Most theatergoers, especially those with limited time and
resources, try to figure out which shows to see through a combination of word
of mouth, social media and official reviews, particularly the ones in The New
York Times. And when the reviews are raves, that can mean they walk into a show
with very high expectations—and the risk of being very disappointed.
So far this season, clamorous buzz and unbridled praise has circled
around The Ferryman, Jez Butterworth’s family saga set against the backdrop of
the Irish hunger strikes in the 1980s; and The Waverly Gallery, Kenneth
Lonergan’s memory play about caring for an aging relative who is descending
into dementia. Each has been proclaimed a production not to be missed. So should
you believe the hype?
Like legions of theatergoers
on both sides of the ocean, I was gobsmacked by Butterworth’s previous play
Jerusalem (click here to read my review), an ode to the eroding myths of British identity that
made a star out of Mark Rylance almost a decade ago. And so Ferryman, with its mythological allusions to the god who carries souls to the underworld, was at the
top of my want-to-see-list this fall. Amazingly, it surpassed my expectations.
With the exception of a brief prologue, the play is set in
the farmhouse of Quinn Carney, a former member of the Irish Republican Army who
has given up politics and now devotes his time to heading a multigenerational
family and farming their land in the rural Northern Ireland county of Armagh.
Living in the house are Quinn’s sickly wife and their six
children, his whiskey-loving uncle, two maiden aunts and his sister-in-law Caitlin
and her teen son Oisin, widowed and orphaned when Quinn's brother Seamus mysteriously
disappeared a decade earlier. The family has long suspected that Seamus was
assassinated by the IRA but while still mourning his absence, Quinn and Caitlin have
fallen in love with one another.
As the play opens, Seamus’ body has been discovered in a bog
with a bullet hole in its head. IRA leaders want to protect the sympathy
for their cause that's recently been engendered by the starvation deaths of incarcerated members
waging a hunger strike for the right to be treated as political prisoners. So the IRA will do whatever it takes to get the Carney family to release a statement absolving the group of Seamus’ murder.
That’s a lot of plot and a lot of characters—21 actors take
a bow at the curtain call—but Butterworth, who based the play on the real-life
disappearance of the uncle of his life partner Laura Donnelly (she also reprises her
Olivier Award-winning portrayal of Caitlin) weaves it altogether in thrillingly
satisfying fashion.
In fact the play serves as a master class in theatrical
storytelling. Butterworth is superb with language, be it the colloquial braggadocio of a group of teen boys trying to act older and wiser than they are
or the poetic musings of the elderly aunt who lives in the past but can
foretell the future.
He’s equally adept with plotting. Not a word in this nearly
three-and-a-half-hour play is wasted. A seemingly random conversation about a radio
program tells us everything we need to know about the characters having it. A funny scene with a live
rabbit in Act I foreshadows devastating consequences in Act III.
His brilliant script is brought to life by an equally brilliant cast lead by Donnelly
and Paddy Considine who originated the roles of Caitlin and Quinn at London’s
Royal Court Theatre, but everyone, down to a real-life baby (click here to read about the infants who share the role) is pitch perfect.
And the vibrant direction of Sam Mendes (click here to read a profile of him) fills the stage with movement, music and an underlying
menace, subtly echoed in Nick Powell’s soundscape, Peter Mumford’s lighting and the
slightly askew farmhouse that set designer Rob Howell has created.
The play is long, the authentic-sounding accents can at times be difficult to understand and a few naysayers have accused the play of
indulging in stereotypes (click here to read one such objection) but I can’t
remember the last time I walked out of a theater so exhilarated by what I'd just seen that I wanted to turn around
and go right back in to see the whole thing all over again.
Alas, I didn’t feel that way when I left the Golden Theatre
after seeing The Waverly Gallery. This is the third of the plays Lonergan wrote
in the ‘90s to get a star-studded Broadway production over the last four years. I was so taken with last spring’s revival of Lobby Hero (click here for my review of that), that I was really looking
forward to this one, especially because some critics have called it Lonergan’s masterwork.
Lonergan has called the play his most personal because it’s
based on the experiences he had with his grandmother who operated an art
gallery in Greenwich Village in the 1970s until she began to suffer from
dementia, forcing him and his mother to make tough decisions about the best way
to care for her and to deal with the gallery that had become the main focus of her life.
Waverly Gallery ran for just 70 performances in 2000 but Eileen
Heckart picked up the Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, Obie and Outer Critics Circle
awards for her portrayal of the declining Gladys Green. This time out, Elaine
May, returning to the Broadway stage for the first time in 57 years, is
destined to make a similar sweep.
May, herself a comparatively youthful 86, turns in a
performance that is heartbreaking in both its emotional and physical truthfulness as her Gladys becomes frailer, and more fearful about
what is happening to her, in each scene.
There is also strong work from Joan Allen as her daughter and Lucas Hedges as her grandson (click here to read an interview with him). And yet the play failed to
move me. Maybe it’s because there have been so many books, movies and plays (including
the devastating The Father) about the ravages of dementia since Lonergan wrote The Waverly Gallery that the material seemed overly familiar.
Or maybe it’s because of the distracting directorial and
design choices that Lila Neugebauer, a usually deft director, has made in her
Broadway debut. Long pauses between each scene to allow stagehands to change
the sets broke the momentum of the storytelling and sucked the energy
out of the whole enterprise.
Meanwhile, the video projections of scenes from the Village in earlier years that Neugebauer and projection designer Tal Yarden chose to show during those intervals quickly grew monotonous and had very little to do with the plot.
Meanwhile, the video projections of scenes from the Village in earlier years that Neugebauer and projection designer Tal Yarden chose to show during those intervals quickly grew monotonous and had very little to do with the plot.
But I’m in the minority on this one. The Waverly Gallery has drawn raves. People who
usually dismiss plays that deal with social issues, have touted this one.
Perhaps that’s because the issue of aging directly affects most critics
(older folks) and Broadway theatergoers (also older folks).
I’m no spring chicken myself. I’ve seen elderly loved ones lose both their physical and mental abilities. And my own mortality is peeping around the
corner. But I like to think none of that would matter and I’d still be moved if there were truly a great
play. After all, I’m not Irish and I was knocked out by The Ferryman.