Stoppard's Arcadia on Broadway

Picture of the ending waltz (NOT from the current Broadway production)

It all ends in one swirling waltz, with both past and present people circling each other in a ring of time and thought. Indeed, Stoppard's Arcadia, currently running at the Barrymore Theater, gives the sense that time dances with itself as well. The two intertwined narratives, one in the 1830s and one in the present day, step around each other in the space of an old British country house, never touching except perhaps if the present day inhabitants feel a ghost-like chill as they research the earlier characters.

Aptly played by most of the cast, except perhaps a really galling and annoying portrayal of Bernarad Nightengale by Billy Cudrup that toned itself down in the second half, the lines were spoken well. (The NY Times disagrees here.) Stoppard loads his lines down with so many -isms that are then undercut by so many comedic lines that just getting them out naturally and so that the audience can follow deserves applause. The characters themselves are warm and human, if not particularly fleshed out. In their limited roles, the mouthing of Stoppard's suddenly heart-wrenching epigrams, full of yearning and paradox, can seem a little startling.

Many of Stoppard's plays have been history lessons as well, bringing us into the intellectual thoughts and mores of an era. Nothing revolutionary happens here, and a quick explanation of plot or purpose is hard to come by for Arcadia. Set in Sidley Park, an English country house, the research of two modern scholars and the house's current residents are juxtaposed with the lives of those who lived there 180 years earlier. In the present, writer Hannah Jarvis is researching a hermit who once lived on the grounds of the estate and Bernard Nightingale, a literature professor, is investigating a possible connection to the life of Lord Byron. As their investigations unfold, helped by Valentine Coverly, a post-graduate student in mathematical biology, the truth about the 1800s era residents Thomasina Coverly, the daughter of the house, and her tutor Septimus Hodge, is gradually revealed.

What the actors do very well is make the search for knowledge and truth a passionate, heartfelt affair. The possible futility of it lends pathos to the character's individual searches. Time and Sidley Park brings them together for a brief moment. Altogether, a little wilder than the average Bristish country house story.

Brian Bedford's The Importance of Being Earnest at the Roundabout

Another day, another drenching of wet snow to struggle through, adding the misery of a full body contact subway commute with people whose horrible taste in music pounds through their earbuds. Anyhow, as I intended to write, last night I went to see one of my favorite plays of all time, the one I write my university thesis on, have seen on stage four times, and viewed every movie version of, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde directed by Brian Bedford.

It de-ceded expectations. Perhaps because I was bringing so much to it, I lost a naive enjoyment of it. Surely a joke is bound to lose some of its funniness when I already know the punch line. Yet I also think I have some distinct opinions about how to deliver the mannered and difficult lines (with preferably less camp) and really about how to do the whole play.

Two perfect things: the set and Brian Bedford (also the director) in his role as Lady Bracknell. He was perfect, and every line of his was a joy to hear. The campy Algernon, and over-modulated voices of the Gwendolyn and Cecily, and character roles the servants took on, and the histronics of Miss Prism--somehow none of them hit the right note of artificiality. They were all too excitable about it, not nearly languid enough. Dr. Chausable and Jack were actually rather good. They ham up the obvious theatrically of the piece rather than treating it with the upmost seriousness.

While it didn't live up to my expectations, Wilde's brilliance is unsquashable and it is a serviceable rendition. True to Wilde, "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily." The New York Times reports this morning that the critically acclaimed show's run is being extended.

Apropos my discussion yesterday against the glorification of Nature in Schiller, this quote of Wilde's seemed deliciously suited:

"I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone." - Lady Bracknell, Act 1

The Screwtape Letters' “soft, gentle path to Hell”

I saw an adaption of The Screwtape Letters at the Westside Theater the other night, in one of last performances before it hit the road (check out the site to see if its coming near you). The Screwtape Letters is a satirical novel by C. S. Lewis first published in February 1942 and the play, set in a stylish office in hell, follows the clever scheming of Satan's chief psychiatrist, Screwtape, as he hungrily entices a human 'patient' toward damnation (human souls being hell's primary source of food). Evil, the banality of evil, and specifically the insidious ways it works into individual's lives is told here through a demon's point of view. It is damn funny, because psychologically is is dead on and startlingly true even today, even from a non-Christian perspective.


As I learned in discussion after the performance, Lewis wrote this story about a senior demon, Screwtape, teaching his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood, how to secure the damnation of a British man after hearing a translation of one of Hitler's speeches on the BBC radio. Hitler's silver tongue, as he exhorted the English to believe that he only wanted to work together to lead a great cultural world upheaval, struck him as being the purest evil. 


Lewis dedicated the work to his friend and fellow Inkling J.R.R. Tolkien, who had warned that delving too deeply into the craft of evil would have consequences. Lewis later wrote:


"Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment . . . though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded.”


However the play is much more lively and interesting than that, and I imagine a much better theatrical experience that reading the meditative letters might give one to expect.

Noel Coward: Blithe Charm

Noel Coward, performer, singer, librettist and playwright, got by primarily on charm from his birth in 1899 until his death in 1973 with what Time Magazine called, "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise." Sensibilities have changed, but there's still a certain old-school, British charm to this theatircal jack-of-all-trades. Indeed, that's what he banked on, often writing plays designed to feature himself.




Mad dogs and Englishman, one of his many ditties, is light and above all entertaining. If you need more evidence of Coward's genius for entertaining and you happen to be in Manhattan, go see the revival of Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theater. This comedy features a stellar cast including Angela Lansbury, and made me laugh more than I ever have at a Broadway play. As good as the production was, the merit lay in the play itself.

Like a little Chekhov with your coffee?

Then keep reading...


-------------------------------

In a Chekhov-heavy season comes another excellent production, The Cherry Orchard playing at BAM's Harvey Theater. Chekhov's final play tells the story of a noble family who has spent their fortune with a purely Russian frivolity and because of it is forced to sell their ancestral home and its huge, beautiful, and useless cherry orchard. True to character, these scions can't manage either to stop spending or to sell the orchard, so it is inevitably auctioned off to pay their debt. Tom Stoppard's adaptation and Sam Mendes' direction would be a winning combination for any play, but a light hand is all that is required to guide this masterwork.

The actors certainly deliver light-handed, realistic versions of their characters. Chekhov's femme fatales are mockeries of the name; femme flawed would be better. These roles certainly aren't easy, requiring self-aggrandizing loud voices and silliness that ring patently false over the play's wasteland of ideals. Sinead Cusack, as Ranevskaya, is true to her part, but hardly carries the lead role as Kristen Scott Thomas did in The Seagull. Rebecca Hall, recently seen in the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona, handles her character excellently. The male cast is strong in general, with Ethan Hawke in another solid performance as an intellectual, and the venerable Richard Easton as the butler Firs.

The production is solid and the remaining question is the same one The Cherry Orchard faced at its first production. Chekhov wrote a comedy, but its first director produced it as a tragedy. Stoppard's rewriting leans toward comedy, but the question remains open. The ridiculous characters, the general insouciance, and the underlying conviction the Chekhov wants you to disapprove of the spendthrift aristocrats all beg you to take their downfall as lightly as they do.

For example, the family's departure from their home is oddly anti-climatic. This is redeemed by the final scene, which depicts the family's faithful old servant Firs, who has awoken to find he has been left behind, dying with only a twinge of sound to mark his passage. His death is a masterful finale for a play that hovers between tragedy and comedy, and, handled in this manner, it diffuses attention from the family just when your sympathies are most with them.

Chekhov's disapproval likewise breaks through in an earlier moment, when an anonymous passerby interrupts the family (and the lightness of the play) to beg for directions and money. His grim presence is the breaking through of a Russian reality, the peasant reality, into their lives. The emotional declarations of the family, for all their more impassioned delivery, don't have the same heft as his simple, serious words. By comedy, Chekhov indeed meant that The Cherry Orchard was a satire, and one whose unhappy characters illustrate unhappy views. His characters are so lifelike and unhappy we sympathize with them.

Despite his intent, Chekhov's artistry outstrips his personal convictions, and in this case, the production itself. What struck me foremost was the play over the production. Chekhov crafted a thoroughly modern, neat, and emotionally satisfying drama that is both timely and timeless. This production at BAM, though by no means unimpressive, was like watching the Oscars and seeing a beautiful girl whose beautiful dress wore her.

Following in the footsteps of The Seagull, and now running concurrently with Uncle Vanya, BAM's production of The Cherry Orchard enlivens any Chekhovite's evening through March 8.

Originally published in Blogcritics Magazine March 2, 2009.

33 Variations: A Race with Beethoven Against Time

Director and playwright Moises Kaufman, of The Laramie Project fame, came on stage at the beginning of 33 Variations, his latest show now in previews on Broadway, last Thursday to explain that he had added some last minute changes. Surprisingly so, since, although the play is new to New York, it has come third-hand via Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. The third time around for Kaufman, his direction and scenery haven't changed, and despite his warning, and a few line flubs, it was a polished and elegant production of an engaging play.

There seems to be little to fool with, as this well-constructed play tells a fascinating set of stories. Musicologist and ALS patient Katherine Brandt (Jane Fonda) determinedly studies Beethoven's Diabelli Variations to figure out why he would write so many variations on a mediocre waltz. Meanwhile, her daughter Clara (Samantha Mathis) tries to get close to her emotionally distant mother, who has less than a year to live, while Clara is also falling in love with a young nurse in the light romantic comedy subplot of this tightly-woven play.

We also watch Beethoven himself (Zach Grenier) work under an obsessive impulse to finish the variations while going deaf and becoming ill. Katherine, Clara, and Beethoven are all in a race against time, and as Katherine comes to feel, Beethoven's 33 variations are a way of exploring all the possibilities and complexities existing in one moment in time.

Death is always the end, but in this case it does not denude the play of drama. The crux of the story becomes the conflict between mother and daughter, and Katherine's need to finish her work. The interludes where Beethoven rages or Clara's boyfriend tries to romance her are the delight of the play, lightening the sense of pathos that is always present yet which, I suspect, never fully plays out. On one hand we are saved from melodrama, and Kaufman's language is delightfully restrained and natural. However, despite the competent acting of the players, some of the characters (the music publisher and the German librarian for example) stray into caricature, and Katherine would be more emotionally compelling if she broke down once.

The production of this piece is the well-honed result of its many stagings. The set was wonderfully handled to accommodate the switch between eras, and its versatile sparseness was modern, light, and effective, with sliding panes of music notes surrounded by shelves alternately accommodating 21st century Bonn and 18th century Vienna. A pianist accompanies the play with parts of the variations. Just as characters talk through time, the music and the characters interact as well. In addition to the drama of the piece, I enjoyed learning about Beethoven's life and works, but also how to listen to him.

33 Variations boasts something for everyone. With its meditation on death, its historical and musical aspects, its touches of light romance, and the gorgeous intermingling of people and ideas across time, the play begs a full house. Combined with the fame of Moises Kaufman and Jane Fonda, it will be interesting to see if that is enough to reel in an audience during these hard economic times.

33 Variations continues at the Eugene O'Neil theater through May 24.

Originally published in Blogcritics Magazine on February 21.

The Language of Trees, teetering between the homefront and the warzone

To see, or not to see this new play? That is the question, and this reviewer is unsure. The Roundabout theater's production of a young playwright's off-Broadway debut has magical moments, but does it fulfill its potential in this short and intimate production?

The Language of Trees follows Loretta and her young son Eben at home while the husband Denton goes to Iraq as a translator and is captured. The focus on the mother and son shows us a prosaic world of dishes and cleaning and one pesky neighbor, who befriends and bothers them. As they deal with life after loss at home, Denton finds more than he bargained for as a translator when he is captured and held hostage.

These topical and all-too real issues are imbued with a degree of magic that is charming to watch. Here, Denton converses with Bill Clinton in his cell, providing some of the most enjoyable and also pathos-ridden moments of the play. Denton rambles about his love for his family until he realizes that Clinton is imaginary. The clever Clinton scene was matched by Eben speaking to his father through a tree and by an ending in which Loretta takes on Denton's words, walk over to him in his cell and kisses him goodbye--and this scene held more emotional realism than all the dull cleaning scenes combined.

The Roundabout Theater keeps a small basement black box theater for the encouragement of young playwrights, such as The Language of Tree's Steven Levenson. A pleasure to see a new playwright, but Levenson certainly seemed naive as he focused on Loretta and Eben at home while Denton fights in Iraq. The New York Times noted the play was the first to focus on the home front rather than war zone.

As that article also noted, the plight of the father in Iraq makes the life of the mother and son seem relatively trivial. As they talk about school or pizza, the characters fail to display the depth of talking around things nor do they have breakdowns where one is transported into their agony. This could be due to Ms. Gold's thin performance as well as the script. The structure of the play itself was flawed. It contained extraneous scenes, and dwelling on dishes seemed to retard meaningful relationships rather than illuminate them. The father, on the other hand, shown kneeling with a black hood over his head, can hardly fail to resonate with an American audience today.

The play tackles serious issues, and ones deeply felt by millions of Americans. I was one of the few theatergoers not crying at the end. However, it was more moving in that it reminds one of reality than because it explores human drama and loss in a specific context. It reminds you of anybody you know in the military, it reminds you of the news...but in the characters Loretta and Eben you only find suggestions of what such people could be like.

Skip this play, but watch for playwright Steven Levenson in the future. There was a candor and ambition in his work that could develop quite magically.

---

By Steven Levenson; directed by Alex Timbers. With: Maggie Burke (Kay Danley), Natalie Gold (Loretta Trumble-Pinkerstone), Michael Hayden (Denton Pinkerstone), Gio Perez (Eben Trumble-Pinkerstone) and Michael Warner (Bill Clinton). At the Roundabout’s Black Box Theater, at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, 111 West 46th Street, Manhattan through December 14.

---

Attempted review of a most excellent Chekhov's The Seagull

A new production of Chekhov's play The Seagull has-

{So why is it called The Seagull?}
{Excuse me! Who are you?! And what are you doing in my theater review?}
{Just trying to help you get to the point. I hate those wordy, loud-mouthed reviewers.}
{I hadn't even started yet!}
{And already prevaricating and going on about yourself...}
{Hrrumph. Apparently there are seagulls on the lakes in Russia,-}
{Ooooh, who knew?}
{-where the play is set , and Nina is compared to a seagull by Constantin and Tragorin, and the play ends with a stuffed seagull being placed on stage. Now may I begin?}
{You may. Start with the characters; Chekhov's people always remind me of my neighbors.}

Irina Arkadina, a famous but aging actress, brings her lover, the successful writer Trigorin, to the country estate where her retired brother and her son live. Her son, Constantin, wants to be writer, and has a tempestuous relationship with his difficult, attention-seeking mother. Constantin loves the naive Nina, who wants to be a famous actress. The rest of the characters circle around the story of these four in this family comic-tragedy. Let's just say things begin to unwind in a downward spiral when Nina runs off to Moscow and becomes Trigorin's lover rather than an actress, and this light family comedy takes on tragic tones that have to be avoided in drawing room conversation.

{Little social-climbling slut!}
{Not really, more naive than anything. Now if you'll please keep quiet!}

The Seagull is the first of Chekhov's 4 major plays prior to his death from tuberculosis in 1904. When it was first staged in 1896, the audience booed so loudly that the actress playing Nina lost her voice from fear. It had the typical Chekhovian cast of fully-developed, ordinary characters who keep most of the action offstage, and interact trivially while talking around more serious matters. For instance, a certain writer blows his brains out offstage and we hear no formal discussion, just a whisper to get Irina away. Subtext of this type was an innovation, and helped bring theatrical convention away from melodrama and into the realms of realism.

The version being played at the Walter Kerr theater in New York city, through December 21st, was written by Christopher Hampton, who says "Chekhov used to be thought of as a lyrical, melancholy kind of writer, and he isn't. He's a very muscular, energetic, clear, lucid writer" in this interview with NPR. The strength of the dialogue really comes out in the exchanges, often heated, between Irina (Kristin Scott Thomas of Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient fame) and Constantin (Mackenzie Crook, who is in the BBC version of The Office). Their relationship mirrors that of Hamlet and his mother, as Constantin hates his mother's lover and vies for her respect and attention. This production actually took 9 of the original cast from the British Royal Court's production, although Kristin Scott Thomas was a new and welcome addition.

{Yes, yes, that is all very well, but how was it? what did you think of the performance?}
{Oh, you mean this performance? the Ian Rickson production that I just saw?}
{Oh, go on then. That one, yes of course!}

I really enjoyed it.

{That's it??? You got to say more than that.}

This highly-enjoyable production held my attention from the moment it subtly started, with a character walking out before the lights went down and the audience hushing itself. The different love-longings and sadness and disappointments of the characters was interspersed with laughter throughout, and kept this tragedy in content light in context. It was perfectly staged, with great sound and lighting. The actors were on the top of their game. Kristin Scott Thomas might have been over that top, but then the character Irina is meant to be over the top to some degree and it worked within the play. I really felt drawn into a different world, and was genuinely troubled by the appearance of Nina in the last act.

I think it was an excellent production of an excellent play. A perfect play, really, as it felt like a perfectly harmonious whole and the end was satisfying even while tragic. The characters were true to life throughout, and distinctive as people you live next to and see every day. I thought it was moving in the way life often is, with significance understood rather than outspoken. The New York Times also praised the production, in case you're interested. It was beautiful to watch, especially as things went from light to dark in the end.

{Well, I'll go see it then.}
{Please do, and go away...bothersome old thing!}
{What was that last bit?}
{Nothing!}

Salome (A Wilde History)

In anticipation of tonight's opera at the Met, I am going to tell you a secret about me: I am in love with a dead gay man. It's true; Oscar Wilde has been the man in my life long before I had a man. He wrote a biblical tragedy of all things, this decadent fop. Then Strauss turned his Salome into an opera, and that is what I am going to see tonight.

1) A Play by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde wrote Salome in 1891 in French, and an English translation came out in 1894. (Translated by Wilde, not his no good lover Bosie despite the fact the Wilde still gave him credit in the Dedication.) The play tells in one act the Biblical story of Salome, stepdaughter of Herod, who, to her stepfather's dismay but to the delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils. Rehearsals for the play's debut in London began, only to be banned. The play eventually premiered in Paris in 1896, but by then Wilde was in prison.

2) Illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley

An outrageously talented artist, Aubrey Beardsely had already been greatly influential prior to his death at age 26. In 1891, at age 18, he met Wilde, who was in the process of writing Salome. Wilde asked Beardsley to illustrate the English version. He was a prefect choice for both the play and for Wilde.

Beardsley "developed a perverse and playfully theatrical style partly inspired by Greek vase painting. The venomous elegance of his drawings has an ornamental rhythm akin to the abstract decorations of Islamic palaces. For Salome, Beardsley ironically appropriated the decadent theme of the evil, emasculating woman." (From Michael Gibson, Symbolism)
Wilde, on Beardsley's muse: as having "moods of terrible laughter"

3) An Opera by Strauss

Those in the know (and I am not referring to myself), argue that Strauss's Salome is the first "modern" opera and his first major operatic success. Richard Strauss composed it in 1904, and wrote the libretto as well, in German. The opera's music is supposed to be gripping–-relating the themes of perversion, evil, and cruelty.

In Production:

The New York Times had a favorable review of the Met’s production and especially of the singer in the role of Salome. The closer it is to Wilde’s original version, and to Beardsley’s striking vision, the happier I will be.

My esteemed father would like to add that, in his opinion, nobody over 50 years of age or 250 pounds should attempt the Dance of the Seven Veils.

A Lovely Evening

Maybe I have a penchant for all things Tudor and Elizabethan.

I enjoy The Tudors almost as much as Shakespeare, albeit in quite different ways. So I was thrilled to get tickets for the Roundabout's new production. Actually, I tend to love whatever the Roundabout puts on, and a historical drama or classic play just adds to the draw.

Last night I saw A Man for All Seasons, a 1960s drama by Robert Bolt about Sir Thomas Moore and his opposition to the divorce of King Henry VIII of England from his first wife, Catherine of Spain, to marry Ann Boleyn. I enjoyed the 60s movie version, and brought high expectations to this production directed by Doug Hughes and starring Frank Langella. The performence met them.

Bolt's play is a clean vehicle for the drama of a man trying to live when his government finds his personal beliefs--inconvenient. A simple play in its characterization of Sir Thomas Moore as a saint, following his conscience to his death for refusing to publicaly support the King's divorce, and everyone else as evil (Cromwell, immoral powerseeker, Rich, trecharous worm) or merely less willing to risk death(Moore's simple wife). Moore's beliefs do not allow him to serve his King any longer, at which point he simply stops, not because-as he points out in the play-he is making a gesture, but because his conscience would not allow him to do otherwise.

Moore's remarks were often the delight of the play, lightening the tense mood even as his situation became more and more dire. Only once--at his trial after Rich betrays him--does Moore's comments, always clear-headed and apt, seem out of place--when he grasps the chain of state office around Rich's neck and, seeing a dragon, says "Not to give one's soul for the whole world, but for Whales?" Moore's fate was sealed in that moment, and his prescient comment too light.

The play had many powerful moments in addition to this, for example when his wife visits him in prison. She is angry that he won't remove himself from his situation. He begs for her support so that he can go on, and she cries out, "No, I am afraid that when you are dead I will hate you." When the jailer pulls her away from a prone Moore, sobbing on the prison floor, one feels the great emotional strength it takes his cahracter, to, ultimately, face death with such resolve. This is not an ascetic, but a man, who loved his family and country as well as his god.

The character requires strength of voice and manner, and some subltely in the timing of its witticisms. Langella inhabits the man and role from the pate to the toes, and his controlled and smooth voice is a pleasure to hear. The play depends on Langella for coherence and veracity, and he delivers a solid and natural performance. I barely took my eyes off him, and was as engrossed in the play as I would have been in a vivid dream, because of his performance. He made it look easy to be Sir Thomas.

Before the play, I had the lucky opportunity to be in the audience of a radio interview of Doug Hughes. Hughes was thrilled to have worked with Langella, saying that to work with an experienced actor at the hieght of his powers in such a part as Sir Thomas Moore's was a great opportunity. After an informative half hour q and a, we were given wine and appetizers and mingled to piano music in the Penthouse Lobby of the American Airline theater--basically the perfect introduction to a powerful, and powerfully-acted, evening of theater.