Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in No Man’s Land, by Harold Pinter

Well … theater buffs have a stellar season this year.  Not only do we have three major Shakespearean revivals, but two of the finest actors of their generation have come to town for a repertory of two plays.  Any occasion when Patrick Stewart (born 1940) or Ian McKellen (born 1939) appear is one for celebration – when they are appearing together, it is an occasion for unbridled delight.

Sadly, Stewart and McKellen have chosen to come to Broadway not in Shakespeare, but in two plays by Harold Pinter (1930-2008) and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). 

Though much-beloved by Modernists and other intellectual lightweights, Pinter’s plays most often leave audiences scratching their heads and thinking… what the heck was that about?  That reaction is mollified – to a great degree – by the delight of watching these two seasoned scene-stealers onstage together.

Pinter’s No Man’s Land premiered originally in London in 1975, with John Gielgud (1904-2000) as Spooner and Ralph Richardson (1902-1983) as Hirst.  This production transferred to Broadway for a 1976-77 run, and has entered into Broadway history.  (The original production with Richardson and Gielgud was filmed for the National Theatre Archive, and can be seen in three parts on YouTube starting at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd6iKPkXMqY).  Your correspondent saw an absolutely smashing production of the play in 1994 at the Roundabout Theatre Company with Christopher Plummer (born 1929) as Spooner and Jason Robards (1922-2000) as Hirst – and though the play was still incomprehensible to me, it was great larks. 

The plot, to call it such, is that Hirst – an alcoholic man of letters living in a posh abode somewhere near Hampstead – picks up Spooner, a seedy poet, taking him home for a drink.  Spooner stays on overnight as an unwilling guest, also interacting with Hirst’s menacing manservants, Foster and Briggs.  What is going on – and who really knows who and to what extent these are old friends, or strangers or potential lovers or … well, anything, are left ambiguous and up to the viewer.  (Kenneth Tynan was greatly disturbed by Pinter’s “gratuitous obscurity,” and to that we add, “Amen, Brother.”)  It is a play that has no business working, but it with the right actors, it always “plays.”

At first, I was a little trepidatious about the casting.  Spooner (originally Gielgud, later Plummer and here McKellen) does the vast majority of the talking, while Hirst (Richardson, then Robards and now Stewart) responds obliquely.  Though McKellen has a fine voice and a mighty persona, he is always more a character than an actor, and I had hoped that Stewart – the more accomplished and compelling of the two – would take center stage.  Moreover, Spooner is such a showy role that Hirst always seems gets lost in the proceedings – my memory of Robards (a great actor), for example, is practically nil.

However, I’m delighted to report that the casting was correct.  It would take an actor of mighty aspect and peerless technique to make Hirst the equal of Spooner, and Stewart carries off this impossible task with ease.  While McKellen makes catnip out of his outlandish verbal wordplay, Stewart stops the show with pithy, monosyllabic answers.  They are perfectly and evenly matched.

McKellen here resists his normal temptation to overact, and he is simply the finest Spooner I’ve ever seen.  He is complete control of his voice and manner, and he manages to command attention even when sitting at ease.  In his seedy suit, greasy hair pulled back with a rubber band, two-day stubble and dirty tennis shoes, he is the failed literary man to a T.  I have seldom seen him so …. human.

Stewart is fit and stunning is a gray toupee and tweeds, later in a smart blue suit.  Oddly enough, the addition of hair makes this seemingly ageless actor look older, which works for the overall conception of the part.  Stewart has several fine monologs, but the show really takes off in the second act when Stewart and McKellen reminisce (if reminisce they do – it’s possible they don’t really know one another) about shared wives and girlfriends.  It’s the kind of badinage that the audience craves from them, and is in such short supply in this play.

Special mention must be made of Billy Crudup (born 1965), who plays the vile Foster.  It is a nothing part, and I’ve never seen anyone do anything with it; however, Crudup, in his two monologs, nearly steals attention away from his more distinguished co-stars completely.  We need him on Broadway more than ever.

No Man’s Land is directed and staged with a sure hand by Sean Mathias (1956) and the set is wonderfully evocative.  The cast broke character at curtain to entreat the audience to support Broadway Cares, a worthy organization.

Readers of this blog know that your correspondent is no great fan of Modernism, and that my aesthetic is largely pre-Industrial Revolution.  As such, I admit to a possible antipathy to works such as this.  That said, however, No Man’s Land is a play so slight as to be nearly transparent.  It was always a vehicle for two great actors and this product provides that pleasure in spades.   One only wishes the vehicle equaled their talents.

Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It

William Shatner – idol of millions (billions?) of science fiction fans and would-be pitchmen – comes to Broadway in a one-man show, Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It.  To witness this spectacle among the true-believers is not quite the same as attending a straight play; rather, it has all the flavor of an old fashioned tent meeting.  Whatever one might say about the show, Shatner has more dedicated, demonstrative, supportive and clinically obese fans than any Broadway actor I have ever seen.

Before going into Shatner’s performance, we should make clear that this is not a “one man show” in the accepted sense.  Do not expect Vincent Price as Oscar Wilde or Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson; this is a personal appearance, where Shatner tells anecdotes detailing how famous he is and how much fun he has had at the expense of a doting public.  Celebrity confessional seems to be a new focus on Broadway – Carrie Fisher, another science fiction icon, made hay (and money) with a recent “one-woman show” where she detailed her problems of addiction and told some moldy Hollywood anecdotes.  However, I do find it specious to bill a fan event a “one-man show,” particularly when the actor involved does little other than natter about the past.

Even within that framework, though, Shatner’s World is slim pickings indeed.  In a mix of anecdotes and film clips, Shatner takes pot shots at past co-stars, talks about the glories of live television, and tells interesting stories about people as diverse of Christopher Plummer and Lon Chaney, Jr.  Some of these stories are interesting and amusing, but Shatner also tells too, too many borscht belt jokes that were stale when Eddie Cantor did them.  As an actor there is nothing that can be said of William Shatner that hasn’t been said of George Hamilton or Robert Wagner – men who are largely famous for having become famous. 

Shatner’s prowess as an actor is something we are expected to take on faith.  In detailing a triumphal turn as Shakespeare’s Henry V (when he understudied a sick Christopher Plummer), Shatner ends the story with showing us his press clip.  An actor, rather than a celebrity, would’ve provided a snippet of Henry (a part rich in monologs) for our delectation, but that’s never the point in Shatner’s World.  The point is he did it, by jingo, and now on to the next triumph…

One must, however, applaud Shatner for his robust energy and extreme vigor.  A man of 80, he prances up-and-down the stage for an hour and 40 minutes, sometimes shouting, sometimes whispering, and even dancing here and there.  He plays largely against an office chair, which doubles as everything from a car to a bed to a horse, and takes much-needed pauses during film clips.  As an act of endurance, it is a formidable feat for both the actor and the audience.

Shatner also tells a great many personal stories, including the death his third wife, and how using his prized horse as a stud ruined that animal, and his guilt at having to put it down.  Surprisingly, the horse story goes on for some 10 minutes, and his wife is largely mentioned in passing.  Even as a confessional, the show also lacks depth-of-feeling.

And if one were to sum-up Shatner -- the show and the man -- that would be the key complaint.  Many are engaged by Shatner’s innate hamminess and the fact that he happily embraces the joke that he has become.   But it is this lack of depth-of-feeling, this sense of a barren interior, that differentiates a fan icon from an actor of any real sensitivity or warmth.  Shatner has become the exemplar of our ego-centric age: we seem enamored of people who disproportionally love themselves.  I had the sense that the audience ovation was also self-reflective – by cheering Shatner, we applaud the neediest part of ourselves.  Shatner comes off as a strange mix of ego-maniacal manchild and wide-eyed innocent: that might be enough to fill the outer reaches of space during Prime Time, but not nearly enough to inhabit the even greater vastness that is the theater.

Frank Langella at the Cornell Club

                          

Your correspondent had the great pleasure of listening to a question and answer session with legendary actor Frank Langella last Friday at New York’s Cornell Club.  The luncheon event, presented under the auspices of the Hudson Union Society, presented Langella in a discussion about his latest star turn in Terrance Rattigan’s (1911-1977) Man and Boy, and then opened the floor to questions.

Langella is one the Americans actors who has carved-out both formidable film and stage careers.  For over 30 years he has morphed from a handsome leading man to a distinguished character player; Broadway roles have included Noel’s Coward’s Gary Essidine (Present Laughter), Sir Thomas More (A Man For All Seasons), actor Junius Booth (the interesting and overlooked Booth by Austin Pendleton), and, of course, Dracula in the Edward Gorey production of Dracula.  (He played a vampire of another type recently in Frost/Nixon, rightly portraying the former president as a slightly rancid revenant.)

Langella’s film career has been more spotty.  Studios worked to make him a mainstream leading man (playing Dracula as a romantic idol, for instance, or in the wonderful Those Lips, Those Eyes), but Langella was never wholly successful as a traditional lead.  Langella’s persona is too epic, too dangerous, and too larger than life for conventional leads.  By temperament and by technique, he is ideally suited for such figures as Sherlock Holmes and Leonardo da Vinci, Prospero and Cyrano.

Langella has had a formidable handicap to his classical theater ambitions – he is an Italian-American born in New Jersey.  (I well recall one waggish New York Times reporter calling him, “Bayonne’s gift to classical theater,” which is both snobbish and stupid.)  Langella, born in 1938, joins a small, select group of North Americans – Christopher Plummer and Kevin Kline come to mind -- with capabilities at classical parts to rival their European counterparts. 

If you have the opportunity to see Langella in Man and Boy, do not miss it.  Rattigan’s 1963 drama about a monstrous captain of industry, and how he ruins the lives of both investors and his own son, could not be timelier as the temperature drops around our Occupy Wall Street heroes. 

Last Friday, Langella was an amusing interview.  He graciously answered questions about his turn as Dracula – though it’s quite clear that he is more than tired of it.  (“It took the industry 10 years to forget that I played Dracula; it took me 10 minutes.”)  He also revealed that he is a dedicated craftsman as well was a great artist – he believes in being on and delivering for audiences.  If you can’t ‘turn it on’ or ‘turn it off,’ you should not be an actor.  He also told of an actor who had played Hamlet and three months after the run, could still not let go of the role.  “Then you did it wrong,” Langella said.

Happily, he spoke at length about Cyrano, who has played three times on stage, and he is preparing to direct a production next year.  It’s Langella’s belief that there is more than a little Cyrano in every man.  “We are all blocked by something – we think we’re too fat or think we’re too ugly, or that our nose is too big – and because of that, we’re unworthy of the love of a beautiful woman,” he said.  “But what Cyrano missed is that he was loved for his soul, and if a person has a beautiful soul, he is always worthy of love.”

Langella spoke with a mix of nostalgia and amusement about his upbringing in a noisy Italian-American home.  (“If pots weren’t flying, I thought something was wrong.”)  He also spoke at length about his preference for stage work, and how proud his is that his has mainly been a theatrical career.

It is always alarming to see a great actor at his ease.  I had the impression that I was with an indulgent uncle rather Dracula, Cyrano and Prospero.  But that is Langella’s point – there is something grand and elemental in even the most quiet people.

Sherlock Holmes and the Limits of Deduction

Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes in Murder By Decree (1979)

Knowing your correspondent’s love for all things Sherlock Holmes, a well-meaning friend recently tried to argue in favor of the recent Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes film.  (Good God, and more to come, with a sequel on its way!)  A kind gesture on the part of my friend to be sure, but it ultimately led to the melancholy observation that there has not been a serious mainstream Sherlock Holmes film in 30 years. 

A grim thought, indeed.  But why, I wondered, why was that?

The last straight, non-comedic Sherlock Holmes film was Murder By Decree (1979) -- a terrific film, I think, with a particularly fine Sherlock Holmes in Christopher Plummer (ably supported by James Mason as Dr. Watson).  The film concerned Holmes and Watson in pursuit of Jack the Ripper, the resolution of which is a massive government conspiracy and resulting cover-up. 

The very reason the film worked is, I think, may also be one of the reasons it was the last straight Holmes film: in the course of his investigations, Holmes discovers that the entire establishment that he represents is corrupt at best, criminal in its actions, and murderous in its intent.  "We've uncovered madmen, Watson, wielding scepters.  Reason run riot, justice howling at the moon," gasps a dispirited Plummer.

Admittedly Murder By Decree is a particularly Watergate-era film, but it was an important first step in what I think of as the limits of deduction.  Right around this time, Post Modernist theory emerged as a 'legitimate' mode of criticism in many universities.  Essentially, the mindset of the past 30 years is that truth is a malleable concept, that different people recognize different truths, and that 'absolute truth’ (or irreducible fact) was merely a construct reflecting the philosophy of the person(s) who held that truth.  This concept has been ruthlessly manipulated by politicians of the last decade or so (with sneering dismissal of 'the reality based community') and by academics, who, it seems, hold little value or respect for the disciplines that they teach. 

Now, the Post Modernist spin that science and/or truth is only a geographical construct is flummery of the most appalling nature (I would have liked to have seen Jacques Derrida hold many of his assertions directly prior to major surgery or while stepping off a plane in flight), but its effect on the overall popularity of detective fiction in general (and Sherlock Holmes in particular) has been devastating.  In a world where the establishment is criminal (Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, whomever) and there is no 'absolute truth,' where is the place for a figure like Sherlock Holmes?

Hence, the limits of deduction.  Perhaps, in this Balkanized environment of a variety of different truths and dismissal of objective fact, the notion of a keeper or finder of absolute measurable, reducible fact holds no cultural currency.  To turn Sherlock Holmes into a Robert Downey action figure to amuse the groundlings who inhabit our movie houses seems (if you'll excuse the phrase) the only logical next step.

Tomorrow - Jeremy Brett as the Master Detective.