John Shea (1/81 American Days)
Excerpt from New York Times 1/2/81: John Shea
STAGE: 'AMERICAN DAYS,' A BRITISH COMEDY
By FRANK RICH Published: January 2, 1981
The evening's central character is the tycoon who will judge them. As played with extraordinary shading by John Shea, he is the very model of the hip young showbiz exective. When he first appears to meet his supplicants, he barks orders into a speakerphone, taking huge delight in his ability to ''terminate'' careers with the flick of a switch. He soon exercises his Godlike power over the auditioners by insulting their ambitions and looks, as well as forcing them to wear laminated identification cards so he won't have to remember their names. Fluttering about the room in his fancy suit, the attractive but squinty-eyed Mr. Shea is a neurotic of the first rank. He's alternately smug, mercurial, cruel and charming. When he isn't either ignoring or ridiculing his guests, he launches into brittle, selfpitying laments about the loneliness of his privileged, jet-set life. The kids are baffled. Should they cower in the shadows or flatter the man or perform for him or fight back? They try each tactic, up to and including sexual enticement, only to realize that the man who controls their destinies is totally immune to any human contact.
It is Mr. Poliakoff's view that this record-world prince has reached the top by living a life that is as hermetically sealed as the place where he works. Though Mr. Shea may be a whirling bundle of personality traits, we eventually realize that he is in fact bereft of a personality. Everything about him, even his vulnerability, is a put-on. He has no strong likes or dislikes in rock music (his favorite record is ''My Fair Lady''); he has no politics; he has no home or friends outside of his company's empire of offices. His only Gods are the marketplace and the New York bosses who order him around on their speakerphones. But there is a logic to his bizarre audition: He will award a contract to that singer who, like him, is willing to prostitute his real identity to the disposable, lucrative fashions of America's record charts.
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A Showbiz Story AMERICAN DAYS, by Stephen Poliakoff; directed by Jacques Levy; set design, Andrew Jackness; costume design, Kenneth M. Yount; lighting design, Dennis Parichy; music by Urban Blight; production stage manager, Edward R. Fitzgerald; musical supervisor, Stanley Walden. Presented by the Manhattan Theater Club; Lynne Meadow, artistic director, and Barry Grove, managing director. At 321 East 73d Street Tallulah ..................................Anna Levine Gary ......................................John Snyder Ian .................................Alexander Spencer Lorraine ..............................Pippa Pearthree Don Sherman .................................John Shea Murray .....................................David Blue
© New York Times
Excerpt from New York Magazine 1/19/81: John Shea
Theater: Alice in Blunderland
John Simon
In American Dreams, Poliakoff's subject is the rock-music empire, more precisely an international record company whose London office is run by a young executive of the new kind; spaced-out yet shrewd; seemingly absentminded and self-absorbed, yet playing a vicious power game with his staff and the kids who come to audition; a chap of apparently random, quirky words and actions that fiendishly manage to humiliate others and exalt him. His name is Don Sherman, and he seems to have imbibed Pinter with his mother's milk.
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Under Jacques Levy's abrasive direction, no performance fails, although John Shea, as Sherman, seems to be a mite too strenuously imitating Peter O'Toole or Ian McKellen or both.
© New York Magazine
Excerpt from People 5/24/82: John Shea
Missing's Heartthrob John Shea Is Present and Accounted for in An Off-Broadway Hit
By Lee Wohlfert-Wihlborg May 24, 1982 Vol. 17 No. 20
After a part in Jill Clayburgh's It's My Turn that ended on the cutting room floor, Shea flew back to New York and opened in off-Broadway's American Days. His role as a Machiavellian showbiz exec who bullies a bunch of auditioning punk rockers brought him to the attention of Costa-Gavras. The director signed him for Missing without even seeing American Days. "We shook on it after a half-hour talk," says Shea. "But Costa caught the play that night, just to double-check."
© People