Top to Bottom: NY production of Faith Healer by Brian Friel [http://www.monstersandcritics.com/arts/news/article_1159604.php]; Publick Theatre's production poster [http://www.publicktheatre.org/08season/season.html]; Rene Augesen as Esme and Manoel Felciano as Jan in Huntington Theatre's Rock 'n' Roll by Tom Stoppard; Rene Augesen as Esme and Jack Willis as Max in same; Broadway poster for Rock 'n' Roll blogs.villagevoice.com]
Two solid productions by two fine playwrights this last week in Boston. Tom Stoppard has had a long career dating back to the early 1960's and his plays deserve their reputation for both content and wit. His earlier works eschewed political content, but Stoppard became involved in human rights organizations such as Amnesty Inernational and his later plays have directly addressed a number of socio-political issues. His plays also do not tend to lack in scope nor ambition, such as his trilogy The Coast of Utopia which examines the development of radicalism in 19th century Russia. So it is in his most recent play Rock 'n' Roll, which covers a time period from 1968 to 1990 and follows the lives of Max Morrow, a communist Cambridge political science professor, his wife Eleanor and daughter Esme, and his Czechoslovakian student Jan.
The play begins in the heady days of 1968 in Cambridge, when Jan is deciding to return to Prague in the wake of the Velvet Revolution that promises more freedom to his people. He has fallen in love with Western rock 'n' roll and wants to bring the music of the Velvet Underground, Zappa and the Stones back with him. He also has eyes for his prof's pretty 16 year-old daughter Esme, hippy love-child incarnate. Max disapproves of Jan's desertion, but sends him on his way. From here we move back and forth between Cambridge and Prague over the years and witness many major events, both emotional and political: Max's beloved wife Eleanor succumbing to cancer; Jan being watched, threatened and eventually arrested and imprisoned for his political resistance; Max visiting Prague and Jan from time to time, often delivering a hot new record from Esme; Esme becoming a young single mother raising her daughter Alice; Gorbachev, perestroika, glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union; the rise of Vaclev Havel and Jan's return to academia at the end of the play.
A lot of territory for one play, but we are in the hands of a masterful playwright and our interest in these characters and their development over such a long time period never flags. Each scene is mostly held in tight focus, often between two or three characters (aside from one large luncheon in Cambridge late in the play...the only time the stage feels really populated). So it is the conversations that take place between these characters over this 22 year period that engage us. Ideas and philosophies are spun out, for certain, but they are always rooted in real lived experience. If Jan strikes us as somewhat naive and idealistic after his return to Prague, it is not too long before events move him into a painful awareness that freedom has a long road ahead before finding its way into Czechoslovakia. If Max strikes us as a bit pompous and absurd, a bit of an oxymoron, the end of the Cold War tests him to the core and he finds a persistent belief in communism that sustains him, even in his bitterness at the compromises made by so many. If Esme begins the play as a flighty flowerchild, she ends it as a mature woman who has successfully raised a talented and caring daughter, who has cared for her aging father and who is finding her way to happiness. And only Stoppard can get away with pulling the rug out from under his audience in the final moments of the play in revealing that all along we've been witnessing a love story that has taken 22 years to come into being. Happy endings all around...Surprise!
The Huntington Theatre production is directed by Carey Perloff of the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Perloff has directed many Stoppard US debuts and she does a fine job here, with an excellent cast in-hand. The three leads (see photos above) are all seasoned actors who immerse themselves in their characters and the quick, sharp dialogue that is Stoppard's trademark. I especially liked Augusen's doubled roles as Eleanor (Max's wife) and Esme (as an adult). She is a fine actress, reminds me somewhat of Laura Linney, who reaches the emotional depths and heights of her roles with great facility. Felciano and Willis are fine as Jan and Max and their scenes crackle with mentor/student (read: Father/Son) tension. These three leads are ably supported by the rest of the ensemble and an effective and impressive set design by Douglas W. Schmidt and lighting by Robert Wierzel. My only minor complaint was the volume of the rock 'n' roll songs used throughout as transitions. Okay, we may be a graying audience who are filled with nostalgia for the music of our youth, but that's no excuse not to turn up the volume! The Stones must be heard at 11, not 10 or 9 or 8, on the dial. Start me up, indeed!
Last night saw me as one of a tiny audience of 8 souls at the tiny Black Box Theatre in the Boston Centre for the Arts complex on Tremont Street in South Boston. We eight hardy ones were treated to a gem of a play by yet another very significant living playwright, Ireland's Brian Friel. I was in his Dancing at Lughnasa a few years back (2002) and was delighted to have the opportunity to embody one of his characters and live in the world he creates in his work. Faith Healer is an earlier play of Friel's, written in 1979, although it has been revived recently, most significantly in the Dublin/NY production with Ralph Fiennes (see image above).
The play is made up of four monologues delivered by three characters: Frank Hardy, a 'faith healer' who has spent over 20 years travelling from town to town 'performing' his acts of healing for those in enough despair to attend his shows; his wife Grace, who has left a comfortable upper middle-class Irish family and run off with Frank, condemning herself to a hard love and an equally hard life; and Teddy, the Hardys' faithful cockney manager who is with them every step of the way and who reflects back on this time with the audience, eventually revealing the truth of the deaths of both Frank and Grace, and his grieving for them. We are not given a clear timeframe for the play, but it feels like it may fall somewhere between the 1940s and the 60s.
Hardy's opening monologue gives us his point of view on his life and the mixed curse/blessing of a gift that only occasionally works. So he is mostly a charming charlatan who can under certain circumstances cause a miracle cure or two (or in one case, 10). He describes his wife as his mistress and is somewhat dismissive of her, although we get hints of deeper feelings, and he satirizes his manager Teddy, yet we see how much he depends upon him. Friel then shifts time and location to a flat in London where we meet Grace, widowed and deeply depressed. She gives us a very different take on Frank, who she absolutely loved despite their frequent battles and his infuriating behaviour (drinking, disconnecting), even after the stillbirth of their baby and Frank's appalling refusal to be there for her during this trauma.
The second act gives us Teddy's perspective on events, his devotion to Frank and unspoken passion for Grace. He is the one who is always there, through thin and thinner, and he tells us of the miraculous night when Frank cured all 10 people in the audience and of another night when it seemed Frank knew the crowd was out to get him...and eventually did. He also tells us of Grace's sad end and his lonely task of identifying her body. Frank returns for a final monologue that relives his final night on earth, and gives us a brief glimpse of the fleeting yet precious gift he may (or may not) have possessed.
So Friel is experimenting Rashomon-like in this play, presenting the same story through the eyes of three protagonists and letting us come to our own judgments about where the truth may lie. He is also drawing on some very primal Christ-like metaphors for Frank, Mary/Mary Magdalene for Grace and the Disciples for Teddy. We humans always want to sacrifice our prophets, right? It is a quiet but powerful piece, terribly demanding on both actors (who use direct address throughout) and audiences (who are challenged by the lack of dialogue and the intimacies of direct address). It demands excellence.
The Publick Theatre production may not give us James Mason (who first played Frank), or even Ralph Fiennes (who I imagine was excellent in the role), but does a fine job nonetheless. The company's Artistic Director Diego Arciniegas plays Frank and has a strong handle on his character, delivering his lines with simplicity and honesty, sometimes letting us see the charisma that must have swayed his audiences in the past. I liked the physicality he brought to the role, and the sense of both sadness and acceptance of fate that seemed to underpin his monologues. Susanne Nitter played Grace with a quiet ferocity, a woman who is so wrapped up in her memories of loss and regret that it must make sense to us later on that she has killed herself; a tough order for an actor who has about half an hour on stage! Yet Nitter drew me in and when she tells us of the birth of her stillborn son, on the side of the road outside a desolate Scottish highland village, we feel her desolation, her abandonment by her beloved Frank, who so often rejected and enraged her, yet who she clearly cannot live without. Gabriel Kuttner is a bit young for the role of Teddy, but he does a masterful job of it. It is probably Teddy who wins most of our empathy in this play, as (like us) he is the watcher, the enabler, the outsider. The love he feels for both Frank (a tough love indeed) and Grace (an even tougher one) is undeniable, although presented in an almost entirely unsentimental way. He only cracks when he tells us about having to identify Grace's dead body...then he goes back to his drinking...alone.
I was very moved by this play, and director Nora Hussey has clearly spent the necessary time with each actor so that the arcs of their interlocking stories and diverse viewpoints are complementary. She even asks each actor to remain onstage throughout another character's monologue, an act of selfless generosity that seems to reflect the deeper themes at work in this sad yet memorable piece; theatre at its most simple and most potent.
