Synopsis
Max and Maxie
Published by Dramatists Play Service
2 Male 1 Female
A young production assistant (who is awed in the presence of a "living legend") helps him with his cues and, at the same time, begins to pepper him with questions about his fabled career as a comic
Cutting swiftly back and forth between past and present, the play then evolves into a series of varied and revealing scenes: Max's hardscrabble early days on the vaudeville circuit; teaming up with Maxie, a young hoofer of Hispanic background; their success as a team and their eventual marriage; and, in the end, Maxie's disillusionment and descent into schizophrenia
Ultimately Max's story becomes one of unbridled ambition and a ceaseless striving for perfection and success at any cost, and the price that this exacts both from him and from those close to him. For, in the final essence, Max finds that while he may have made it to the top, he has arrived there alone, embittered and, in the most personal sense, unloved and unfulfilled
Alternately touching and funny, this imaginatively conceived play introduces us to a now rich and famous ex-vaudevillian, Max Love, who is about to appear in a production of Waiting for Godot, and takes us on a fascinating journey back into his checkered past