The premise of Terrence
McNally's Master Class is a deceptively simple one.
We're in an auditorium—at
a university or conservatory, one imagines—in
an unspecified year, the better to foster the illusion of being in the present,
although clearly we are not. And that's because the instructor of the
master class we're attending is famed opera diva Maria Callas (in the body of actress Tyne Daly). She enters grandly, evidences grand airs (as
such artists are wont to do), and when she turns her attentions to each of the
three students she will be coaching, she is by turns solicitous, impatient,
awe-inspiring, compassionate and insensitive. She is, in short, the iconographic
Super-Mentor figure.
I’ve seen Master
Class four times before—in its
initial Broadway run starring Zoe Caldwell, followed by Patti Lupone and Dixie
Carter, then more recently at Paper Mill with Barbara Walsh—each of them
perfectly splendid; but Ms. Daly, for me, may be the best of all. It’s a very
small margin that defines “best” in such company, to be sure, but if I can
define what lies in that small margin, it’s the sense that somehow Ms. Daly is
channeling Callas more dangerously. I can’t say more authentically, I don’t
know enough to make that assertion, nor do I have any desire to diminish the
other great ladies I’ve seen in the role. I can only tell you there’s something
about the centeredness and poise of her portrayal, about the physicality and
general appearance, about the balance of narcissism with expertise with
vulnerability that made me store away more moments, pay attention a little
differently.
Of course,
in a play involving other actors, not even a towering, dominating role such as
Callas resonates unto itself, and the casting of the accompanist (Jeremy
Cohen), the blithe yet respectful
stagehand (Clinton Brandhagen)
and especially, of course, the students—Alexandra Silber as a talented naïf, Sierra Boggess as a firebrand and, perhaps most affectingly, Garrett
Sorenson, whose tenor voice can literally
move you to tears—is also key. Their own uniqueness and the gestalt they
generate, under the nuanced yet almost invisible direction of Stephen
Wadsworth, are part and parcel of Ms.
Daly’s performance, because for so much of the play, they are the “feed.”
Which is
not to say that Master Class is a
flawless play—but audiences never seem to care about the credibility
lapses much, and the play is so ubiquitous a part of the American theatre scene
as a show piece for a (one hopes) gifted diva that they no longer register with
me, either. Like Callas herself teaching a master class must have been, it’s an
indelible experience, that’s all, and never more exhilarating that it is
currently.
And what
else, in the long run (pun intended) need a play be?
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