stage. The desks that made up the office of the newsroom, the bar where the journalists would all congregate around were either at the center or periphery, but never offstage. When transitioning from setting to setting, actors who were not part of the scene at that moment all help to move the set into place. What I also found interesting was that throughout the play, the floor is littered with bits of paper, adding to the slightly haphazard feel of the industry and the city. All of this said, while the props and lighting were effective they were never so prominent as to draw attention away from the actors and the action.

Truly, it would be difficult to redirect the spotlight away from the actors. Without doubt, their work and abilities were the truly spectacular aspects of the show. Tom Hanks was simply superb in affecting the range of McAlary’s personalities as he developed from an eager wannabe, to a comfortable crime writer, to a brash columnist, to a man laid low by his own fallibility but who then rises again on the strength of his own mortality. Surrounded by an impressive cast—including Peter Gerety as McAlary’s mentor John Cotter, who was always at the ready with nuggets of wisdom and a stiff drink, and Christopher McDonald as his big talking lawyer Eddie Hayes—the acting sparkles. And Maura Tierney, who plays McAlary’s wife and bedrock Alice, is never overshadowed by the star power of Tom Hanks.

But Hanks is clearly the heart of the show.  His postoperative, morphine fueled heart-to-heart with Hap Hairston (played by Courtney Vance) will leave audience members moved. We witness Hanks’ prowess as an actor through his ability to communicate the rawness of his fall from grace, but also its absurdity, his absurdity. It is brilliant to watch.

Nora Ephron, being Nora Ephron, didn’t miss the opportunity to highlight  the dearth of women journalists in the 80s throughout the play. One character, the reporter Louise Imerman (brought beautifully to life by Deidre Lovejoy), denounces the newspaper industry for so easily and readily marginalizing women, rendering them merely as supportive players. It’s true: even in the dramatization of McAlary’s life, the women played only the roles of caring wife, aggressive career commandos, and shepherding managers.  It is our luck that we had Nora Ephron to tell this story, and serves to remind us of the importance of continuously asking where the women are in the making, telling and retelling of the stories that make up our culture and our cities.

Lucky Guy was the last piece Nora Ephron completed before she succumbed to pneumonia in her battle against leukemia in 2012. She began this play after receiving her diagnosis and continued to work on it through her treatments. While she had completed writing the play before her death, it was still in production when she passed. It’s a shame. If she intended to leave a piece that expounds upon her reverie of the profession of journalism, New York City, and the resiliency of both of these amidst constant commercial, cultural, and human flux, then she accomplished it. This production of Lucky Guy stands as a fitting act of respect and homage to its creator.

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