With a name like Pegeen Mike Stapleford, it is not surprising that this grown daughter might still want to get back at her parents. Taking up with a friend of the family in his late 60s making headlines for erratic behavior ought to do the trick—that is, if the lesbian Stapleford really has started a serious relationship with Simon Axler.
He certainly thinks they have, but his perception of reality is not exactly super-reliable. There will be plenty of angst, regardless, in Barry Levinson’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s “The Humbling.”
When Axler gets the sense that the audience is not paying sufficient attention to his production of “As You Like It,” he does the only sensible thing an actor might do in such a situation—nose-dives into the orchestra seats. It sort of works, in so far as he becomes the leading topic of theater gossip.
