Temporary Insanity

New York has not turned out like CLARKE O’NEILL (19) anticipated. Having grown up in a loving home in Iowa City (where she performed for her father’s furniture store), her image of Broadway was one of excitement and invitation.

Once actually in the city, however, Clarke finds herself in cattle calls for Off-Off-Off-OFF Broadway productions of shows like Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics. Her one paying job is as a swimsuited bathing beauty in a “New York Is Summer Fun” commercial. Shot in 40 degree weather in the World Financial Center boat basin, the only thing Clarke gains from the experience is the flu.

Her one fix of brightness is second-acting a revival of West Side Story. Intoxicated from the show, she wanders obliviously down a dark street. There she is mugged, or almost mugged, by JAMES ANDREAS (late 20s) A struggling musician and single father, his daughter, RIANA (4), is about to be evicted from her private kindergarten if he doesn’t raise the tuition fees.

James is a totally hapless mugger, and finds himself taken under Clarke’s wing, as they try to engineer a way to keep his daughter in school.

Clarke gets James a job where she is temping, in the Word Processing Center of the Eland Investment Bank. The department is inhabited by a cross-section of subcareer New York. MARGUERITE, a neurasthenic, prima donna actress; PIP, a cross-dressing nightclub performer; RICH and TRISH, a performing arts couple trying to have a baby; and the supervisor, JOSH, an aspiring novelist who, fresh from dismantling bombs in Lebanon, finds New York laid-back. Clarke is especially drawn to the proofreader DEREK, who danced in the Broadway road shows she so dearly loved until a knee injury ended his promising career.

Their colorful stories thread through Clarke’s and James’s roller-coast romance. “Our ages and aspirations are too different,” they solemnly insist and vow to remain only friends. “Besides, I have my career to consider,” Clarke says, as she continues to trudge from audition to audition. Their conflict culminates with a romantic argument in the middle of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, with Clarke swaddled in a Christmas Kangaroo costume.

Derek, who has been ill for many months but concealing it, is suddenly hospitalized in critical condition. Even worse, the bank shuts down the center and outsources their jobs. Clarke and James are now forced to make real choices, about friendships, their careers and about each other.

Ranging from Rockefeller Center in the snow to smoky jazz clubs, Park Avenue penthouses, and the Central Park Zoo, Temporary Insanity is a gritty fairy-tale, a paean to New York on the cusp of the millennium. The screenplay celebrates the performers who struggle to both survive and give expression to their burning inspiration. They are charming, fun-loving people we know or would like to know. We leave their company with regret, though the glow of their companionship will linger for a lo