Seth Allen: From LaMaMa to Lisbon Traviata

By a happy accident I find myself about my second LaMaMa alum of the day, actor, playwright, and director Seth Allen (1971-1986). (The accident is that he and and Danitra Vance share a July 13 birthday).

Allen had roles in well-known films, but I became aware of his significance through reading about his theatre work. Intriguingly, his New York Times obit ONLY mentions the theatre work, and not the films at all. I know that he was from Brooklyn. I’ve come across nothing on his education. He is notable for an early association with Tom O’Horgan, winning an Obie in the premier production of Futz (1966) and later starring in the 1969 film version. He also went into the Broadway casts of Hair (1968) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971). He was in Andre Gregory’s doomed Broadway production of Leda Had a Little Swan (1968) and in the West End cast of Michael Weller’sCancer (1970), as well as a 1971 Broadway production of Schiller’s Mary Stuart with Nancy Marchand,Philip Bosco, Adolph Caesar,Stuart Pankin, and Salome Jens. Off-Off he also directed his own plays A Rat’s Mass (1969) and Blonde Roots (1974). His 1972 play Sissy was directed by John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous.

Allen mostly played bit roles in films but many are memorable. You can see him in Alice’s Restaurant (1968), Catch-22 (1970), The Hot Rock (1972), the blacksploitation film Honeybaby, Honeybaby (1974), The Flamingo Kid (1984), and Prizzi’s Honor (1985). Thus in addition to great stage directors like O’Horgan and Gregory, he also worked with Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Garry Marshall, and John Huston. Not too shabby. In television he guest starred on The Blue Knight, Starsky and Hutch, and Hill Street Blues.

Then there was return to theatre in a big way. He was in the original production of Terrence McNally’s Lisbon Traviata and then a return to Broadway in Dario Fo’s The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, both in 1984.

He was clearly on an upward trajectory. But the timing of his 1986 provides a strong clue to his premature fate. Seth Allen was killed by AIDS-related cryptococcal meningitis.