Madame Melville:
The Return of Macaulay Culkin

by Ernest Barteldes

recent cover story from New York magazine told me of the Off-Broadway premiere of Madame Melville, the off-Broadway production that marks the comeback of former child star Macaulay Culkin to acting after a hiatus of six years.

The Culkin I remembered was the same one most us do: the little kid with the red lips who starred in two films as the child of an absent-minded family that seemed to forget about him during their winter vacations,leaving him on his own to take care of himself while tormenting the lives of a couple of thieves on the way.

His last movie role had been the unmemorable comedy Getting Even With Dad, which he co-starred with Ted Danson of Cheers fame.

Last Sunday I took my wife to see Madame Melville, which is playing until August 26th- Culkin's twenty-first birthday - at The Promenade Theater (At 76th Street and Broadway).

The play, written and directed by Richard Nelson, tells us about a night and a day in the life of 15-year-old Ohio native Carl(Culkin, five years older than the character but still with his baby face), a high school student at an American school in Paris in 1966.

The play is narrated by Carl himself(now 55 years old and a family man in New Jersey, though he speaks with the voice of a young man) as he tells of his coming-of-age experience as he spends a night and an afternoon with his literature teacher, Madame Melville, who is masterfully played by Brit actress Joely Richardson.

Culkin hasn't changed much, although he now speaks with a teenager's voice. As he walks unannounced on stage, he is warmly received by the Sunday afternoon crowd and he starts the story.

At once you realize why many American critics slashed the play, while the English press raved: the play is quite artsy, and people who are undercultured or unaware of certain facts of the sixties might get lost in the plot ; in a few seconds, he mentions the Rolling Stones and other icons of the era, such as Grateful Dead and other icons of poetry, literature and the movies that were popular then . Carl also mentions seeing his first naked woman and giggles as he admits that the image was only on celluloid, and not for real.

As he grabs a book, his teacher, walks in, and virtually steals the scene.

Carl and Madame talk and drink wine, and they eventually sleep together after the lonely Frenchwoman shows him a copy of The Kama Sutra.

The love scene does not happen in front of the audience, but it is rather narrated by the older Carl - something that I think was a masterful stroke of the play's author; the intention of the play is not to be erotic, so why add that feature unnecessarily?

Morning comes and another character walks in - Madame's friend and neighbor, Ruth(Robin Weigert), a happy divorcée from America. She is at first shock with the teacher's affair, but then she just blends in and the story goes on, with narrated visits to the Louvre and walks in the streets of Paris.

What I have to say that the two actresses are much more talented and stage-trained than Culkin, and that becomes evident when the three of them are on stage. As the two women are there, the young novice simply laughs and almost becomes an extra - you barely notice him, except when he says his lines.

The play has no intermission, but one hardly feels the 100 minutes go by, except for the discomfort of the chairs at The Promenade theater. A male couple next to us quite enjoyed the story(coincidentally, one of them was from the same Brazilian city my wife was born in), and so did we - a simple coming-of-age story of how a young boy realized he had become a man.

Culkin, though a bit subdued in his acting, seems in good shape and fit for his part.

In my opinion, it was smart of him to return to acting in a small off-Broadway production instead of risking being cast in some big-budget Hollywood film and ultimately fail - something, we all know, that would be hard to overcome.