Max and Maxie

THE STORY: Now rich, famous and perhaps a bit out of date, Max Love is in Florida about to star in a production of Waiting for Godot. An ex-vaudevillian, Max is not much for such high-class pursuits as the theatre, and he is having a bit of trouble with his lines. 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.McLure, James is the author of 'Max and Maxie ', published 1989 under ISBN 9780822207412 and ISBN 0822207419.