Summer Theater Wrap-Up

Across the Pond

So far, it hasn't been a great millennium for British theater. Having spent most of the past fifty years riding high on the post-war victory of the Labor Party, which made it a priority for the first time in England's history to establish a large pool of public funds specifically directed at the theater, the entire dramatic community seems to still be in a state of shock at the now 20-year old cuts that Margaret Thatcher's administration made on the Labor Party's bounty. And though funding has been on the rise again since the Blairs moved to Downing Street, there remains an obvious sense of trepidation in the decisions of London's producers and directors. For a nation that could celebrate the new millennium with anything as audacious as the theme park-cum-history museum that is the Millennium Dome, you might think they could at least produce an dramatic innovator on the order of Peter Brook for the turn of the century. But rather than face the years ahead straight-on, the powers that be on the West End have chosen to turn their gaze every way but forward.

In fact, it was a challenge just to find an English show in London for the first summer season of the millennium. England's former colonists, the Americans and the Irish, seem to be filling all the West End theaters. Two separate Tennessee Williams plays, Orpheus Descending and Baby Doll, made their homes in London for the summer, as did David Mamet's Speed the Plow, a three-hander trying to capitalize on that other London-based, three-actor, world-wide phenomenon, Art (an import from Paris, mind you). Even the self-proclaimed (actually, government-proclaimed) flagship of the English theatrical world, the Royal National Theater, found itself bowing its hat to the Americans with a new production of Arthur Miller's All My Son and a stage of adaptation of Singin' in the Rain. Even the Old Vic Theater opened its doors to non-British writers and put up Frank McGuiness' new play, Dolly West's Kitchen, a sentimental (and surprisingly Neil Simon-esque) family-based comedy that deals with the issue of Irish neutrality in World War II.

That's not to say British plays are nowhere to be found in London. Copenhagen, Michael Frayne's tale of friendship, betrayal and nuclear physics is still running strong on the West End. Thanks to Michael Blakemore's powerful direction - who would have thought three actors, three chairs, and page-long monologues about quantum mechanics could be so captivating? - the show looks to be a mainstay of the London theater scene. But there's hardly enough new activity to warrant excitement. The big news is that Joe Penhall finally broke the National Theater's string of poorly received new plays with his new work Blue/Orange, a gripping (if somewhat clinical) treatment of the politics of mental institutions. But Blue/Orange is in pitifully small company when it comes to innovative new works. The word around Andrew Lloyd Weber's upcoming The Beautiful Game is that it will be less than ground-breaking. And the two new plays from the pen of millionaire writer-director Alan Ayckbourn, House and Garden (two interconnected pieces performed by the same cast simultaneously on two different stages at the National Theater) are all concept and no content. In fact, the best piece of original, recent English writing in London today is probably Passion Play by Peter Nichols. Nichols' new work has been unofficially banned from the West End because of a nasty dispute with the National Theater some years ago, but this new revival of one of his early works proves (for those who've forgotten) that he's one of England's most skilled dramatists. In a season with such little English skill in evidence, it seems about time to let bygones be bygones.

Fortunately for the English, a dearth of new talent just means a greater opportunity to do more Shakespeare. And despite the slight air of defeat in the idea of facing the new millennium with a string of 400 year old plays, it's hard to complain when there are so many worthy productions of the Bard. Leading the pack is the National Theater's new production of Hamlet, starring the incomparable Simon Russell Beale. Bringing a sensitivity and compassion to the title role beyond that found in almost all other stagings in memory, Beale has clearly solidified his position as one of the greatest actors of his generation. A little further down the Thames, Mark Rylance also spent the summer tackling the melancholy Dane at Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Though reaction to his weak and weepy interpretation of Hamlet was poor, there was a general admiration of the quality of the production in general. Thanks to Rylance, London theater elites seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief at the realization that the fledgling Globe will not simply become an Elizabethan Disneyland attraction but will be the site of serious, star-studded productions. - David Kornhaber

ALONG THE CHARLES

Nothing says summer in Cambridge like gentle riverside breezes, tall glasses of ice cold lemonade, rapists, spies and the Spanish Inquisition. Ahhh... Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theater (HRST). For the past three months, an intrepid team of undergraduate artisans has entertained the greater Boston community (and those few souls unable to seasonally escape our hallowed halls). In their efforts they drew upon British wordsmith Tom Stoppard, American literary (figuratively) giant Tennessee Williams and Dale Wasserman's musical classic Man of La Mancha.

In production throughout second semester, HRST put together an artistically and financially successful season. While Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and La Mancha were widely enjoyed, they closely resembled much of the term-time student work that makes its way into the Loeb Experimental Theatre. The one standout of the season was Stoppard's spy thriller Hapgood. Directed by Nick Parillo '00, Hapgood was a delightfully exhilarating glimpse into the self-aware world of Cold War intelligence. Slickly stylized from the opening montage to the final showdown, this vibrant production possessed the capability of overshadowing the many fine performances; no doubt sensing the challenge, the cast rose far beyond normal undergraduate levels to carry the day. In the title role, Emily Knapp '03 was a divine combination of iron-fisted determination and motherly vulnerability.

Opposite her, the defective defector of James Carmichael '01, an ex-Russian physicist and father of Hapgood's son, provided a touchingly human portrait of man torn between the family he loves and the country he serves - whichever one it may be. Attention must also be paid to the wonderfully villainous Ridley of Tom Price '02. He possessed enough venomous charm to make a Bond villain proud.

One of the interesting features of summer theatre is the overlap within the individual productions. Senior Jay Chaffin transformed from a condemned Spaniard-with-a-song-in-his-heart into a gambling New Orleans philanderer; Ari Appel '03, the guitarist in La Mancha's orchestra, took a turn across the boards as Stanley in Streetcar. Dan Cozzens '03, in a rather peculiar instance of ethnic globalization, went from Russian to Mexican in a matter of weeks.

The one critical question which remains unresolved is whether there is a significant enough qualitative increase to warrant the $12 ticket prices of the HRST; while it is by no means an extortionate amount for an evening of entertainment, it bears consideration in light of the much more appealing price tag attached to semester Ex shows (free). While the HRST shows were more technically savvy than most, the designers can only raise the bar of a production so high, leaving it for the director and cast to hurdle across it or falter in the effort; La Mancha and Streetcar quite nearly succeeded, but only Hapgood achieved a seemingly effortless synergy of style and substance.

For all that, as term-time settles upon us and the nights grow cooler, the boys and girls of summer can look back on their work with pride and raise each other one last glass of lemonade. - Matthew Hudson

THEATER IN THE BIG APPLE

CopenHagen

Many people attend the theater to be transported. For them, the hallmark of a good production is that they forget at some point who and where they are and become consumed by the action on stage. Within this frame of reference, Michael Frayn's Copenhagen is quite a bore. It has a remarkable capacity to keep the audience in its place. Dealing with issues of physical and historical certainty through a meeting between the physicists Neils Bohr (Phillip Bosco) and Werner Heisenberg (Michael Cumpsty), the show is performed on a bare set designed to resemble a Bohr model of an atom. It would be a real shame, though, to write off this show. In fact, if given the attention it deserves, the play proves as thought-provoking and as captivating as any new play in recent memory. The acting, particularly that of Tony-winner Blair Brown, is as intense and focused as the direction. It is difficult to summarize the questions that this play raises or its structure without revealing too much. Suffice it to say that though you may not forget yourself as you watch Copenhagen, neither will you forget Copenhagen for quite some time.

The Music Man

Susan Schulman's revival of this classic musical was widely praised in the mainstream press. USA Today, Time Magazine, and Newsweek positively bubbled over with appreciation for 'a good, old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.' In fact, the production has many things working in its favor. Although he seems engaged in a constant struggle not to mimic Robert Preston's performance in the original production and the film, Craig Bierko is a reasonably charismatic leading man. What his renditions of the classic songs 'Trouble' and '76 Trombones' lack in depth character, they more than make up for in energy. Rebecca Luker delivers a surprisingly arresting performance as Marian the Librarian, and her voice remains rich and beautiful. The choreography, too, is largely enjoyable to watch, though it certainly doesn't break with any conventions. Unfortunately, a few concrete and probably financially-motivated decisions put a damper on the proceedings and prevent the show from achieving the giddy heights of, say, the recent Kiss Me, Kate revival. First, the sound is grossly overamplified. Sound design has become the favorite target of cantankerous critics in recent years, but in this case, any complaints are more than warranted. Most of the people sitting near me were unable to understand the lyrics of the faster songs, and when the full orchestra joined in, the sound from the speakers was noticeably distorted. On a related note, Schulman decided to produce the show with a relatively small cast. During what should be rousing and frenetic numbers performed by the townspeople, large areas of the stage are left empty. If the entire town has turned up for the Ice Cream Social, it is disconcerting that the only visible citizens are the sixteen or so named characters that the audience is already familiar with. The Music Man may be a fine place to bring the kids or to relive happy memories, but it is far from inspiring.

Contact

Contact defies easy categorization. Though it won the Tony Award for Best Musical and is billed as a Dance Play, the show contains almost no dialogue; rather, it consists of three seemingly-unrelated scenes performed in dance. Unlike a ballet, though, the three plots are explicit and are not subjugated to the dance.

Each vignette offers its own special pleasures. In the first, a dancing tableau-vivant of the Fragonard painting The Girl on the Swing, brings a disarmingly bawdy and slapstick flair to the more subdued trappings of the period. The second, which whimsically documents the liberation fantasies of a 1950s housewife, manages to disperse comic relief so widely that the result is not tragedy punctuated by humor but a remarkably entertaining dose of bittersweet.

'Contact,' the third piece and the entire second act, also deals with an apparently simplistic story but because its medium is so original, its dancing so masterful, and its dramatic structure so solid, its story seems rich and universal. Its final moments are surprising and surprisingly moving. But Contact is greater than the sum of its parts: the three pieces, within the context of the entire performance, take on even greater meaning. Experiences so entertaining, so moving, and so original are rare and should not be missed.

- Dan Wagner