SCENE PARTNERS (Vineyard)
WAITING FOR GODOT (Polonsky)
ARCADIA (Bedlam)
Reviewed by David Spencer
Here’s a quick overview of some shows that are nearing their run—in some cases extended run—completions
Scene Partners, at the Vineyard—live-streaming its final four performances this week, worldwide—is a kind of mash-up play by John J. Caswell, Jr. Ostensibly it’s about the saga of Meryl, a newly widowed 75 year old woman (Dianne Wiest), who, likewise newly liberated, decides to leave cold Milwaukee for sunny Los Angeles to pursue her long-suppressed dream to be a movie star. Tone-wise, it conflates satire of Hollywood showbiz with family comedy-drama (reuniting with her sister [Johanna Day] is a big deal too)—and surrealism. Whether what we’re seeing is real or imagined and in what proportion is an impression constantly in flux, and the play seems determined to leave the answers up to you. Director Rachel Chavkin’s mildly multi-media production nicely supports the ambiguity. The play has been receiving many critical huzzahs, but I’m somewhat cooler about its deliberate lack of an anchor; for me, there were moments of dog-paddling, where avoiding an anchor also meant losing the grip on trajectory. And the play kept evoking one of Arthur Miller’s: the equally surreal, if ironically more thematically square, Mr. Peters’ Connections (1998), also set within the landscape of a senior citizen’s mind. Such callback associations are inevitable when you’re old enough…but let me not digress into the landscape of my mind.
At the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, there’s the new interpretation of Waiting for Godot. It’s playing out an extension, which of course only happens with good reviews and popular demand. And the audience I attended with seemed to be happy. But I didn’t dig it much, and the reasons why may resonate with some. I’m old enough to have seen Waiting for Godot a good number of times—and most of those times featuring actors who are natural comedians—Nathan Lane, Tony Shalhoub, Bill Irwin, John Goodman, Christopher Lloyd, to name a few—which would seem to be important in a play that, however dark and dystopian, was written for clowns. Which is not to sat that every actor who assays the roles needs to be known for comedy; only that he needs to have that juice. And for me, well…the quartet, Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks as the ones waiting, Jeff Biehl and Ajay Naldu as those who pass through, seem to be playing at being funny. Nothing as artless as Look how funny we’re being mugging, but letting us see the effort being put into the task, a certain physical overstatement, which makes the proceedings feel redundantly weighted. (Some of this, of course, must be attributed to director Arin Arbus setting and enabling the tone.) As Steve Martin (who also acted Godot In New York) said of the play, the darkness takes care of itself in the text. “It’s the comedy that has to be delivered.” Indeed, for stark contrast, if if you pop over to YouTube to watch the Vladimir and Estragon of Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel, you’ll see the, deliver the tragedy with a gossamer touch enhanced by Laurel-and-Hardy timing. (Kurt Kasznar’s Pozzo and Alvin Epstein’s ironically named Lucky contribute their own divine insanity.) I wish I could put it better than that…and again, I offer my view not to contradict what seems to be general approval…but to alert those of similar sensibility, (and they’re out there), who may have seen this revival or plan to, that they’re not alone.
For the most part, I enjoyed Bedlam Theatre’s multiply extended production of Tom Stoppard’s complex—and emotionally cool—play Arcadia, which exists in two timelines: dramatizing the doings within a 19th century British manor house, a hub for historical notables; and the play’s present day (1993) in which an enclave of historians try to piece together what actually happened in that house, often coming to conclusions at odds with what we’ve seen. And I’d recommend it as a fine, stripped-down approach to a fine play. With one big caveat. It seems to conclude three times. I did not have that experience watching the Broadway production in 1995, so I have to lay that, somehow, at the feet of director Eric Tucker. I wish I could tell you where the miscalculation occurs—the best I can come up with is that there’s an imbalance of emphasis somewhere; something that’s been given the feeling of conclusivity, that should instead point toward more things to be resolved…but this should not discourage you from attending. It’s otherwise a typically lovely Bedlam production.