Though Americans have no
proprietary feeling toward British playwright Terrence Rattigan, he’s certainly a big deal in the UK, and it is
perhaps not a coincidence that the Roundabout has chosen to revive one of his
lesser-known works, Man and Boy in the centenary year of his birth. Rare too is that it
is set in America, in a Greenwich Village apartment in 1934. The apartment is
where a young man who goes by the name Basil Anthony (Adam Driver), a nightclub pianist, lives with his fiancé Carol
(Virginia Kull)
incognito—because he has spent much of his adult live severing ties from
his father, an infamous financier. And on the evening of the play, that
self-same father, Gregor Antonescu (Frank Langella) comes to visit his estranged son. And why? Because
due to his Ponzi-like manipulations finally near exposure, Gregor’s empire is
about to crumble; and his son is
exploitable for the purpose of trying to save it.
Though
handled in a low-key manner typical of Rattigan, there is the stuff of
melodrama about the plot machinations (some of it a bit quaint), and if it
isn’t edge-of-the-seat stuff, it has enough relevance to What Goes On Today to
provide a modest measure of “sleeper” entertainment, especially with additional
characters such as the Big Man’s loyal associate and “fixer”, Sven (Michael
Siberry); an equally shady colleague
Antonescu is hoping to finesse (Zach Grenier); an exasperated government official trying to
tighten the noose on the slippery target Antonescu embodies (Brian
Hutchinson); and Antonescu’s trophy wife,
a Countess (Francesca Faridinay).
Much of the fun comes from director Maria Aitken and the cast seeming to understand that it’s all
about getting the archetypes right, and they all do, with Mr. Langella giving
his typical (which is to say remarkable) combination of bravura and deceptively
offhanded nuance.
A
caution: Rattigan, and this play in general, is not recommended for those with
little patience for old school exposition and dramaturgy that’s a little bit
diagrammatic. For me, I take each Rattigan play on its own terms, and this one
strikes me as worth the time. But there are those, speaking of this production,
who will tell you differently. So factor your sensibility into the mix.
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