I had the pleasure of reading Gina Gionfriddo's BECKY SHAW and seeing its New York production while I was on the Pulitzer Prize drama jury. The jury had no difficulty making BECKY SHAW one of its three finalists for the prize that year (2009). It has reached London in a production by the director of the New York production (Peter DuBois) and one of the original cast members and received raves from most of the critics. A second viewing only confirms my enthusiasm for the play.
In the simplest terms, BECKY SHAW is a quintessentially American play is focusing on a dysfunctional family. What it does brilliantly is confront serious issues through comedy. We begin with an odd family configuration in a typical domestic drama crisis. Suzanna's father has died and the family discovers not only that he squandered a great deal in poor business decisions, but that he and his business partner were lovers. Four months after his death, his mother, suffering from multiple sclerosis, has taken a lover-caregiver who is, to put it mildly, a bit shady. The only daughter, Suzanna, is a thirty-one year old graduate student in psychology who has many issues of her own. The family fortune, such as it is, and domestic crises are handled by Max, who has lived with them since his mother died when he was ten. Max and Suzanna are, to put it mildly, very close. At the end of the first scene, it becomes sexual, at least for one night. Suzanna's response is to marry the first man she meets, a sweet, overly sentimental (pornography makes him cry) barista and would-be writer, Andrew. While they live in grad student poverty, Max gets rich as an investment counselor.
Max is really the central character in the play. Professionally successful, Max in his private life has no ability to dissemble. He says exactly what he thinks, no matter how hurtful. No relationship with a woman has lasted more than three months. A principal reason for this is his love of Suzanna.
Enter Becky Shaw as a blind date Suzanna and Andrew have arranged for Max. If Max is the central character, Becky is the catalyst for all the action in the second half of the play. Becky is needy, manipulative and tenacious. When Max dumps her after one disastrous date, Becky looks to Andrew for solace and sappy Andrew gets totally sucked into her black hole of need. Becky still believes she can get Max, who can't stand her, through her manipulation of Andrew. After her patently bogus suicide attempt, Max screams, "The nest time you attempt suicide, try harder." However, it isn't clear that he can avoid her. Becky becomes the litmus test by which the characters defend their sense of morality. Ardent feminist Andrew sees Becky as a victim who must be cared for. Suzanna wants her husband back, though she is really in love with Max. She has her own neediness and can only live with a strong man to protect her. She was devastated by the death of her father and needs Max's strength. Max is deeply loyal to the people he loves -- Suzanna and her mother -- but could care less about anyone else. Morality begins and ends at home for him. The only thing that all the characters share is a need for a loving relationship, however unstable. Max and Suzanna's mother claim not to believe in love, yet Max is devoted to Suzanna and her mother quickly found another man. The loving relationship they seek may or may not be sexual and sex is not necessarily a sign of love. Becky asks Max, "If you didn't want a relationship, why did you fuck me?" Ethically the question makes sense, but unfortunately that's not the way men always think. Is Becky's use of sex to hook a man for life any less ethical than Max's separation of sex and love.
This very funny play raises all sorts of issues about our responsibility beyond the people nearest to us. Is Max wrong for not caring about Iraq? Is Andrew ridiculous in feeling that Becky has become his reponsibility? In general Gionfriddo's sympathy seems to be with the most rational characters -- Max and Suzanna's mother.
One of the things I like best about the play is its non-ending. We're left without a resolution -- with a sense that the process will still be going on. Becky will not disappear. Max will still love Suzanna whose marriage to Andrew is far from satisfactory. The ends aren't neatly tied up at the final curtain.
As in New York, David Wilson Barnes's Max is the center of the play. He is the most complex, interesting character and Barnes totally inhabits him. His body language is as masterful as his comic timing. He's funny but also touching. The always terrific Hayden Gwynne plays the pragmatic mother brilliantly, a rock in a sea of neurosis. The other actors are appropriately irritating. Anna Madeley makes one see that Suzanna may be physically thirty-one but, like many graduate students, is still seventeen. Vincent Montuel is a bit too handsome and too young for the wimpy Andrew. Of course Suzanna would be drawn to this stunning guy who makes his first appearance shirtless, but in the context of the play Suzanna falls for Andrew because of his personality, not his looks. He is the opposite of Max. At first I was surprised at the casting of Daisy Haggard as Becky. She seemed ditzy in her first scene, but the New York Becky radiated neediness from her first appearance. However, as the play progressed, I totally bought that there was a neurotic strength that kept her going. She is totally focused on nabbing Max.
The pacing and character relationships were perfect, the sets (on a revolving stage) appropriate. The cheering audience brought the cast back on repeatedly at the end. This comedy of manners is deceptive. Under the laughs are really serious questions. I think the British love it because they are always drawn to characters like Max who breach all manners (an American Basil Fawlty). However, I think the play speaks more to the American sense of family responsibility and our belief that one is judged first and foremost by how one treats the people closest to them, not one's position on geopolitical issues.
It was great to see BECKY SHAW in an audience that had as many young people as old. When I saw it on a Saturday night at Second Stage in New York, the audience was totally geriatric -- the typical audience at a non-profit theatre in the Big Apple. Now I too am geriatric, but the future of theatre depends on a younger audience. It also make the energy of the theatrical experience more intense. Let's hope that the smaller non-profit theatres in London ca keep their prices low so young people still can affort to attend. The National Theatre is now as pricey as the West End, so one gets an older, well-heeled audience. The National Theatre should be the most affordable theatre in London.
BECKY SHAW by Gina Gionfriddo. Almeida Theatre. January 25, 2011.
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Sunday, 23 January 2011
TIGER COUNTRY
We were very impressed with Nina Raine's TRIBES at the Royal Court this past fall. She's a writer with a sure sense of theatre and an ear for sharp dialogue. So we were curious and excited about her new play, TIGER COuNTRY, now at the Hampstead Theatre. Raine studied directing as well as playwriting. This is her production of her work.
TIGER COUNTRY is about doctors in a large city hospital. Sound familiar? Can one write a play on this subject without echoing ER, GRAY'S ANATOMY and their UK brethren HOLBY CITY and CASUALTY? The answer is not totally. The fast moving play that cuts back and forth between short scenes seems at times like a television drama, particularly in the romantic, or should I say sexual, moments. The doctors are all heterosexual, of course. The young male doctors are all handsome, the young females attractive. I'm sure there are homely doctors as well as gay doctors. However, Raine has a particular focus, the balance of dedication and cynicism necessary for a person to survive as a doctor. Her central charater, Emily, is a young emergency room doctor who taes a rather sentimental attitude toward her work while her colleagues are more hard-hearted. She almost implodes when a young woman who has had a heart attack dies. In her eyes, all her colleagues were heartless and uncaring while they were merely being realistic. The patient was dead on arrival and nothing would have saved her. Emily's attempts at resuscitation were wasting time and money. There were moments when I wanted to slap her but fortunately she grows up. Emily is surrounded by colleagues her age and senior. A female Indian surgeon realizes that she is giving up too much to be one of the blokes (necessary in her profession). She sacrifices her femininity and her ethnic identity -- the blokes are white. One becomes aware of the rigid hierarchy of a medical center and the cost of defying the chain of command even when it is necessary.
All Raines's characters are sharply drawn and her dialogue is lively. So, despite the moments that verged on cliche, the play was enjoyable and somewhat thought provoking. Her production was flawless. The Hampstead was turned into a transverse stage with the audience seated on two sides of an open playing area. Beds, gurneys and operating tables were wheeled in and out with choreographic precision and grace. Walls are filled with projections of x-rays and scans. Her 15 member cast was top notch featuring some of Britain's best actors, familiar both from stage and television. Standouts were Thusitha Jayasundera and Adam James. Jayasundera plays the senior female physician who realizes she doesn't fit in any more when she can do nothing for her aunt who is seriously ill thanks to a botched surgery by a senior specialist. To remain one of the blokes, the doctor can not complain or move her aunt to another hospital. James is a forty-something doctor who is forced to become a patient. The younger members of the cast are also fine, particularly Pip Carter as the rebellious resident.
TIGER COUNTRY is not as rich as Raines's TRIBES, but a thoroughly enjoyable play that reinforces all one's reservations about hospitals. Having once been on the receiving end of medical imcompetence, I am always skeptical of hospital care.
TIGER COUNTRY, written and directed by Nina Raine. Hampstead Theatre. January 22, 2011.
TIGER COUNTRY is about doctors in a large city hospital. Sound familiar? Can one write a play on this subject without echoing ER, GRAY'S ANATOMY and their UK brethren HOLBY CITY and CASUALTY? The answer is not totally. The fast moving play that cuts back and forth between short scenes seems at times like a television drama, particularly in the romantic, or should I say sexual, moments. The doctors are all heterosexual, of course. The young male doctors are all handsome, the young females attractive. I'm sure there are homely doctors as well as gay doctors. However, Raine has a particular focus, the balance of dedication and cynicism necessary for a person to survive as a doctor. Her central charater, Emily, is a young emergency room doctor who taes a rather sentimental attitude toward her work while her colleagues are more hard-hearted. She almost implodes when a young woman who has had a heart attack dies. In her eyes, all her colleagues were heartless and uncaring while they were merely being realistic. The patient was dead on arrival and nothing would have saved her. Emily's attempts at resuscitation were wasting time and money. There were moments when I wanted to slap her but fortunately she grows up. Emily is surrounded by colleagues her age and senior. A female Indian surgeon realizes that she is giving up too much to be one of the blokes (necessary in her profession). She sacrifices her femininity and her ethnic identity -- the blokes are white. One becomes aware of the rigid hierarchy of a medical center and the cost of defying the chain of command even when it is necessary.
All Raines's characters are sharply drawn and her dialogue is lively. So, despite the moments that verged on cliche, the play was enjoyable and somewhat thought provoking. Her production was flawless. The Hampstead was turned into a transverse stage with the audience seated on two sides of an open playing area. Beds, gurneys and operating tables were wheeled in and out with choreographic precision and grace. Walls are filled with projections of x-rays and scans. Her 15 member cast was top notch featuring some of Britain's best actors, familiar both from stage and television. Standouts were Thusitha Jayasundera and Adam James. Jayasundera plays the senior female physician who realizes she doesn't fit in any more when she can do nothing for her aunt who is seriously ill thanks to a botched surgery by a senior specialist. To remain one of the blokes, the doctor can not complain or move her aunt to another hospital. James is a forty-something doctor who is forced to become a patient. The younger members of the cast are also fine, particularly Pip Carter as the rebellious resident.
TIGER COUNTRY is not as rich as Raines's TRIBES, but a thoroughly enjoyable play that reinforces all one's reservations about hospitals. Having once been on the receiving end of medical imcompetence, I am always skeptical of hospital care.
TIGER COUNTRY, written and directed by Nina Raine. Hampstead Theatre. January 22, 2011.
Friday, 21 January 2011
THE COUNTRY GIRL
Fors some reason, Clifford Odets is seldom included in the pantheon of twentieth-century American playwrights. Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill, whom I think is highly overrated, are accepted as our great writers for the stage and Odets usually is placed a the top of the second rank. My pantheon would exclude the lumbering O'Neill and include Odets. He had the great gift of making characters sound real and eloquent simultaneously. The devil is in the details with Odets and none of our other major playwrights could include so many detailed character portraits in one play. Odets was the house playwright for the Group Theatre in the mid-1930s, turning out four classics in a row: WAITING FOR LEFTY, AWAKE AND SING, PARADISE LOST, AND GOLDEN BOY. All are studies of the dark side of the American dream as characters give up parts of their soul for money. In these plays Odets managed to create a group of urban characters who were simultaneously optimistic and disillusioned. The language is urban poetry. Odets writes better than any of our other playwrights except Tennessee Williams.
After a period in Hollywood -- like his characters, Odets chased fortune but never quite caught it, ODets returned to Broadway with two showbusiness sagas, THE BIG KNIFE, his vision of a Hollywood sellout, and THE COUNTRY GIRL, which is just finishing a successful run on the West End. This seems to be Odets' year in London. The National Theatre is about to revive his seldom performed 1938 play, ROCKET TO THE MOON.
I had never seen THE COUNTRY GIRL onstage and only knew it from reading it and from the film with Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby, of all people. Most of the play takes place backstage and in dressing rooms. It is the world of its two leading men, weak, washed-up actor Frank Elgin, who uses bits from plays he has performed in as his own fictional, self-justifying back story and young director Bernie Dodd, who can't manage a life outside of the theatre. Dodd, whose father was an alcoholic, becomes obsessed with saving Frank and providing his comeback to the stage as a leading actor. The central character is Frank's young wife, Georgie. When we first see her, she is packing a suitcase to leave her squalid flat and needy failure of a husband. Georgie is a living embodiment of disillusionment. She looks older than her years, exhausted from holding up two people. Frank tells Bernie that Georgie is mentally unstable, suicidal and an alcoholic, projecting onto her his own weaknesses. Young, idealistic Bernie believes him and treats Georgie terribly. He sees Georgie's protection of her husband as destructive when actually Frank totally depends on her.
In THE COUNTRY GIRL, Odets has written a powerful play about a strong woman surrounded by weak men. Georgie doesn't have a career, but must be mother, lover, agent, servant, domineering bitch, sexual magnet to the men who enter her sphere. By the end, all she wants to be is alone. Since the men don't see or care who she really is, Georgie remains something of an enigma to us. Slowly the details of her character emerge.
Rufus Norris, who can be a gimmicky director (his recent production of Mozart's DON GIOVANNI was dreadful) here leaves the play alone and focuses on the performances. Being a West End enterprise, the production has a cast of actors best known for their many television appearances, but with impressive theatre credentials. All give nuanced performances. All three leading roles are tricky because the characters are deeply flawed. Frank at one point says that he must come to like his character before he can play him and that is true as well of any actor in an Odets play -- he or she must find what is likeable amidst the weakness and brashness. I know people who don't care for Jenny Seagrove but I found her totally believable as a trapped woman who stops believing it is too late to change her life. Martin Shaw, who usually plays heroes in television detective dramas found the balance between bluster and weakness in Frank. Like many actors, Frank is a child who has never grown up. Georgie, young enough to be his daughter, must be his mother. Mark Letheren found Bernie's anger and his need to save Frank. I saw this production on a weekday matinee at the end of a long run. It was fresh and totally committed. It reminded me of what a great playwright Odets is and how alive he still is in the right hands. The language is beautiful, both mundane and poetic.
A tangential note. As much as I enjoyed this performance, I was appalled at the state of the Apollo Theatre. At West End prices, one expects a level of comfort and upkeep. The carpet is being held down with duct tape. The old seats are uncomfortable and there is no legroom even in the stalls. New York theatre owners keep their buildings in good condition. The Apollo, like many old West End theatres, is a dingy dump. Anyone paying Wes End prices should expect more than that.
THE COUNTRY GIRL by Clifford Odets. Directed by Rufus Norris. Sets and costumes by Scott Pask and Jonathan Lipman. With Martin Shaw, Jenny Seagrove and Mark Letheren. Apollo Theatre. January 21, 2011.
After a period in Hollywood -- like his characters, Odets chased fortune but never quite caught it, ODets returned to Broadway with two showbusiness sagas, THE BIG KNIFE, his vision of a Hollywood sellout, and THE COUNTRY GIRL, which is just finishing a successful run on the West End. This seems to be Odets' year in London. The National Theatre is about to revive his seldom performed 1938 play, ROCKET TO THE MOON.
I had never seen THE COUNTRY GIRL onstage and only knew it from reading it and from the film with Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby, of all people. Most of the play takes place backstage and in dressing rooms. It is the world of its two leading men, weak, washed-up actor Frank Elgin, who uses bits from plays he has performed in as his own fictional, self-justifying back story and young director Bernie Dodd, who can't manage a life outside of the theatre. Dodd, whose father was an alcoholic, becomes obsessed with saving Frank and providing his comeback to the stage as a leading actor. The central character is Frank's young wife, Georgie. When we first see her, she is packing a suitcase to leave her squalid flat and needy failure of a husband. Georgie is a living embodiment of disillusionment. She looks older than her years, exhausted from holding up two people. Frank tells Bernie that Georgie is mentally unstable, suicidal and an alcoholic, projecting onto her his own weaknesses. Young, idealistic Bernie believes him and treats Georgie terribly. He sees Georgie's protection of her husband as destructive when actually Frank totally depends on her.
In THE COUNTRY GIRL, Odets has written a powerful play about a strong woman surrounded by weak men. Georgie doesn't have a career, but must be mother, lover, agent, servant, domineering bitch, sexual magnet to the men who enter her sphere. By the end, all she wants to be is alone. Since the men don't see or care who she really is, Georgie remains something of an enigma to us. Slowly the details of her character emerge.
Rufus Norris, who can be a gimmicky director (his recent production of Mozart's DON GIOVANNI was dreadful) here leaves the play alone and focuses on the performances. Being a West End enterprise, the production has a cast of actors best known for their many television appearances, but with impressive theatre credentials. All give nuanced performances. All three leading roles are tricky because the characters are deeply flawed. Frank at one point says that he must come to like his character before he can play him and that is true as well of any actor in an Odets play -- he or she must find what is likeable amidst the weakness and brashness. I know people who don't care for Jenny Seagrove but I found her totally believable as a trapped woman who stops believing it is too late to change her life. Martin Shaw, who usually plays heroes in television detective dramas found the balance between bluster and weakness in Frank. Like many actors, Frank is a child who has never grown up. Georgie, young enough to be his daughter, must be his mother. Mark Letheren found Bernie's anger and his need to save Frank. I saw this production on a weekday matinee at the end of a long run. It was fresh and totally committed. It reminded me of what a great playwright Odets is and how alive he still is in the right hands. The language is beautiful, both mundane and poetic.
A tangential note. As much as I enjoyed this performance, I was appalled at the state of the Apollo Theatre. At West End prices, one expects a level of comfort and upkeep. The carpet is being held down with duct tape. The old seats are uncomfortable and there is no legroom even in the stalls. New York theatre owners keep their buildings in good condition. The Apollo, like many old West End theatres, is a dingy dump. Anyone paying Wes End prices should expect more than that.
THE COUNTRY GIRL by Clifford Odets. Directed by Rufus Norris. Sets and costumes by Scott Pask and Jonathan Lipman. With Martin Shaw, Jenny Seagrove and Mark Letheren. Apollo Theatre. January 21, 2011.
Friday, 14 January 2011
THE POTTING SHED at the Finborough
Graham Greene's THE POTTING SHED was first performed in London and on Broadway in 1958. It has seldom been revived since. There's nothing particularly wrong with the play though critics over the years critics have deemed it dated in style and substance. The solid production at the Finborough Theatre proves that perhaps now, when atheism can be as doctrinaire as fundamentalist Chrstianity, it is again timely.
THE POTTING SHED is structured as a kind of mystery. The form goes back to Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX. Something happened to James Callifer when he was fourteen that he has totally forgotten and which his family has tried to erase. During the course of the play James is impelled to discover the secret and this family must deal with the consequences. There is no incest or murder here in this hyper-intellectual British family. The secret has metaphysical implications which change James and since the family are celebrated professional atheists -- the patriarch was the Richard Dawkins of his age -- upset his family. Has James gone mad because he has come to believe that he experienced a miracle? To accept his conviction is to admit that there is something more than -- or other than -- science and rationality. The play explores a mystery in the religious sense of the word. The question the revelation at the heart of the play poses is whether miracles happen. If they do, the family's staunch atheism is exposed as a sham. Graham Greene is writing in prose the sort of religious play in the mode of T.S. Eliot and Christopher Fry wrote in verse. There is a strong kinship between THE POTTING SHED and Eliot's THE COCKTAIL PARTY and THE FAMILY REUNION. Greene was a Catholic and his Catholicism permeates his work, but his approach to his religion was complex and far more modern than Eliot's. Faith and doubt go together in Greene's universe. There is little comfort in faith and God is always unknowable. Yet God does intervene in our world. Greene's plays are intrinsically dramatic because his faith is built on contradictions. I prefer his novels to the plays. There is something formulaic about his dramatic structure. It is too pat for his subject matter. He's a good playwright, but much more than a good novelist at his best. Seeing this production of THE POTTING SHED made me want to reread the novels. There's a new Hollywood film of his classic novel, BRIGHTON ROCK, coming out this Spring. Will Hollywood do justice to this complex writer? Probably not.
I enjoyed this production of THE POTTING SHED at the tiny Finborough. Svetlana Dimcovic staged and paced the play effectively on the small playing area. The playing area created by the walls of this oddly shaped building makes a natural box set that is a perfect size for this sort of drama. Given the brevity of the play, I would have cut one or both of the intervals to maintain tension (without intervals, the play runs less than two hours). Paul Cawley as James, the man discovering his past, was fine in the big moments. I never felt his spiritual emptiness in the first half of the play. He must go through a major change and I think it demands an actor with greater range than Cawley has. In essense we must see a man reborn in the third act but that depends on seeing the deadness before. I'm sure he was improvement over the original John Gielgud and pop star Cliff Richard in the 1971 revival (whose idea was that?). The other ten actors were well cast and more than adequate. If I am a bit dissatisfied, it is because I think more is at stake in the play for all the characters than these actors realized. Everyone underplayed a bit too much. Since I excoriated the cast of a previous Finborough production for chewing up the scenery, I am uncomfortable criticizing this group of good actors for not raising the emotional temperature enough. It's tricky to find the proper balance in a tiny space like the Finborough but I didn't feel that Eileen Battye in the crucial role as the matriarch holding the big secret was ever more than mildly piqued as if someone had breached a rule of etiquette when actually a thirty-year-old family secret is about to be exposed. It's more a question of listening and reacting than how the lines were spoken. I'm not sure one can totally avoid melodrama in this work, which is a kind of Agatha Christie mystery with deep religious implications.
Whatever my reservations, I am deeply grateful to the Finborough for giving me the opportunity to see this play again. And may I say I'm grateful to the friendly new owners of the nice wine bar downstairs for providing cleaner amenities. And I look forward to the new air conditioning system for this famously hot (in all senses of the word) performing space
THE POTTING SHED by Graham Greene. Finborough Theatre. January 13, 2011.
THE POTTING SHED is structured as a kind of mystery. The form goes back to Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX. Something happened to James Callifer when he was fourteen that he has totally forgotten and which his family has tried to erase. During the course of the play James is impelled to discover the secret and this family must deal with the consequences. There is no incest or murder here in this hyper-intellectual British family. The secret has metaphysical implications which change James and since the family are celebrated professional atheists -- the patriarch was the Richard Dawkins of his age -- upset his family. Has James gone mad because he has come to believe that he experienced a miracle? To accept his conviction is to admit that there is something more than -- or other than -- science and rationality. The play explores a mystery in the religious sense of the word. The question the revelation at the heart of the play poses is whether miracles happen. If they do, the family's staunch atheism is exposed as a sham. Graham Greene is writing in prose the sort of religious play in the mode of T.S. Eliot and Christopher Fry wrote in verse. There is a strong kinship between THE POTTING SHED and Eliot's THE COCKTAIL PARTY and THE FAMILY REUNION. Greene was a Catholic and his Catholicism permeates his work, but his approach to his religion was complex and far more modern than Eliot's. Faith and doubt go together in Greene's universe. There is little comfort in faith and God is always unknowable. Yet God does intervene in our world. Greene's plays are intrinsically dramatic because his faith is built on contradictions. I prefer his novels to the plays. There is something formulaic about his dramatic structure. It is too pat for his subject matter. He's a good playwright, but much more than a good novelist at his best. Seeing this production of THE POTTING SHED made me want to reread the novels. There's a new Hollywood film of his classic novel, BRIGHTON ROCK, coming out this Spring. Will Hollywood do justice to this complex writer? Probably not.
I enjoyed this production of THE POTTING SHED at the tiny Finborough. Svetlana Dimcovic staged and paced the play effectively on the small playing area. The playing area created by the walls of this oddly shaped building makes a natural box set that is a perfect size for this sort of drama. Given the brevity of the play, I would have cut one or both of the intervals to maintain tension (without intervals, the play runs less than two hours). Paul Cawley as James, the man discovering his past, was fine in the big moments. I never felt his spiritual emptiness in the first half of the play. He must go through a major change and I think it demands an actor with greater range than Cawley has. In essense we must see a man reborn in the third act but that depends on seeing the deadness before. I'm sure he was improvement over the original John Gielgud and pop star Cliff Richard in the 1971 revival (whose idea was that?). The other ten actors were well cast and more than adequate. If I am a bit dissatisfied, it is because I think more is at stake in the play for all the characters than these actors realized. Everyone underplayed a bit too much. Since I excoriated the cast of a previous Finborough production for chewing up the scenery, I am uncomfortable criticizing this group of good actors for not raising the emotional temperature enough. It's tricky to find the proper balance in a tiny space like the Finborough but I didn't feel that Eileen Battye in the crucial role as the matriarch holding the big secret was ever more than mildly piqued as if someone had breached a rule of etiquette when actually a thirty-year-old family secret is about to be exposed. It's more a question of listening and reacting than how the lines were spoken. I'm not sure one can totally avoid melodrama in this work, which is a kind of Agatha Christie mystery with deep religious implications.
Whatever my reservations, I am deeply grateful to the Finborough for giving me the opportunity to see this play again. And may I say I'm grateful to the friendly new owners of the nice wine bar downstairs for providing cleaner amenities. And I look forward to the new air conditioning system for this famously hot (in all senses of the word) performing space
THE POTTING SHED by Graham Greene. Finborough Theatre. January 13, 2011.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
THE GLASS MENAGERIE
As with KING LEAR, I have seen many productions of Tennessee Williams's THE GLASS MENAGERIE and have directed the play myself. Only one production captured the play as I understand it -- a production at the Hippodrome Theatre in Gainesville, Florida. Usually the Amanda is too old to have children in their early twenties and, to compensate, the children have to be older than their stated age in the script. Jessica Tandy played Amanda in her eighties --- she would have been Tom and Laura's grandmother but not their mother. The same miscasting often occurs with Blanche in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE who is supposed to be thirtyish, not middle aged. Often, too, the focus is placed too much on Amanda and Laura when the relationship between Tom and Amanda is equally important. It is Tom's memories we are watching, after all.
The current production, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins at the Young Vic has its flaws, but the fascinating, near over-the-top performance by Leo Bill as Tom makes it worth seeing. The program reminds us that Tom Williams, not yet named Tennessee Williams, had a nervous breakdown while working at the International Shoe Company and living at home with his garrulous mother and mentally disturbed sister. Leo Bill's Tom is at the breaking point. He is all nervous energy, frustration and entrapment. When his mother cries, "I don't believe you go to the movies," he backs against the wall as if harboring a guilty secret (homosexuality?). This young man has to get out of this apartment and away from his chatterbox of a mother or lose his mind. To some extent, Bill's performance throws the play a bit off balance, but it is perfectly valid and fascinating to watch, particularly for someone who knows the play well. The Brits next to me thought he was too manic, but I think he justifies the production. Bill is an actor willing to take great risks.
Deborah Findlay, an actress I usually like from stage and television roles, is a bit disappointing as Amanda. Perhaps it is the awful southern accent, but I never quite believed her (I must say that in general the dialects were all over the place. Bill's Tom was New York, Jim was midwest -- well, it is St. Louis -- and Laura nineteen-thirties Hollywood. Btitish actors are usually better with American dialects these days -- they certainly seem to be getting lots of leading roles on American tv with their Hugh Laurie midwestern accents. I don't demand accuracy, but consistency would be nice). Great Amandas combine desperation with humor. Like all Tennessee Williams's heroines, Amanda is funny, sad and irritating all at once. Somehow Findlay was too earthy to capture Amanda. She has clearly never met a southern steel magnolia. I have lived in the south for decades now and have met many Amandas. They're a dying breed now, but once ruled the roost in every church and cultural organization. Sinead Mathews was perfectly acceptable as Laura, a bit too pretty and with a strange, throaty voice. I didn't see that brief blossoming of a wallflower and deflation when her dream, after briefly coming true, is dashed. Kyle Soller is equally OK. I missed that sense of a young man for whom high school was always going to be his finest hour and he knows it. He basks in Laura's fond memories of him, but the future doesn't look too bright. Which is to say that 90 per cent of the pathos and the humor in this production came from Leo Bill's Tom.
The staging, pacing and music are fine. Hill-Gibbins used the odd Young Vic space effectively. The audience sits on two sides of a corner stage, but the production uses a curtain which sometimes rises from the floor and sometimes descends from above to give a sense of the illusion Tom speaks of in his prologue. This wasn't a revelatory production but I'm glad I went.
THE GLASS MENAGERIE by Tennessee Williams. Young Vic Theatre. January 13, 2011.
The current production, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins at the Young Vic has its flaws, but the fascinating, near over-the-top performance by Leo Bill as Tom makes it worth seeing. The program reminds us that Tom Williams, not yet named Tennessee Williams, had a nervous breakdown while working at the International Shoe Company and living at home with his garrulous mother and mentally disturbed sister. Leo Bill's Tom is at the breaking point. He is all nervous energy, frustration and entrapment. When his mother cries, "I don't believe you go to the movies," he backs against the wall as if harboring a guilty secret (homosexuality?). This young man has to get out of this apartment and away from his chatterbox of a mother or lose his mind. To some extent, Bill's performance throws the play a bit off balance, but it is perfectly valid and fascinating to watch, particularly for someone who knows the play well. The Brits next to me thought he was too manic, but I think he justifies the production. Bill is an actor willing to take great risks.
Deborah Findlay, an actress I usually like from stage and television roles, is a bit disappointing as Amanda. Perhaps it is the awful southern accent, but I never quite believed her (I must say that in general the dialects were all over the place. Bill's Tom was New York, Jim was midwest -- well, it is St. Louis -- and Laura nineteen-thirties Hollywood. Btitish actors are usually better with American dialects these days -- they certainly seem to be getting lots of leading roles on American tv with their Hugh Laurie midwestern accents. I don't demand accuracy, but consistency would be nice). Great Amandas combine desperation with humor. Like all Tennessee Williams's heroines, Amanda is funny, sad and irritating all at once. Somehow Findlay was too earthy to capture Amanda. She has clearly never met a southern steel magnolia. I have lived in the south for decades now and have met many Amandas. They're a dying breed now, but once ruled the roost in every church and cultural organization. Sinead Mathews was perfectly acceptable as Laura, a bit too pretty and with a strange, throaty voice. I didn't see that brief blossoming of a wallflower and deflation when her dream, after briefly coming true, is dashed. Kyle Soller is equally OK. I missed that sense of a young man for whom high school was always going to be his finest hour and he knows it. He basks in Laura's fond memories of him, but the future doesn't look too bright. Which is to say that 90 per cent of the pathos and the humor in this production came from Leo Bill's Tom.
The staging, pacing and music are fine. Hill-Gibbins used the odd Young Vic space effectively. The audience sits on two sides of a corner stage, but the production uses a curtain which sometimes rises from the floor and sometimes descends from above to give a sense of the illusion Tom speaks of in his prologue. This wasn't a revelatory production but I'm glad I went.
THE GLASS MENAGERIE by Tennessee Williams. Young Vic Theatre. January 13, 2011.
KING LEAR
How many productions of KING LEAR have I seen? I remember Morris Carnovsky, Paul Scofield in the great Peter Brook production, John Wood, Robert Stephens, Brian Cox in a fascinating Deborah Warner production, Ian McKellan. I also remember a production at Playmakers Repertory Theatre in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that ranks as the worst production of Shakespeare I have ever seen and one of the worst productions of any play I have ever seen. I shouldn't just mention Lear; for the play is as much about Edgar, Gloucester and Kent as it is about the old king.One thing is clear: there is so much to this play that no director or cast can get it all and different productions emphasize different aspects of the play. In the recent Trevor Nunn production, McKellan brought out the humor in Lear's role while the fine Ben Meyjes made Edgar's suffering almost unbearable. No production made me think more about this fascinating, dark play than Michael Grandage's current production at the Donmar. This is ironic since the playing area, the ceiling placed over it and the edges of the circle are covered in whitewashed boards. Visually, the production looks washed out, like over-exposed black and white film. The characters are mostly in black -- the few bits of color are almost shocking. The lighting is almost entirely white. On this bare set -- no furnishings until a throne is brought in for Lear's reunion with Cordelia -- Grandage offers a fast paced Lear. Actors for one scene are entering as characters from the previous scene speak their final lines. There are enough cuts -- mostly in the final acts -- to get the production to two hours and fifty minutes including the interval. There are no armies of attendants. In this small theater, KING LEAR can be performed effectively with an ensemble of sixteen fine actors.
What this KING LEAR offers is a stark picture of good and evil, striving and suffering. The play is almost a moral parable of what happens to a world when people surrender their most important human trait -- compassion. In this stark production, the heartless grasping of Goneril, Regan and Edmind seemed all the more frightening. They were so matter-of-fact in their brutality. There was no chewing of the scenery from the nasty sisters or Edmund, just simple, cold ambition, greed and desire. One missed the usual sense of humor actors find in Edmund. Alec Newman's bastard was too heartless to be funny, but his interpretation worked in this context. The good characters were superbly played. Reliable Paul Jesson, who always gives a superb performance, was a sweet, clueless Gloucester, trying to do the right thing but unaware there could be such evil. Gwilym Lee's Edgar, the polestar of good in this production, evolved through his testing into a real hero. One saw Lear and Edgar as the central relationship in the play -- mad old man learning to "see better" and young man feigning madness while he learns about human suffering. Two naked souls in the tempest. It seemed absolutely right that Edgar got the last word. Gina McKee and Justine Mitchell wisely did not play the usual harridans. They were women who simply had no feeling for their fathers or their husbands. All they had were anger and appetites. Yet I did, as one must, feel that right was on their side in the first hour of the play as they suffered their father's hundred knights and invective. You should not see Goneril and Regan's villainy right away. I didn't think Pippa Bennett-Warner did much more than speak Cordelia's lines. Why is she Lear's favorite and, if so, why isn't she willing to humor him in the first scene? What she says is absolutely rational, but we should see a reason why she won't play the game as her sisters do. Michael Hadley was effective as Kent and Ron Cook ably played the fool as a clown who realized that wit and humor were no antidote to the tempest that was brewing. When Lear and Edgar go off at the end of the first part, the Fool goes off in another direction, never to be seen again (not even at the curtain call). He sees that "Poor Tom of Bedlam" is a fitter companion for the mad king.
Now to Derek Jacobi's Lear. Everything was there. One had a sense that he was on the way to madness in the first scene. I have seen actos make more of certain moments in the first half of the play ("I will do such things as . . .I know not what"). When one sees a lot of Lears one tends to judge a performance by certain moments but here one had to look at the evolution of the character. There were surprises. The whispered "Blow winds, crack your cheeks", as if the storm Lear was invoking was not the one whirling around him. Grandage cut the storm sounds and brightened the lights as Lear spoke these lines to make it a mad, internal moment. He was at this best in the scenes with Edgar and the final scenes. For this seventy-something actor, KING LEAR was in great part a play about age. Edgar and Cordelia become the polestars of good because they revere age, even when the old are cruel, like Lear, or foolish, like Gloucester. Lear, Gloucester and Kent all realize that they have lived too long and seen too much to want to go on. It's up to the young to redeem this fallen world. A minor point, but it is amazing that at the finale of such a powerful performance the smallish, seventy-something Jacobi still carried in the not-so-petite Cordelia.
At the end, after Edgar has spoken those interesting final lines (the text gives them to Albany, but it seemed right for Edgar to speak them. Albany has not really earned these lines.) -- "The weight of this sad time we must obey,/Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young/Shall never see so much, nor live so long" -- the lights brighten and we hear birdsong. The natural world will go on. The sun will rise. Birds will sing. But mankind must live to a higher order than the mere "Nature" Edmund invokes. The three surviving good men -- Albany, Edgar and Kent -- are there. The evil has been purged, but some good people have suffered and died as well.
Michael Grandage's production reminded me that this is one of the greatest plays ever written, perhaps the greatest, but also the darkest. We watch what happens when people do not act humanely and the cost of trying to do good when the moral order breaks down. One can think of big things like the holocaust, or smaller tragedies like the shooting in Arizona last week, a byproduct not only of madness, but also of the total breakdown in civil dscourse in my native land thanks in part to people making millions of dollars being uncivil on radio and television and setting a horrible example of behavior in a democracy. Sermon ended.). Purists may quibble at the cuts and the reassignmnt of some lines, but this KING LEAR does more than tell a story. It gets at the heart of the play. On both sides of us, peopple whispered "Wow" as the lights went down at the end. Brits don't often say "Wow." It was deserved. It was also interesting to note the number of actors in the audience last night. I saw one fine young actor who plays one of the leads in the current National Theatre HAMLET watch intently. Even for a good actor, this production offered lessons in acting.
KING LEAR, directed by Michael Grandage, designed by Christopher Oran. Donmar Warehouse Theatre. January 12, 2011.
What this KING LEAR offers is a stark picture of good and evil, striving and suffering. The play is almost a moral parable of what happens to a world when people surrender their most important human trait -- compassion. In this stark production, the heartless grasping of Goneril, Regan and Edmind seemed all the more frightening. They were so matter-of-fact in their brutality. There was no chewing of the scenery from the nasty sisters or Edmund, just simple, cold ambition, greed and desire. One missed the usual sense of humor actors find in Edmund. Alec Newman's bastard was too heartless to be funny, but his interpretation worked in this context. The good characters were superbly played. Reliable Paul Jesson, who always gives a superb performance, was a sweet, clueless Gloucester, trying to do the right thing but unaware there could be such evil. Gwilym Lee's Edgar, the polestar of good in this production, evolved through his testing into a real hero. One saw Lear and Edgar as the central relationship in the play -- mad old man learning to "see better" and young man feigning madness while he learns about human suffering. Two naked souls in the tempest. It seemed absolutely right that Edgar got the last word. Gina McKee and Justine Mitchell wisely did not play the usual harridans. They were women who simply had no feeling for their fathers or their husbands. All they had were anger and appetites. Yet I did, as one must, feel that right was on their side in the first hour of the play as they suffered their father's hundred knights and invective. You should not see Goneril and Regan's villainy right away. I didn't think Pippa Bennett-Warner did much more than speak Cordelia's lines. Why is she Lear's favorite and, if so, why isn't she willing to humor him in the first scene? What she says is absolutely rational, but we should see a reason why she won't play the game as her sisters do. Michael Hadley was effective as Kent and Ron Cook ably played the fool as a clown who realized that wit and humor were no antidote to the tempest that was brewing. When Lear and Edgar go off at the end of the first part, the Fool goes off in another direction, never to be seen again (not even at the curtain call). He sees that "Poor Tom of Bedlam" is a fitter companion for the mad king.
Now to Derek Jacobi's Lear. Everything was there. One had a sense that he was on the way to madness in the first scene. I have seen actos make more of certain moments in the first half of the play ("I will do such things as . . .I know not what"). When one sees a lot of Lears one tends to judge a performance by certain moments but here one had to look at the evolution of the character. There were surprises. The whispered "Blow winds, crack your cheeks", as if the storm Lear was invoking was not the one whirling around him. Grandage cut the storm sounds and brightened the lights as Lear spoke these lines to make it a mad, internal moment. He was at this best in the scenes with Edgar and the final scenes. For this seventy-something actor, KING LEAR was in great part a play about age. Edgar and Cordelia become the polestars of good because they revere age, even when the old are cruel, like Lear, or foolish, like Gloucester. Lear, Gloucester and Kent all realize that they have lived too long and seen too much to want to go on. It's up to the young to redeem this fallen world. A minor point, but it is amazing that at the finale of such a powerful performance the smallish, seventy-something Jacobi still carried in the not-so-petite Cordelia.
At the end, after Edgar has spoken those interesting final lines (the text gives them to Albany, but it seemed right for Edgar to speak them. Albany has not really earned these lines.) -- "The weight of this sad time we must obey,/Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young/Shall never see so much, nor live so long" -- the lights brighten and we hear birdsong. The natural world will go on. The sun will rise. Birds will sing. But mankind must live to a higher order than the mere "Nature" Edmund invokes. The three surviving good men -- Albany, Edgar and Kent -- are there. The evil has been purged, but some good people have suffered and died as well.
Michael Grandage's production reminded me that this is one of the greatest plays ever written, perhaps the greatest, but also the darkest. We watch what happens when people do not act humanely and the cost of trying to do good when the moral order breaks down. One can think of big things like the holocaust, or smaller tragedies like the shooting in Arizona last week, a byproduct not only of madness, but also of the total breakdown in civil dscourse in my native land thanks in part to people making millions of dollars being uncivil on radio and television and setting a horrible example of behavior in a democracy. Sermon ended.). Purists may quibble at the cuts and the reassignmnt of some lines, but this KING LEAR does more than tell a story. It gets at the heart of the play. On both sides of us, peopple whispered "Wow" as the lights went down at the end. Brits don't often say "Wow." It was deserved. It was also interesting to note the number of actors in the audience last night. I saw one fine young actor who plays one of the leads in the current National Theatre HAMLET watch intently. Even for a good actor, this production offered lessons in acting.
KING LEAR, directed by Michael Grandage, designed by Christopher Oran. Donmar Warehouse Theatre. January 12, 2011.
Monday, 10 January 2011
THEATER ECONOMICS
This past weekend we saw the delightful MIDSUMMER for £15 a ticket (unreserved) and a superb concert by the BBC Symphony led by the charismatic John Wilson for £12.80 a ticket (orchestra stalls seats). This week I will see Derek Jacobi in KING LEAR for £18 (front row circle), a critically acclaimed revival of THE GLASS MENAGERIE for £10 (front row orchestra stalls) and a revival of a Graham Greene play for £9 (unreserved). That's £65 pounds (a little over $100) for five performances. An orchestra seat for a Broadway show is upwards of $135 before all those handling fees are added on ($75 or so for Off-Broadway and non-profit theaters). This means that theater is affordable, not much more expensive than going to a movie. Granted, none of the productions I saw last week or are seeing this week are West End commercial productions which are considerably more expensive, but seldom as interesting as what is running off West End or on the fringe. They now have a top of around £60 a ticket (around $96 which is still $40 cheaper than Broadway). But one can see a lot of great theater without going to the West End. One goes there for big stars and big musicals.
My point is that one can go to the theater regularly in London. It needn't be a special occasion. This means that one feels more adventurous. I will gamble on a new play at £10-£20 a ticket. I would be unlikely to do so at $135 a ticket. Here the level of acting is so consistently high that you are likely to get as good, if not better, performances on the fringe as on the West End.
I don't include the Royal National Theatre in my argument. Their productions are usually excellent, though they seldom get the best of the new plays. As a national theater, it should be affordable, but except for the discounted summer productions in the largest of the theaters, their prices are inching close to those on the West End. Under 25s can get in relatively cheaply and over 60s get a deal on the weekday matinees but with a £44 top, you don't gamble on National productions unless it is something you feel you must see.
Like New York, there is a half price ticket booth and on weekdays most shows are available. I have noticed that a lot of shows are no longer offering half price tickets, but something like 2/3 or 3/4 price tickets.
The point of all this is -- if you are a theater fan and want to glut on theater, London is the place to be.
My point is that one can go to the theater regularly in London. It needn't be a special occasion. This means that one feels more adventurous. I will gamble on a new play at £10-£20 a ticket. I would be unlikely to do so at $135 a ticket. Here the level of acting is so consistently high that you are likely to get as good, if not better, performances on the fringe as on the West End.
I don't include the Royal National Theatre in my argument. Their productions are usually excellent, though they seldom get the best of the new plays. As a national theater, it should be affordable, but except for the discounted summer productions in the largest of the theaters, their prices are inching close to those on the West End. Under 25s can get in relatively cheaply and over 60s get a deal on the weekday matinees but with a £44 top, you don't gamble on National productions unless it is something you feel you must see.
Like New York, there is a half price ticket booth and on weekdays most shows are available. I have noticed that a lot of shows are no longer offering half price tickets, but something like 2/3 or 3/4 price tickets.
The point of all this is -- if you are a theater fan and want to glut on theater, London is the place to be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)