Reuben, Reuben

Reuben, Reuben is a 1983 comedy-drama film starring Tom Conti, Kelly McGillis (in her film debut), Roberts Blossom, Cynthia Harris, and Joel Fabiani.

The film was adapted by Julius J. Epstein from the play Spofford by Herman Shumlin, which in turn was adapted from the novel Reuben, Reuben by Peter De Vries. It was directed by Robert Ellis Miller.

The main character in DeVries's novel was based largely on the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who was a compulsive womanizer and lifelong alcoholic, finally succumbing to the effects of alcohol poisoning in November 1953, while on a speaking tour in America.

Plot

Gowan McGland (Tom Conti) is a creatively blocked Scottish poet who ekes out a day-to-day existence by exploiting the generosity of strangers in an affluent Connecticut suburb, where he recites his verse to various arts groups and women's clubs. Gowan is something of a leech, cadging expensive dinners from well-off patrons (usually stealing the tips afterward) while seducing their bored wives and affecting a superior attitude toward the smug bourgeois types he exploits.

Reuben, Reuben (opera)

Reuben, Reuben is a 1955 "urban folk opera" by Marc Blitzstein. Set in New York's Little Italy and inspired by the Faust legend, it concerns Reuben, a suicidal veteran who has received a medical discharge because he cannot speak. His disorder serves as an allegory of the difficulties of interpersonal communication in society, and of the eventual triumph of love over these difficulties and over the death wish.

The original cast included Eddie Albert as Reuben, Evelyn Lear as Reuben's love interest Nina, Kaye Ballard as the Countess, Enzo Stuarti as Attilio, George Gaynes as Bart, Sondra Lee as Gisella, and Timmy Everett as Blazer. Other cast members included Lear's husband Thomas Stewart, Allen Case, Emile Renan, William Pierson, and Anita Darian. Hanya Holm choreographed, Robert Lewis stage directed, and Cheryl Crawford produced the show.

The opera's initial run, in Boston, was a failure: audience members left in the middle of the show, and critics panned it. Nevertheless, Leonard Bernstein named his daughter Nina after the play's heroine.