Davidson Convincing As Roosevelt In ‘Bully’

“Bully” Tuesday, March 23, The Met

“Bully” passed the key test with honors: Never once did I think of the man on the stage as John Davidson, former “Hollywood Squares” host. I thought of him as Teddy Roosevelt, president, conservationist and one of America’s most fascinating characters.

This touring production of Jerome Alden’s play is satisfying in the same way as Hal Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight.” These one-man shows are like time machines, allowing us to overcome the misfortune of being born too late to see Twain or Teddy in the flesh.

Maybe “Bully” isn’t exactly the same as seeing Teddy in the flesh, but the important thing from a dramatic point of view is that we believe we are. We certainly hear Teddy’s real words, since this show is peppered with Teddy’s sayings and writings, including a soliloquy on the famous line, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” which Teddy attributed to an African proverb, and also his “The Man in the Arena” speech.

Davidson re-creates T.R.’s distinctive squeaky voice accurately - a surprisingly “unmanly” voice for the most manly of presidents, as Davidson said in a short talk with the audience after the show. In Davidson’s hands, T.R. is the most exuberant of men, practically squealing with delight and excitement when a subject has captured him, which is often. Davidson, in fact, may re-create T.R.’s voice too accurately, because the only complaint I heard from my fellow balcony-sitters was that his voice was so stylized it was often hard to understand what he was saying.

The play itself begins with T.R. out for a walk with his (imaginary) companions, including William Allen White and Gifford Pinchot, exhorting them in typical Rooseveltian fashion to ever more vigorous exertions. Then he repairs to his study, furnished with desk and cabinets, where he tells stories of his life. Some stories are funny, such as the accounts about skinny-dipping in the Potomac. Others are tragic, as in his heartbreaking account of the night in 1884 when his wife and his mother died in the same house within hours of each other.

Davidson is fully up to both the comic and the dramatic demands of this role, which might come as a surprise to those who think of him as the “Hollywood Squares” lightweight. Davidson does, in fact, have long and varied stage experience, and in his post-play talk he admitted that he wants “Bully” to be the “defining role” of his career.

“And my career could use some defining,” he added, with good-natured self-deprecation.

Davidson dreams of the show reaching Broadway, which doesn’t seem out of the question from a quality standpoint, although Broadway is a tough market for this kind of material these days. Davidson has also received feelers from PBS, for which it seems ideally suited. In fact, Tuesday night was an experiment to see if the show could be done entirely in one act, as it would be for PBS.

The verdict: It works fine in one act. The show races by. At the end, I wanted more and it never hurts to leave ‘em wanting more.