STAGE REVIEW : ‘At Wit’s End’ Plays With the Sharps and Flats of Levant’s Life

“Well, that was--loud,” mutters Oscar Levant (Stan Freeman), after disassembling De Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” during the first half of “At Wit’s End” at the Coronet on La Cienega Boulevard.

We can’t disagree. This is supposed to be Oscar’s comeback concert after a decade of pills and hospitals, but he is not in top form. The wit is still caustic, but the music-making is blurred and bangy. At one awful moment--the pianist’s nightmare--it even seems that he can’t go on.

At intermission, we’re wondering what playwright Joel Kimmel has in mind for the second act. Will he dig deeper into Levant’s distress, in the manner of Shay Duffin’s one-man show about Brendan Behan, or will he back off?

He backs off. Act II sees Oscar restored to himself, possibly through the magic of chemistry. He doesn’t just scale “Rhapsody in Blue,” he plants a flag on top of it. What a performer. Who says he’s finished?

We aren’t sorry that the evening takes this turn. Not every artist’s pain is edifying. Levant’s private story, from what we know of it, is more depressing than it is tragic. We would rather remember him as a curmudgeon than as a basket case, and we don’t begrudge him an MGM ending--his studio, after all.

But, having made his choice, playwright Kimmel should have gone back and lightened up that portentous first act. “At Wit’s End” would be just as effective, and subtler, if it were a 90-minute visit with Oscar Levant at the top of his bent, showing no more distress signals than necessary to convey the burden of being Oscar Levant.

Stan Freeman, of the baggy eyes and the strong piano technique, is just the man to portray him. Freeman isn’t the grouch that Levant was, but he understands the disappointment that lies under so much of Levant’s wit.

We hear the famous anecdote about Gershwin making Levant take the upper berth in the Pullman car: the difference between genius and talent. We hear a less famous story about Levant and his girl dreamily winning a waltz contest in high school and being handed first prize: a lemon.

Naturally, he would grow up a master of the put-down. We hear him dispose of Elsa Maxwell, Vernon Duke, Joan Crawford and Leonard Bernstein (for “revealing secrets of music that have been well-known for 400 years”).

But he also puts Oscar Levant in his place. Where do you live, Mr. Levant? “On the periphery.”

Freeman handles the verbal side of the evening with gloomy satisfaction, like a man who always knew that the dam would burst. He handles the musical side of it with real distinction. He distinguishes, that is, between a pianist who is so disgusted with his life that he’s just flailing away (Act I) and a pianist who is starting to get interested in the music (Act II.)

Levant, if memory serves, had a one-note singing voice. Freeman has a good saloon-singer’s voice, and a fine feeling for jazz. “True Blue Lou” may be from an early Levant picture, but one doubts that Levant performed it this tastily. There are moments when Charles Nelson Reilly’s production is really about Freeman, and they aren’t the show’s worst moments.

These come toward the close, when Levant starts to sentimentalize about his wife and three daughters. Perhaps this material is there in order to please Mrs. Levant, whose name is listed on the title page of the program, but it is beside the point.

We don’t cherish Levant because he was a nice guy (anybody can be a nice guy), or because he went through hell (everybody eventually goes through hell), but because he was one of the few public figures of the 1940s and ‘50s to suggest that things were out of joint in the culture.

Don’t tell me about your failures, Levant once told a certain playwright--”Your successes are depressing enough.” He was one of the great snobs, and deserves to be heard at full capacity.

Plays Tuesdays-Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sundays at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets $20-$27.50. 366 N. La Cienega Blvd.; (213) 466-1767.