Starstruck Schoolboy Meets His Fate in ‘Grand Manner’: Review

As a New Hampshire boarding-schoolboy, A.R. Gurney (Pete to his friends) traveled to Manhattan on a weekend to catch fellow Bufallonian Katharine Cornell as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra on Broadway. In the green room after the show, he managed with minor difficulty to get her to sign his program.

Is there a play in such a minor encounter? On the evidence of “The Grand Manner,” at New York’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, no.