The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 137

I I i a III' C9 BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE December 17, 1978 Unlike the movie, 'Sarava' on stage a subtle, romantic fable do you know what the symbols of that dehumanization are: actors, human beings, are referred to as 'bankable' and creative work, scenarios and scripts which may have the potential to become art are called Nash lived and worked in Hollywood over a seven year period. "Never again!" But N. Richard Nash, who has been married three times and has three daughters, said that he has no regrets about anything, an attitude he inherited from his father who emigrated from Berlin, where he was a newspaperman, and settled in Philadelphia, where he became a bookbinder after being repeatedly hired and fired by the Philadelphia Bulletin. (He said his father was as "romantic as the rainmaker; he met my mother in Baltimore on Thursday and married her on Saturday, without a moment's If Nash has no recriminations about the along the script and showed it to Amado. And he loved it.

When I finally met him, which wasn't until recently, he hugged me and said, 'You loved my characters more than I did and I love you for Isn't that just Nash went on to explain that "Sarava" means hello in Portuguese, but evidently a hello with bells on: "It's a greeting laden with good cheer, a quality of happiness, a promise that tomorrow is going to be great." Nash also said that he thinks the musical "is, quite simply, the best score Mitch has ever written, better than 'La richer, more original" and he specified a lament for the dead hero. There are seven songs in the first act, three reprises and four additional songs in the second act. The show is under the direction of Rick Atwell, has sets and costumes by Santo Loquasto and the cast is headed by Tovah Feldshuh, P.J. Benjamin and Michael Ingram. past, he said he does "feel guilty about leaving Brandeis, I feel as though I abandoned the Theater Arts program at a crucial time." But he pointed out that he couldn't have done otherwise.

The program, a working mix of professionals and students doing adventurous plays (a precursor to Robert Brustein's work at the Yale Rep), came under attack by the Brandeis administration, "the usual kind of political interference." He said the program drowned because of "the built-in envy academicians seem to have for all" professionals." He theorized that this is probably what has happened now at Yale, and recounted a conversation he had with Robert Brustein back in the mid-1960s: "Brustein said to me then, 'I wonder how long we can go at Yale before the faculty tries the same gamut on us N. Richard Nash smiled ironically, and his right index finger tapped the table, like Moses scratching a message on The Tablet Nash also explained the divergence in his career from playwright to novelist. It happened when he wrote a screenplay which was twice rejected by 20th Century Fox. He gave the material love story between a lonely man and a bastardly little Mexican a new format, hurriedly rewriting it as a novel. When it was published, under the title "Cry Macho," Fox immediately optioned it and signed Nash to do the screenplay: "I turned in the same damned script they'd rejected, I only changed four pages, and 'Cry Macho' now is about to be produced by Al Ruddy, who did 'The This anecdote led Nash into a fuming, beautifully scaled peroration about "the perils of selling your soul for celluloid." If, earlier, he seemed to be talking under divine guidance, now he became an angered Lear stalking the heath of Hollywood.

He identified Hollywood as "the most corrupt city in the world, utterly dehumanizing, and Whtm in Soullwrn California visil STUDIOS TOUR AN MCA COMPANV ency Nash has tried to eliminate in his adaptation of Amado's work. Some years ago, at the urging of David Merrick, Nash tried an adaptation of Amado's "Gabriel-la, Clove and Cinnamon" and gave up because he was "unable to transcribe the novel's texture to the stage." 'Sarava' really has nothing to do with 'Dona Flor' as a movie. I started working on it five years ago, long before the movie. The movie is a tawdry little joke and its popularity has hurt us a lot. I mean when the time came for us to raise money for the production, it was tough going.

Investors don't know how to read librettos, don't even know how to listen to music and judge it properly. So every time Mitch and I would show the script around, or hold auditions, investors would rush out to see the damned movie. And, if they had any taste at all and thought we were basing the musical on the movie, they'd turn us down. I hate the movie. And, by the way, I voiced some of my objections about it to Amado, both in letters I wrote to him and in person.

"I say all this now and it must seem rather brash, I mean Amado is a great man, a preeminent novelist. But when I first read 'Dona I had two objections. I just couldn't fathom why Vadinho, Dona Flor's first husband who dies, was written as such a lout, why Amado had made him so swinish. Nor could I understand how Amado would then marry Dona Flor off to a dolt like Theo, the pharmacist. I mean, she is meant to be a lovely, charming, sensitive woman and just too intelligent to fall into such a trap.

Well, I suggested these changes to Merrick, who was still interested in doing an Amado musical. Merrick felt the changes would offend Amado, but I wrote to, Brazil anyway and suggested them. Amado had seen The loved it and felt that he and I were the same skin. I told him I'd try to find some way to make Vadinho a human being. And I worked on the script.

Some time later Mitch (Leigh) went to Brazil to do background work on the score and, although he told me he wouldn't, he took NASH Continued from Page CI lies dying, leaving behind a Church on the edge of dissolution." In Cleveland, "where Nash had gone to promote the on a talk show, he actually predicted the election of a Polish Pope. Although his heritage is Jewish (he was born Nathaniel Richard Nusbaum), he calls himself "a Catholic manque." And when he told me the story of his accurate guess about Pope John Paul II, his eyes fled through the ceiling of the Dorset bar as though seeing even deeper into the mysteries of heaven. "I was in Cleveland for three days, and .1 did the show. John Paul died and I was called back for another interview. I suggested and all this is on tape that the new Pope might be from the Netherlands or the choice might be between two Polish cardinals.

Then John Paul II was elected and the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a banner headline on page two: 'Nash Predicts And, within a week, like blessing from above, 'The Last Magic' hit nine best-seller lists. The tour was "expanded. I did 29 cities in all and the book is now on 26 best-seller lists. Look," Nash said, profaning the sacred gleam in his eye, "I've been extraordinarily lucky. The world just wasn't waiting for a new novel about Catholicism, about the Vati- can.

Now the subject is red hot. Irving Lazar, Swifty, my agent, tells me Robert Redford wants to buy the book for a movie, not for himself but as a producer. Paul Newman has been suggested for the leading role. The truth is everyone wants to play a priest now, even the women. And that's another whole problem the Church is having at the moment Away from the topic of his possible "divine inspiration," Nash talked about "Sarava" with a mixture of enthusiasm, seeming candor and a kind of lovehate appreciation for "Dona Flor" as a novel.

He admires Jorge Amado enormously but feels that Amado, who is perhaps Brazil's best known contemporary novelist (he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1973), has an "unfortunate tendency toward the leer, the salacious, the dirty joke," a tend TV Week lists all of the tele-v i i on shows for every day and night of the week. Have you seen The Globe today? n-. 1 feifoVottoj cnrin foMallo WRAP UP YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING IN RECORD TIME WITH THESE BETTER THAN BOSTON SPECIALS! THEBESTOF EARTH.WIND&FIRE VOLUME. BILLY JOELifl I 52-STBEHjE I lITI.rght I (t Got To Get You WO ttv Lite Sowasong Sninma Star Trats The Way Of The world Barbra Streisand's I Greatest Hits. 1 Volume 2 A I lie Flows 5" MriOwnondl 3 LoneTname Fro ASm 1 I Hot I The WyW Wait jF Stone End mH 'i2 FC 35679 A zc'Kton of the best twr on cf the greatest performers ail tire.

fC 35679 A tciifdiott of the best twr one cf the greatest performers ail tirro. BumtMBoogM Diamond GifK FC 35609 5ind Street Its the FC 35625 Th.s is Neil's finest bum to date It teates (vs smash i hit duet ith Ba-b-a "You I I FC 35647 Farth. W-nd f're tof niary yrafS has susvned a level ot musica' eceiieice a-'ii acheverr-eni tiat arrsts count Tcrt A collection of their oest songs are curtained th.s Vaiuri i greatest is a.bura. nam of BiHy Joel newest album And ifs Herr.er 6-Hy Joel it: all me electric imensty ail tne legerory aid legacy that 52nC Street stands or with someone who knows fits way -iiound Don BniR We as well as sutx'b new sorts destined to become "Diamond iriassics TSs ai bii-n must tor his millions of fans. 76 ALBUM OR TAPE $4 RECORDS TAPES $48 ELVIS I Vtrtuim-3 ALBUM OR TAPE Shalamar Daryl Hall John Oates Along Hit Red Ledg 'M.

DISCO GARDENS mm includes, I Don't Wanna Lost Von i a Laugh Melooylor Memory nCt ThelaatTimt 1 5) OR TAPE OV Mown PxMn SounJMK ANIMAL IMUfl lYIGA RECORDS 181 ALBUM OR TAPE 4 fX DIANA "THE VIZ- Vorrrc MICHAEL lSY RU5SLL Tf BOSS LENA HOP.NE ELTON JOHN A SINGLE MAN P.rhAD pfiYOft mm v. ri MCA-jOb5 THE WHO I WHO ARE YOU 1 $(o)7(S MCA-J0b7 ALBUM OR TAPE UNIVERSAL PICTURES presents A ROBERT STIGWOOD production LILYTOMLIN JOHN TRAVOLTA "MOMENT BY MOMENT" executive producer KEVIN McCORMICK produced by ROBERT STIGWOOD ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS BOB LeMOND AND LOIS ZETTER WRITTEN DIRECTED BY JANE WAGNER MUSIC SCORED BY LEE HOLDRIDGE TECHNICOLOR RECORDS TAPES MSTMCTID HOURS SUN. 12-6 Mcr MMiATtuiuaiM miAuffisf 0 IQRONAl SOUNDTRACK ON RSQ RECORDS AND TAPES INOW AN OBSTBALLANTIME PAPF SRACX fMOMENT BY MOMENT" SUNG BY WONNE ELLIMAN 1978 UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FILMS tm STARTS FRIDAY VISA' age Mall 95 Washington Canton Phone 828-4533 pole Mall Route 1, E. Walpole Phone 668-3133 762-3323 SHOWCASE WOBURN 933-5330 SACK CHARLES 1-2-3 lCMIMDGf SL wGOV CT.

T17-aX CIRCLE CINEMA ocsTNin mi an. CUVHANOCMCU 566-4040 FRAMINGHAM CINEMA IT. SHOPPUS WLO. 235-8020 DANVERS BRAINTREE CINEMA 5a SHORE PIAZA 848-V070 Myiic Mall 168 Everett Chelsea Phone 884-8544 599-7100 niTHonnm.