The Fabricator
Bauer to bring 'Peter Lorre Tonight!' to TPAC
Tennessee Performing Arts Center officials have confirmed that former GOP presidential candidate and religious -right icon Gary Bauer will bring his popular one-man show Peter Lorre Tonight! to Nashville this spring.
”We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to book the show,“ said a TPAC source. ”The timing of his opening here depended on how quickly he got drubbed out of the presidential race.“
PLT!, as it is known to cognoscenti, was building tremendous word-of-mouth and garnering excellent reviews in a New York run when Bauer pulled out to begin his highly quixotic run for the White House.
The play is about two hours long and includes a number of set pieces featuring Lorre’s best known roles, including the ”cut-rate parasite“ Ugarte from Casablanca, the killer Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, and the serial child murderer in the German classic M.
These movie reenactments are salted with ”Lorre“ breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the audience about, among other subjects, his love for morphine and alcohol.
”It’s fun for the whole family!“ a TPAC official said.
New York Times theater critic Frank Rich compared Bauer’s portrayal of Lorre to the gold standard of one-man shows.
”Not since James Whitmore’s Will Rogers has an actor so embodied a character,“ Rich wrote. ”In a way, it’s almost as if Bauer isn’t acting. With his preternaturally bulbous head, bizarrely bulging eyes, nervous mannerisms, and tinny, annoying voice, Bauer creates the illusion that he is Lorre. In a word, he’s creepy.“
Tickets for Peter Lorre Tonight! go on sale later this month at TPAC.
”Not since James Whitmore’s Will Rogers has an actor so embodied a character,“ Rich wrote. ”In a way, it’s almost as if Bauer isn’t acting. With his preternaturally bulbous head, bizarrely bulging eyes, nervous mannerisms, and tinny, annoying voice, Bauer creates the illusion that he is Lorre. In a word, he’s creepy.“
Tickets for Peter Lorre Tonight! go on sale later this month at TPAC.
