BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. It’s 1980, Peter Sellers is hooked up to a heart monitor in “the London Palladium of clinics,” having had a serious attack. He’s angry, frightened, bored and obstreperous, even after he flatlines. (In 1977, he had a pacemaker implanted, refusing the open heart surgery doctors say would’ve saved his life. Sellers ignored every recommendation given him by the medical staff).

I admit to not being a diehard member of the Peter Sellers fan club. Like any enthusiastic movie-goer, I think I’ve seen most of his work, though it’s been years. Intimacy with the subject might’ve helped to catch every reference, not merely Inspector Clouseau and Dr. Strangelove. As far as I can discover, he never acted in Shakespeare, but quotes here as if he had done. Who but a biographer would know that Glenn Miller’s In the Mood, with which the play closes, was a song he hated but perversely requested played at his funeral?

Sellers often said he had no identity outside the roles he played. This may well have driven him to develop extreme attributes for his characters, a faculty for which he was well known. Every part had a defined accent, peculiar gestures, unique physicality. He refused to be interviewed except in character. Perhaps if David Boyle (actor) had more sharply mimicked the roles as they sped by…

Depression anxieties likely exacerbated by a smorgasbord of drugs (and alcohol), created a life filled with instability and crises. Sellers was married four times, and a womanizer throughout his life. Only briefly happy—in The Air Force—he was variously described as selfish, egotistical, and violent, alienating friends, associates, and his families. Perhaps if Carl Caulfield (playwright) had given us an arc with which to follow his protagonist’s emotional life, instead of just leading us through a hodge podge of films and personal moments…

Apparently vaudevillians who dragged him from town to town making any social connection impossible, his parents are never fleshed out. He speaks to his mother (I infer this is Peg) on and off during the monologue but without focus or discernable intention. References to seeing Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx in the afterlife fall flat. And it’s never clear to whom else he’s speaking.

David Boyle bears a close resemblance to Peter Sellers which puts him ahead of the game. Still, Geoffrey Rush’s 2004 television movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers was more compelling. Boyle never seems either convincingly manic or agonized both of which Rush communicated in spades. Only when we see glimpses of his need to please does the man appear believable.

Simon Green’s direction is too fast to grasp what’s going on and too often seemingly arbitrarily LOUD—as if that were a sign of Seller’s desperation. Against odds, he moves his player interestingly around the limited hospital room set, but never achieves either sympathy or empathy.

Carl Caulfield’s script is written as if he was having a conversation with himself…leaving out information he, of course, knew. It’s all over the place and manages, finally, to make a dull evening out of a fraught, eventful life.

Photo by Oscar Blustin

Being Sellers by Carl Caulfield
With David Boyle
Directed by Simon Green
59E59 St. Theaters
59 East 59 St.
www.59e59.org or Ticket Central 212 279 4200
Through December 12