Before I plunge in further with my plan to discuss segues between
Method and Meisner, I need to talk about two superlative acting ensembles I had
the privilege to witness over the weekend: Sam Shepard’s Heartless and Annie Baker’s version of Uncle Vanya at the Soho Rep.
It’s valuable to analyze
why a work of art succeeds – and what we mean by ‘success’ in this context. A
reaction to a work of art is not entirely ‘personal’; although I have often
disagreed with the critics, they have helped me over the years to understand a
‘pattern’ that makes audiences and critics alike feel a very special kind of
excitement when viewing a performance. I
strive to bring about work in my students that is able to transform an audience
from passive viewers into active participants. I mean this in the sense that
the audience actually feels what the characters are experiencing and that the
play is in some way about them and their life.
Heartless hasn’t opened yet and I don’t want to give away anything
about the plot. Please go and see it for your own good. It is not an easy play
to watch. We were seated almost under the stage and I had to crane my neck,
which was already sore, in order to watch the action. But after a while I felt
that my discomfort was actually contributing to my personal involvement in this
superb play. Two outstanding elements make it, in my judgment, ‘successful.’
Actually three, now that I think about it. I was going to say the writing of
the script and the sensitive acting, but then I realized that the brilliant
direction connects these two like the third leg of a triangle.
Shepard has always been
able to boil down earth-shaking themes such as brotherhood, ‘familyhood’ and
corporate greed and feed them through simultaneously believable and crazy
characters - and then make the whole
stew go down easily with a liberal sprinkling of humor. But here Shepard takes on a man vs. women
theme with the intensity of a Greek tragedy and pulls it off through actors,
who literally turn themselves inside out. There’s no preaching in this play.
People talk, well… not naturally, but in the way people might actually speak
when they have a lot on their minds, and they do plenty of interesting things
and by the time they’ve reached the end of the play, they reveal that the
qualities they seemed to project at first are the polar opposite of who they really
are. The ensemble work of the actors is terrific; whether utterly attuned or
viciously dissonant they continually speak ‘from the heart or heartlessness’
that defines their core. The emotional life is so tangible that we can’t
disconnect for an instant. If we allow ourselves to listen, we are riveted –
and when it is over we know that we are
them and they are us – and in one way
or another, the terrible arc of their lives is ours. I can imagine what it must
have cost Shepard to come up with this kind of honesty, but it is hard to
imagine how the actors go on night after night shivering with emotion like
leaves in a particularly icy wind.
Annie
Baker’s Uncle Vanya at Soho Rep is
another wrenching treat for theatergoers. Others more qualified than I have extolled
the virtues of this particular presentation - how the stage area extends into
the audience as if we are at times transported to, and at others literally
trapped inside, a rural Russian living room of the late nineteenth century .
And what goings-on we encounter! I
thought to myself, we, the audience, are a Greek chorus of helpless bystanders,
only allowed some laughter and a hell of a lot of sadness at this so-called Chekhovian 'Tales
of Country Life.'
Actually, I could write a dissertation
on this wonder-inducing production of a play, I know almost as well as my own
life from the amount of times I’ve worked on it with students. But in the
interest of brevity, I will concentrate on the ‘core resonance’ of this
particular performance, which, in my entirely personal view is built upon the
axis of Vanya, fueled by fury and crammed into an armor of irony – except when
he explodes like a bomb - in Reed Birney’s steely portrayal, and the sinuous,
seductive, tubercular and ultimately achingly disappointed Astrov, unveiled by
the masterful Michael Shannon. Running
courier between them is Eve Best’s adorably hopeful and equally despairing
Sonia. The other characters definitely do more than ‘swell a progress’ but they
are mired – and to some extent saved - by an ignorance of their desperate lot.
The three prime movers, however, are acutely aware – Sonia only in the final
moments – that they will never experience love and fulfillment in their lives.
In this way, they presage the ‘end of days’ horror that will descend upon
Russia in the next few decades and annihilate the landowning class. Vanya
seethes with rage at the knowledge that he wasted valuable possibilities
in his youth, Astrov is a man of action but the action leads nowhere because of
the vast ignorance and laziness around him, and Sonia girds her character with
faith in a spirit world beyond the grave to face abiding sorrow on this plane.
Shannon’s portrayal of Astrov is
astonishing; at times he was standing only a few feet from my seat, and I could
see the curvature of his spine and the grimace of pain on his face. He was the
embodiment of a man who masters illness, commits himself to courageous action
and loves with all his heart. He is everything we admire and could wish for in
a man today. These are his words, The
Russian forests are literally groaning under the axe, millions of trees are
being destroyed, the homes of animals and birds are being laid waste, the
rivers are becoming shallow and drying up, the wonderful scenery is
disappearing forever…
Does anyone hear him? No. He is a voice in the
wilderness, which will die out, as will so many millions of other Russian
voices, those of the ones murdered by dictators in the years that followed. And
the earth will be laid waste, most notably in Chernobyl. But Uncle Vanya will live one, interpreted
by artists who truly understand the importance of reminding us that ‘those who
ignore history are doomed to repeat it.’ Or even more frighteningly, history
will always repeat itself no matter what we do, because history is the result
of Human Nature…
No comments:
Post a Comment