http://www.playbill.com/article/lynn-nottage-is-developing-a-companion-piece-to-her-play-sweat
Author Archives: Tony
A Revelatory Hairy Ape
It is not enough to say that The Hairy Ape, currently playing at the Park Avenue Armory and a co-production with the Old Vic, is a superlative production – though it is. It should also spark a revision of how we receive Eugene O’Neill’s work in the twenty-first century. That is a lot to place on this production, but its broad shoulder can handle the load and responsibility.
The play is not one of the better known in the O’Neill canon. I read it as part of a graduate school class on twentieth-century American drama, but have never seen it performed until now. There have been multiple productions of Long Day’s Journey, Iceman, Moon, and even the odd Anna Christie, Elms, and Wilderness. Since its 1922 premiere in New York City (transferring to Broadway from The Provincetown Players), The Hairy Ape has rarely made it onstage – a 1930 London production with Paul Robeson would certainly have been interesting but problematic through our lens of 2017.
It is easy to see why. Expressionistic, political, and focused on class in America, The Hairy Ape does not dive into the psychological complexity of its characters we associate with the playwright’s later work. That, however, does not make any less valuable and vital. The plot is simplicity itself. Yank (Bobby Cannavale), a stoker on a cruise liner, loses all sense of pride as a hard-working working class man after a brief encounter with heiress Mildred Douglas (Catherine Combs). The lion’s share of the play follows Yank as he moves through New York’s Upper East Side seeking revenge and instead finding humiliation and after humiliation. He at last arrives at the gorilla’s cage at the zoo, and even there, a hoped-for comradeship is nothing more than a pipe dream.
Sitting at the Park Avenue Armory (physically located in the midst of most of the play’s action), I felt the scales falling from my eyes. What had been relegated as an interesting curiosity from O’Neill’s early career spoke to our present moment with a clear and angry voice as any of the soliloquies from The Iceman Cometh. Here was a working class man who lost all sense of his place within the American community. With the passing of each scene, he spirals further and further downward into irrelevance. Even the Wobblies, portrayed as members of the coastal elites, have no use for Yank and throw him out the door. His tragedy (and it is a tragedy in the Ancient Greek sense) is as relevant today the drama of Lynn Nottage’s Sweat.
Hairy Ape should allow us to open our eyes to the larger O’Neill canon. Like Miller and Williams, O’Neill has become a part of the American drama museum: works from a “golden age” of theatre that are now given prestige if ultimately safe productions. The playwright chronicles those who do not fit into American life, even the relatively prosperous Tyrones. His characters have fallen into despair, financial ruin, and driftlessness. Even when O’Neill takes a certain mocking tone toward radicals and Socialists, it has much more to do with their lack of effectiveness than ideology. His America is harsh and uninviting; it is quick to destroy any and all, including its greatest adherents. Yank moves from a sense of exaggerated pride (he is the “guts” of the ship) to an ultimate desolation. Despite his physical strength, he is emotionally and psychological brittle and unprepared for the realities of a society bound up with a social hierarchy.
As Yank, Cannavale is a wonder. Whether in film (The Station Agent), television (Boardwalk Empire, Vinyl), or stage (Glengarry Glen Ross, The Motherfucker with the Hat), Cannavale is poetry in motion and action. He brings his usual vitality, energy, and intelligence – and then some! – to Yank. Thus, Yank never feels like a caricature or a representation, but a fully complex and nuanced character whose downward descent into a personal Hell, despite the expressionistic nature of the play, always feels so very, very real. The excellent cast – that feels much larger than it is – gives full and complete support to its lead. Combs hilariously portrays the petulant and spoiled Mildred. As Paddy, David Constable gives life to O’Neill’s elegiac poetry concerning life at sea (something that wends its way throughout the playwright’s career through to the famous Edmund monologue in Long Day’s Journey). Chris Bannow is a wonderfully sniveling Long.
Aletta Collins (choreographer) and Thomas Schall (fight director) have crafted a beautiful, pulsating, and textured physical life for the production; every movement adds to the narrative drive and there is not a wasted motion throughout. Director Richard Jones deserves a standing ovation in his own right. The production was flawless from the character work with the actors to the design elements to the production logistics; that it all looked so easy meant that he must have spent numerous hours of hard labor to make it all happen. His use of the Park Avenue Armory space itself was innovative, fully utilizing every nook and cranny and creating a sense of depth rarely seen outside of cinema; the upstage wall resembled, for all the world, the Odeon of Herod Atticus.
From start to finish, it was a dazzling achievement.
Quick Thought about Fences
Much has already been written about Denzel Washington’s film adaptation of Fences, which has recently been released on blu-ray and streaming services. Washington took a little heat for his direction, but basically I think he did a fine job in his freshman effort behind the camera. He demonstrated a solid understanding of what a director does: strong craft, not much artistry, and little fuss. He got out of the way so that the play could be seen and heard.
Viola Davis rightly earned numerous plaudits in the role of Rose Maxson. She deserved an Oscar, but for Best Actress not Best Supporting Actress (a discussion for another time). Washington was necessarily volcanic as Troy, though I still cannot get the indelible impression James Earl Jones made in the Broadway premiere. Unsung in much of the criticism is Stephen McKinley Henderson. An excellent stage actor (he recently starred in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Between Riverside and Crazy), he added much to the role of Bono. Fences offers a number of three-hander scenes between Troy, Rose, and Bono, and Henderson more than held up his own end. He deserves great praise as well.
“Everything influences playwrights. A playwright who isn’t influenced is never of any use.”
― Arthur Miller
Nostalgia is a Disease
How much did I love Sweat, Lynn Nottage’s new play making its Broadway debut? I first saw it at The Public Theater about three weeks before the election. It made such a profound impact on me as an audience member, playwright, and American citizen that I had to see it again in its new digs at Studio 54. Even though I was fully aware of its gut-wrenching conclusion this second time, I still shed a tear when it arrived. Sweat should be required viewing for anyone living in our republic – it is that important.
The lion’s share of the play takes place at a bar run by Stan (James Colby fully embodying the moral conscience of the play) in Reading, Pennsylvania. This is a working class bar where Bud and Michelob are on tap, and the patrons come to unwind from long days on factory floors and to bitch about management. It move back and forth in time between 2000 and 2008, the advent and the twilight of George W. Bush’s administration. Jason (Will Pullen) and Chris (Khris Davis) have done something that has landed them in prison in 2000, and in 2008 they are released. It is not until the end of the play that we find out what that something is. The inciting incident of much of the drama is the decision by management of the local steel mill to move operations to Mexico and play hardball with its employees (demanding severe cuts to pay and pensions, a lock-out when they refuse).
Much has already been said of Nottage’s compassionate and perceptive depiction of the Trump voters. Like Stephen Karam with The Humans, she chronicles the fall of working-class families from economic security into an ever-churning chaos. Nottage centers on the anxieties of those who once were prosperous and have since fallen on hard times. She shines a light on how quickly they can find themselves in poverty, addiction, and shame. We see how anxiety quickly transforms into anger and then into rage. The promises of a return to greatness – though clearly hollow – would have instant appeal.
And if that is all Sweat just did that, it would be a good play for the moment and fade from memory come 2020 (hopefully) or 2024 (not so hopefully). What Nottage has constructed, though, is an American play for the ages, a tragedy of the American dream that would be appreciated by the likes of Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets. “Nostalgia is a disease,” says Stan. Part of what is destroying these workers is their attachment to a way-of-life that, while it had some rewards when times were good, is ultimately destructive. Even before the troubles at the plant start, Chris desires to leave the line and study to become a teacher. For this, he is mocked by his friend Jason. What matters most is tribal loyalty. To want something better is seen as a betrayal – as contempt for the life they all lead. Adding to the stew is the racial mix. Jason and his mother, Tracey (Johanna Day) are white. Chris and his mother, Cynthia (Michelle Wilson) are black. So long as times are good and everyone marches to the same drummer: all is well and good. Cynthia, however, is like her son and has ambitions for something other. She applies for a position as a supervisor. When she earns the new job, charges of the hiring process being rigged for affirmative action are inevitable. Outside from the start is Oscar (Carlo Alban), whose family is from Colombia. That he was born here does not halt the charges that he immigrated illegally to take our “jobs”.
The tragedy here is that many of the characters feel that they deserve a job at the plant, even though they hate it. They are limited by a lack of imagination, by shortsightedness, by a sense of entitlement. When the workers are locked out, Oscar is hired as a temporary worker. The $11 an hour he is paid is a windfall, but it is an insult to Tracey. Rather than direct anger at company management, Tracey and Jason train their fire on Oscar exclusively. Again, one of the historic tragedies of American history rears its ugly head: those who should be united against those in positions of power and privilege are divided along racial and ethnic lines. Stan tries to remind his friends of this, but that his voice of wisdom gets silenced points to greater tragedies that will overtake this community.
There are no monsters here, though we may despise many of the characters’ decisions and actions. Nottage’s genius is apparent in that it is possible for, say, Tracey, to be both right and wrong at the same exact moment. Yes, she is right to be angry and frustrated and to want to continue to work (she is no looking for handouts) as she always has. But she is wrong to place the blame on Cynthia and Oscar. She is wrong to think she is entitled to a place further up the line because her people have been in the country longer. She is wrong not to understand Cynthia and Oscar’s history. And, at the end of the day, despite the hostility both verbal and physical, it is Oscar who fares best. Again, it is part and parcel of American history, that more recent arrivals respond best to adversity, adapt, survive, and thrive. That Oscar is the ultimate voice of compassion further highlights those core strengths. It is a dazzling achievement.
Nottage is part of a Renaissance of American playwriting. At the end of the twentieth century, it seemed that playwriting dying as talented writers went to film and television. Plays seemed small, concerned with the inchoate longings of clueless yuppies. Nottage like a number of other playwrights is utilizing the stage to tell powerful, important, and provocative stories that will have enormous impact – both on the personal and political levels – far beyond their initial presentations. Nottage’s Sweat deserves to be in the same conversation with Tony Kushner’s Angels in America or August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.
For right now, though, see it. Simply see it.
A Psychologically Complex Lear
In The Empty Space, Peter Brook argued that one of the reasons contemporary productions of William Shakespeare’s plays were so deadly (as in boring) was because actors were so familiar with the material that they played the end of the play from the start. He used as an example Goneril and Regan’s professions of love for their father in the opening scene of King Lear. Professional actresses would transfer their characters’ final descent into villainy to their introductory appearance thus robbing themselves and the audience of any sense of journey. I am pleased to report that the production of King Lear currently performing at The Secret Theatre in Long Island City has taken Brook’s injunction seriously and have escaped the pitfalls that have plagued so many other productions of the tragedy.
Director Alberto Bonilla and his ensemble focus on developing strong, complex, and believable characters. Bonilla moves the setting forward to a facility for ailing seniors. Lear (Austin Pendleton) suffers from Alzheimer’s, dementia, or potentially both, and the narrative of Lear plays out as a product of that illness. Pendleton has had a long, storied, and artistically rich career on both stage and screen, and he does not conform to the traditional image of Lear. Those who have assayed the role in the past – such as James Earl Jones or Laurence Olivier – can easily access bombast in their construction of the role. Pendleton takes a counter-intuitive turn. His style of acting is quiet and modest. He underplays where most others would over-play. He strays from received ideas about what Shakespearean performance should be and instead utilizes an acting approach more in keeping with an American sense of psychological realism. It is Lear by way of Willy Loman or Joe Keller. It is bound to be a controversial choice, but I think it pays dividend, especially in light of Brook’s argument.
What we therefore have is something I have never seen in a production of the play before: a full and intimate picture of the Lear family. British playwright Howard Barker wondered what became of Mrs. Lear and wrote his own Seven Lears to find out; he would have less to wonder about if he were to see this production. Pendleton, along with Elizabeth A. Davis (Once) as Goneril and Melissa Macleod as Regan, have brought the whole dark and dysfunctional history of this family onto the stage. This Lear does not bellow, but he laughs, he smirks, he cajoles, and we feel every smile as a lash on the backs of his two elder daughters. If they were not abused, they were certainly dominated and emotionally manipulated by a capricious and over-bearing patriarch. Even when they band together with the full power of the state behind them to deny him his entire retinue, they are still afraid of him. When Lear proclaims “I am more sinned against than sinning”, it is almost laughable here. In the hands of Davis and Macleod, Goneril and Regan’s choices are understandable and full of the contradictory greys that mark human choice in harrowing circumstances. When Lear attacks Goneril and wishes her a barren existence, our sympathies are with the daughter (it helps that Davis is obviously pregnant). This is a family with a penchant a la Albee for tearing into one another. The difference is that Lear makes a course correction and in abandoning power moves toward redemption, while his children continue on in their quest for power. Pendleton, Davis, and Maclead have created a Lear that is not just tragedy of Lear but also of Goneril and Regan – we cannot fully hate them nor can we fully forgive him for his responsibility in the play’s inevitable descent into darkness – and that is refreshing indeed.
Mounting a production of Shakespeare, especially on a tight showcase rehearsal schedule, presents a director a series of choices. Emphasize x, and you have to take the spotlight off of y. In focusing on Lear and his family, in fully grappling with their psychology and complexity, means less attention is given to the larger political reality of the play or world-building. King Lear has at its center a demonstrably irresponsible head-of-state who manipulates family and advisers (and the line between both is blurred) and sends his nation careening into chaos not because of threats from abroad but from self-inflicted wounds; it obviously speaks to our present moment. The larger geo-political implications of Lear’s choices got a little bit lost in the proceedings, and the design choice to confine the drama within the domestic sphere further isolated the impact of the tragedy from larger societal ramifications. I saw Bonilla’s excellent Macbeth (also at the Secret) a few years back, and the focus there was the opposite of here. World-building was at the forefront, and so there was less revelatory in terms of character exploration. What I look for in a Shakespeare production is to be shown something new or surprising in a canon I am all too familiar with. Bonilla, Pendleton, Davis, and Macleod made me want to spend time with these characters, and they found something both unexpected and deeply satisfying in the construction.
Also of note are Alexander Stine, who somehow managed to take the sanctimony out of the Duke of Albany and find both the darkness and the light in the part; Arthur Lazalde and Zachary Clark, who dive into Kent and Edmund respectively with great gusto; and most especially Jack Herholdt, whose portrayal of The Fool is quite simply brilliant. I had seen Herholdt as Dionysus in his own reworking of The Bacchae, and he never fails to captivate whenever on stage.
King Lear runs through April 9th. More information about the show can be found here: http://www.secrettheatre.com/KingLear.html
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-first-theatrical-landmark-of-the-trump-era
“I don’t think you can ever know too much about craft.” —August Wilson