More Lies About Jerzy
More Lies…was written by Davey Holmes, award-winning playwright/television writer. He was nominated for a WGA Award in 2007 for Damages and recipient of that award in 2008 for an episode of In Treatment. His writing for television also includes Worthy, Pushing Daisies, Happy Town, and Law and Order.
More Lies About Jerzy is based on the life of famous author, Jerzy Kosinski. Mr. Holmes changed the name to Jerzy Lesnewski because, as he states, “It provided a huge breakthrough creatively…it freed me to make up his life.” Mr. Holmes has endeavored to convey a sense of the incessant lies, exaggerations, and never-ending stories and contradictory material Kosinski presented in his art as well as his life. Kosinski was a dynamic, “larger than life” personality with huge charisma and imagination. He authored such famous works as the Painted Bird, Steps, and Being There, (a work subsequently made in to a film staring Peter Sellers, who won an Academy Award for his performance). Kosinski’s literary works took the world of the 1960’s and 70’s by storm.
Probably his most famous work, The Painted Bird is a novel accounting the personal experiences of a boy of unknown religious and ethnic background taking refuge among a series of people, many of whom are brutally cruel and abusive, either to him or to others. Soon after its publication, Kosinski was vehemently vilified as a plagiarist. Still Eli Wiesel wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it was “one of the best…Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity." Richard Kluger, reviewing for Harper’s Magazine, wrote, "Extraordinary... literally staggering ... one of the most powerful books I have ever read." In The Miami Herald, John Yardley wrote: “Of all the remarkable fiction that emerged from World War II, nothing stands higher than Jerzy Kosiński's The Painted Bird. A magnificent work of art and a celebration of the individual will. No one who reads it will forget it; no one who reads it will be unmoved by it."
I read The Painted Bird some time in the 1960’s, and found it a magnificent work of art, never to be forgotten. I have taken the time to describe the events of its story, and to quote several reviews because I wonder how an audience could be interested in this play, More Lies About Jerzy, without familiarity and even love for Kosinski’s work, particularly this novel. And that is the major thrust of my review: talented author, talented actors, talented director all in the service of a skeleton of a play that does not elucidate the character and life of Kosinski further than what is already well known by people who follow this sort of thing. Mr. Holmes must do much more than simply change the name of the main character in order to allow us to glimpse into the heart and soul of such a fascinating artist.
Jack Stehlin, a very fine actor, did not satisfy me in this production either. At the most important moment in the play, when he is confronted with irrefutable proof that he is lying, he does not reveal the depth of character or inner struggle that would make us really care and be involved.
I believe the scenery, continually being rolled back and forth by the actors as they made their entrances and exits, was intended to conjure up advertisements for Kosinski’s famous book. Cartoon figures of wild dogs chasing a man walking in two directions at once. At least this is what I thought the pictures on the portable flats were attempting to represent. How anyone not already familiar with Kosinski’s work would grasp these images is unfathomable to me.
Circus Theatricals downstairs at the Hayworth
Fri.-Sat. 8 pm through June 26
2511 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, Ca. 90057
Tickets: (323) 960-7788
Circustheatricals.com