Bad Habits is play by Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...

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The comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 is composed of what originally were written as two one-act plays set in sanatorium

Sanatorium

A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...

s. In Ravenswood, a doctor allows his patients to indulge in all their bad habits as means of finding happiness. In Dunelawn, a serum is used to provide a cure.

Under the auspices of the Manhattan Theatre Club

Manhattan Theatre Club

Manhattan Theatre Club is a theater company located in New York City. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, Manhattan Theatre Club has grown since its founding in 1970 from an Off-Off Broadway showcase into one of the country’s most acclaimed...

, the play premiered on February 4, 1974 at the off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 Astor Place Theatre

Astor Place Theatre

The Astor Place Theatre is an off-Broadway house located at 434 Lafayette Street in the NoHo section of Manhattan. The theater is located in the historic Colonnade Row, originally constructed in 1831 as a series of nine connected buildings, of which only four remain...

, where it ran for 96 performances. The Robert Drivas

Robert Drivas

Robert Drivas was an American actor and theatre director.Drivas was born Robert Choromokos in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Hariklia and James Peter Choromokos. Drivas studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Miami...

-directed cast included F. Murray Abraham

F. Murray Abraham

Fahrid Murray Abraham is an American actor. He became known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men and Scarface...

, Paul Benedict

Paul Benedict

Paul Benedict was an American actor who made numerous appearances in television and movies beginning in the 1960s...

, and Doris Roberts

Doris Roberts

Doris Roberts is an American character actress of film, stage and television. She has received five Emmy Awards. She began her career in 1952, and may be best-known as Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996–2005....

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On May 5, the production moved uptown to the Booth Theatre

Booth Theatre

The Booth Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 222 West 45th Street in midtown-Manhattan, New York City.Architect Henry B. Herts designed the Booth and its companion Shubert Theatre as a back-to-back pair sharing a Venetian Renaissance-style façade...

, where it ran for 177 performances. The cast was joined by Cynthia Harris

Cynthia Harris

Cynthia Harris is an American film and television actress.She is known for her role as Helen Hunt's character Jamie Buchman's overbearing mother-in-law on Mad About You. She has also appeared in many television series and TV movies, such as L.A. Law, All My Children and in the classic drama, Edward...

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Bad Habits won the Obie Award

Obie Award

The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...

as Distinguished Play for the 1973–1974 season.

Summary

A day in a rehab centre that deals with various "bad habits". The three patients that are introduced through the dialogue are an alcoholic, a drag queen and a perverted sadistic deluded man. Doctor Toynbee the man in charge of the centre is described throughout as a great man, a saint, revered by everyone in his presence. The doctor has developed a “serum” that is meant to help get rid of his patience’s flaws and worries. However, it lasts momentarily and the effects don’t seem to eliminate any amount of the patients’ previous bad habits as a sign of gradual elimination of their bad habits. The play is over the course of a sunny afternoon at the centre. Bruno a worker who helps out Ruth Benson and Becky Hedges, the nurses, and tends to the garden and hedges brings the patients out one by one, where the nurses are giving patients serum, some sun and some fresh air. As he goes back and forth he “leers” at Hedges, attempting to seduce her. As they wait for Bruno to bring along the next patient, we learn about the two nurses, their own bad habits, past lives, regrets and their striving for reformation. We learn of the trigger for their quest, men, at least in Ruth Benson’s case one man, Hugh Gumbs.

External links

• New York Times review from March 1990