The History Boys at the Studio Theatre

I didn't have the good fortune to see the London or Broadway productions of The History Boys, but friends verified the glowing reviews. The play didn't transfer well to the screen, but by using the original cast, the film gave some sense of the performances that so enthralled audiences and critics alike.

The new production at the Studio Theatre, while good, lacks the sheen of the original. Normally, Joy Zinoman does a crackerjack job with recent Broadway and London imports, and she has a particular genius for reworking material to sometimes startling results. Witness her brilliant production of The Invention of Love, which discovered untapped depths of feeling in the script, whereas the London production saw only Stoppard's customary linguistic brilliance. This time, though, the magic touch eluded Zinoman, and the resulting show, while enjoyable, has some real problems.

The most obvious kink, which other reviewers have noted, was the casting of Floyd King as Hector, the Pied Piper of a pedagogue with roving hands. King's portrayal contrasted sharply with that of Richard Griffiths, who premiered the role. Griffiths, a portly, jolly man with a distinctive voice, made us understand entirely why his charges would shrug off the occasional grope, as if that were a small price to pay for being in the presence of such delicious eccentricity. Zinoman's casting of King was a clear decision to go against type, and while contrary choices have served her well in the past, this time it backfired. Everything about King seemed crabbed, inward, and small, from his appearance to his delivery, and the result left one wondering what appeal he could possibly hold for his students. There were small annoyances too. King's pallid English accent fluctuated, disappearing by the end, and his customarily slurry enunciation, charming in comic roles, too often rendered him inaudible. An actor should be able to make himself heard in an intimate space like the Metheny Theatre, but King habitually swallowed the ends of words, making comprehension difficult.

Others in the cast fared better.  Simon Kendall was a softer, more hesitant Irwin than Stephen Campbell Moore in the London/Broadway production, giving his character the complexity that King also sought (but missed). The boys were uniformly good with some real standouts, such as Owen Scott as the comically sad Posner and Jay Sullivan as the sexually predatory Dakin. Sullivan, who looks like a youngish Robert Redford, embodied perfectly the golden boy that everyone wants.

Some of Zinoman's staging choices also failed to serve the production. The modular set, while clever and attractive, was used to excess, a common problem these days. Bennett's script evinces the sort of episodic structure that has pervaded British drama since the eighties, which can translate to upward of thirty scene changes. Rather than relying on lighting or movement to indicate a simple change, Zinoman had the "boys" constantly rearrange modular bits, moving archways and repositioning desks. The chronic changes, largely unnecessary, made an already choppy script even more disjointed. She also eliminated the back screen projection of eighties video footage, a choice that not only drained the play of its political context--and the Thatcher years are essential here--but also inadvertently revealed the flaws in Bennett's script.

On the face of it, The History Boys pays homage to a fast-fading society where knowledge is valued for itself and ethics still matter. Irwin, the young, smarty-pants history instructor (and pedagogical villain) teaches to exam results, not the intellect, preaching the virtues of glib originality to secure a place at Oxbridge. History for Irwin is little more than ductile narratives. If received opinion condemns Mussolini, then praise him; if post-war society denounces the Holocaust, then suggest its unexpected benefits. Projected video in the original show clearly associated Irwin's educational principles--if one can dignify them with such a word--with the excesses of the Thatcherism.  Without that context, Irwin seems little more than a smug prig, one of the pitfalls of the Studio Theatre production.

Against Irwin is juxtaposed the old humanist Hector, who quotes poetry and demands that his boys do the same. His lads learn for the sheer pleasure of learning, be it snippets of old movies or the French subjunctive. Hector also treats learning as a bulwark against the erosion of time, a way to fortify the spirit when all else fails.  If Irwin's efficient amorality is symptomatic of the Thatcher years, then Hector's intellectual messiness, a hodgepodge of high and low culture, brings to mind the post-war period of the fifties and sixties, when clever boys out of Oxbridge (some of whom like Bennett would go on to form Beyond the Fringe) married music hall vaudeville to Left Bank existentialism.  

Zinoman's production forsook Thatcherite politics for an emphasis on sexual desire, ironically, the most problematic aspect of Bennett's script.  While Hector, not Irwin, commands our sympathies, he is also pathetic: Auden, Hardy, and Housman, all masters of unrequited and repressed emotion, figure largely in his poetic flights for good reason. Unwilling to face his homosexuality or leave his marriage, Hector's longing finds expression in the sad little gropes visited upon the boys who ride double on his motorcycle.  While one would expect Irwin, the consummate product of the eighties, to embody post-Stonewall attitudes, he too longs silently from afar.  Only golden boy Dakin finds sexual fulfillment--and yet we recoil from his predatory pursuit of men and women alike.  

Indeed, The History Boys seems peculiarly intent on punishing those who "come out." Publicly exposed and shamed into early retirement, Hector enjoys a last-minute reprieve when the headmaster's own peccadillos--albeit of the heterosexual variety--are conveniently revealed. Circumstances thus accomplish what volition could not, forcing Hector to acknowledge his predilection for boys, not his wife.  Irwin plans to meet Dakin for what surely will prove to be a life-altering tete-a-tete.  A motorcycle accident at the penultimate moment, however, kills Hector and maims Irwin, thereby ensuring that neither man will know peace in the wake of sexual revelation. The postscript to the play proper, where we learn the eventual fate of the students, underscores the punitive message. Posner, another unfulfilled homosexual, is destined to halfway houses, psychiatric treatment, suicide attempts--and literary scribblings.

What, then, are we to make of a play that murders or cripples (literally and psychically), any male who gives voice to the love that dare not speak its name? Only Dakin prospers--as a slimy barrister. Moreover, his undifferentiated, avaricious sexuality appears--even more so than Irwin's educational policies--to figure the unbridled consumerism of the 80s. If so, then the play's outcome suggests both the triumph of capitalism over the socialist state and the victory of vulturine over repressed sexuality. Certainly, the maudlin ending secures this reading.  As the students and faculty eulogize Hector, we are expected to wax nostalgic for a mode of learning, as Bennett reminds us in 2004, now vanished--as has the unrequited version of homosexual longing he embodied. Even more disturbing is the collective price Hector, Irwin, and Posner pay for "coming out," an odd moral made all the more bald by Zinoman's decision to eliminate political context from the production.  At least in the Broadway/London premiere, the constant visual reminder of the Thatcher years shifted attention away from Bennett's dubious sexual message.

In the final analysis, The History Boys not only promotes misty-eyed remembrance of old-fashioned pedagogy but also of the days when men could not express same-sex desire. By suggesting that art and learning can only flourish in the soil of unhappiness, Bennett recycles the same muddled sentiments one finds in the worst Romantic poetry.  Only the sexual orientation has changed.

Argonautika

Known for her adaptations of timeless works, such as The Arabian Nights or Ovid's Metamorphosis, Mary Zimmerman turned her sights to the ancient story of Jason and the Argonaut. Back in January we went with eager anticipation to see her latest redaction, this time staged by The Shakespeare Theatre Company. I walked away disappointed: the show, while good, had none of the polish or visual ingenuity of Metamorphosis, which we had seen in New York several years ago.

We saw Argonautika fairly early in the run, and it felt underrehearsed: entrances and exits were sloppy and some technical cues were missed. Movement-based theatre needs especially to be sharp. I was also disappointed with the poor handling of the language. Several actors treated their lines like a casual afterthought, not an essential part of the show, again, a problem I often encounter in theatre based more on movement than script.

Casting actors to fulfill an ideological aim is common these days. One sees, for instance, all-male versions of Sondheim's Company or race-reversed productions of Othello. I don't object to the practice but rather to the assumption that one must be pounded to get the point. Do we really need to see a white Othello and a black Iago to divine the complexities of race in the play? Can Bobby's reluctance to marry at the end of Company only be explained in terms of repressed homosexuality? Zimmerman, alas, was so determined to make goddesses central to her retelling of Jason's story that she cast an absolutely colorless actor in the role. His line readings were flat and without affect, as were those of the men who accompany him on the journey. The women playing the goddesses were, by contrast, energetic, funny, smart, and sexy, dominating the stage figuratively and literally (many of their scenes take place on a platform overlooking the exploits of the bland males). Okay, we get it: goddesses rule, not masculine heroics.  Zimmerman clearly wants us to rethink this ancient tale; rather than "Jason and the Argonauts," she's giving us "Jason, the hapless plaything of Hera and Athena," with the usual philippic on the evils of empire, colonies, and warfare.  

Ella at Arena Stage

Put bluntly, Tina Fabrique was the only reason to see Ella back in January and February at Arena Stage. What a gal! And what a terrific set of pipes!

I wish I could muster the same enthusiasm for the book which, according to the Arena Stage web site, was "conceived by Rob Ruggiero and Dyke Garrison." That verb is telling: conceptions, if properly formulated, eventually become creations, but Ella, alas, resists the happy translation from idea to artifact. Half-baked, it is very much a "conception," not a finished play.

In all fairness, the lackluster script cannot solely be blamed on Ruggiero and Garrison (and who, by the way, is sufficiently benighted to name a child "Dyke"?).  At bare minimum, a bio-drama (like a bio-pic) requires a memorable personality dropped into an interesting cultural moment; shake 'em both up, and you hopefully get a nice cocktail of dramatic conflict. While the Big Band scene that forms the backdrop for Ella is colorful, the singer's life wasn't and therein lies part of the problem. Yes, Ella Fitzgerald had a tough start in life, but so did many others during the Depression; and, sadly, her inability to realize lasting love is hardly unique. She was a craftswoman: technically brilliant and artistically inspired, she became her sound. Just mention "Ella," and people smile in recognition, instantly hearing her unsurpassable renditions of Gershwin and Cole Porter. Like Sinatra, she was truly sui generis.

A distinctive vocal style, however, does not a story make, and Ruggiero and Garrison, desperate to infuse some life into the book, impute to Fitzgerald a feminist consciousness that allows her to critique, loudly and sassily, the lot of women or the unjust times. At points, I expected Tina Fabrique to break into "R-E-S-P-E-C-T," not "Miss Otis Regrets." It's extremely peculiar, not to mention wildly anachronistic. There's little evidence that Ella Fitzgerald was anything other than a well-mannered, hard-working lady.  Even by Depression standards, she was no Emma Goldman.

There are other peculiarities: the script has Fitzgerald taking swipes at Sinatra, hinting at ill treatment by Ole' Blue Eyes. Sinatra, though, not only acknowledged his indebtedness to Fitzgerald, attributing his phrasing to her characteristically syncopated style, but also professed admiration for the woman and absolute regard for the musician. Just watch the two of them perform together in this 1967 television special: three minutes into the medley, Sinatra sits on the floor, his back to us, generously yielding the stage to Ella's extraordinary scat solo. When the camera pans to Sinatra's face, we see wonder, not disrespect. They would go on to tour together with Count Basie in the 70s; a superstar, Fitzgerald was certainly under little compunction to perform with anyone who treated her poorly, even Sinatra.

The script similarly transforms Norman Granz, Fitzgerald's manager, into another exploitive, unfeeling white male in a vain attempt to imbue her life with the tragic overtones of Lady Day. In actuality, Granz felt strongly about civil rights and refused--even in the fifties--to let restaurants or hotels discriminate against his performers, one of the reasons that musicians like Ray Brown, Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald remained his life-long clients and friends. It goes without saying that the many awards, accolades, and honorary degrees heaped upon Fitzgerald are never mentioned since they ill accord with Ruggiero and Garrison's representation of Ella the Downtrodden.

Despite her rough start, Fitzgerald actually achieved success early in life, and she maintained a busy work schedule for over forty years. Industriousness, while commendable, is hardly the stuff of high drama, with the result that Ruggiero and Garrison, desperate for conflict, take extraordinary liberties with a well-documented life. In this day of Wikipedia and You Tube, it's easy to pull up basic information or clips from concerts and television, putting additional pressure on writers to justify artistic license. Clearly, art is not biography--nor should it be--but departures from history should add up to something more than tired cliches.

Happily, Fabrique's big, lush voice, backed by a superb combo, dominated the evening and compensated for the lackluster script. Fabrique made the smart decision not to channel Fitzgerald; rather, she reinterprets, paying homage while making the songs her own. In so doing she avoids the creepiness of Kevin Spacey doing Bobby Darrin in the recent film, Beyond the Sea (2004). With Spacey, I found myself simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by his musical reenactment. The voice was eerily right, but the body was so wrong--as if a zombie had taken over Darrin. Fabrique thankfully does not attempt a literal impersonation, freeing us to appreciate her artistry rather than marvel at her mimetic abilities. Overall, Fabrique seems like a pretty good actress: I fault the script for giving her little to do other than strut, complain, and lecture between sets. Arena would have been far better served by a cabaret show; rather than shackling Fabrique to this third-rate script, why didn't they free her to do what she clearly excels at--sing?

Musings on Marlowe, Part II

Audiences in Washington, D.C. had a rare opportunity this fall to assess the playability of Marlowe's scripts. To inaugurate the new Harmon Arts Center, The Shakespeare Theatre Company played Edward II and Tamburlaine in repertory. Queer Theory has been largely responsible for the several revivals of Edward II since the early nineties. The story--about a weak English monarch who neglects his kingdom for his male lover--obviously lends itself to contemporary debates over sexual identity. No mystery there. E2 also happens to be a pretty good play: the last complete script Marlowe produced, it suggests he was beginning to learn something about dramaturgy. For good reason, Brecht chose that one script out of Marlowe's oeuvre to rework.

Tamburlaine, however, is an entirely different matter. Wildly popular at the time of its premiere, the titular role gave the bombastic Edward Alleyn a chance to showcase his histrionic style of acting. So big a hit was the play that Marlowe went on to write Part II, supposedly at the behest of audiences. After that brief flash of popularity, the play moldered, unknown and neglected until after WWII. By 1595, whatever had initially appealed to audiences no longer spoke to them or, for that matter, to anyone subsequently. Tamburlaine became the plaything of bibliophiles, critics, or the casually curious, but it was no longer welcome in the theatre.

That began to change in the twentieth century when the Yale Drama Club Association staged the play in 1919, more as a historical curiosity than anything else. Since WWII, revivals have had more to do with directorial desire than literary merit. Directors with an agenda (and who does not these days?) rub their hands gleefully over the script, hoping either to revive the Shakespeare/Marlowe debate, resuscitate Marlowe's reputation, or prove his neglected theatrical genius. Michael Kahn, the artistic director of The Shakespeare Theatre Company, called Tamburlaine a "great classic" in his notes to the company, observing the play "could be a lot of things. . . . a tribute to empire and colonialism, or a criticism of empire and colonialism." It is both "a critique, and yet also a celebration, of individualism and drive, with both its good points and dangers." Kahn's notes, much like Park Honan's claims for Marlowe's "artistry," try to make a virtue out of deficiency, elevating poor plotting to the level of thematic ambiguity. I don't need to invoke William Empson or even Derrida to point out the difference between an aesthetic density that allows for multiple readings and narrative holes so large you could drive a rig through them.

Undoubtedly, Tamburlaine, with its myriad Central Asian locales, and story of a despot who conquers, enslaves, and kills untold people, speaks to our current interest in colonialism, just as Edward II lends itself to Queer Theory. In that sense, both plays are "timely." Does timeliness make for good theatre, though? Is "relevance" enough?

Several students last semester wrote reviews of this production of Tamburlaine; not one was laudatory. They reported disgruntled conversations and people fleeing during intermission. Three students admitted they too would have left had not the review required them to stay. All of them liked how Kahn and the production team underscored the exoticism of the play, and for the first hour, the swirl of gorgeous costumes, innovative staging, and original music (vaguely Asian and electronic, with intermittent drumming) held their attention. They appreciated, as did I, Kahn's mastery in cutting and merging Parts I and II, and providing at least one creative solution to the rapid succession of unrelated scenes. It's almost impossible to follow Tamburlaine's progress through Central Asia, Egypt, and Africa, so disjointed is the plotting. Thus the projection of place names on an electronic screen above the proscenium helped immensely to locate the action. At least, one could sit back and say, "Ah, now he's slaughtering the inhabitants of Alexandria, not Carthage!"

Timeliness will only get you so far if the plot--even with electronic assistance--and language are unplayable. Even having read the play, my students complained bitterly about their inability to detect the spine of the story. The plot essentially boils down to this: conquer; meet future wife; conquer; conquer; conquer; marry wife; huge elapse of time (between Parts I and II), in which three sons are produced; wife sickens and dies (now we're really pissed!); conquer; conquer; conquer; conquer; kill one son for his lack of manliness; conquer; conquer; and die, instructing remaining sons in final moments to carry on legacy of conquest. Gee, we haven't learned a thing! Scenes of abject humiliation (e.g. bridling human conquests as if they were horses) provide some leavening to this tasteless mass.

The company of actors did their best with this mishmash, trying hard to compensate for the lack of narrative tension with energy and physicality. Avery Brooks played Tamburlaine as a street thug, mugging, laughing maniacally, and leaping all over the stage. I wasn't surprised that he busted three ribs well into the run, given that Kahn had him doing everything short of swinging from the rafters. The jittery, hyperkinetic blocking was augmented by the constant swirl of movement onstage, with carts and beds rolling on and off, objects rising from traps, and bright swatches of material unfurling. Whether consciously or unconsciously, director and actors reacted to the lack of story, the paltry motivation, and the thinness of character. I think the logic was that if you run around enough, the stage picture will compensate for the thin narrative, a ploy that film, an essentially visual medium, can pull off. It doesn't work in straight theatre.

Most of the reviews and blogs I looked at didn't like the play, but they proceeded to trash the production, not Marlowe's writing. I'm not sure the actors could have done much more. Avery Brooks came under fire for not finding his character, but Marlowe doesn't give him a break. Speech after speech reads as a perverse resume, with Tamburlaine announcing his latest "accomplishments" as he subjugates one realm after another. He taunts his conquests, fawns over his wife (another conquest), and belittles his one unmanly son before running him through. Never does he express regret or doubt. In other words, this is a character focused exclusively on exterior events, which is great if you're writing a Restoration fop, but not so good in a tragic hero. In part, this might explain Brooks's decision to play Tamburlaine as a comic character since the script (with the exception of one speech) doesn't give him occasion for introspection, motivation, or growth. What else could the poor guy do with the role?

That Marlowe didn't care much for actors or theatre is most evident in his dialogue. He was a freelancer, not a member of an acting company, and the difference shows. The language is relentless, a torrent of noun- and adjective-heavy lines that trip the tongue and strain the diaphragm. I saw the production a good six weeks into the run, which meant the actors had worked with the language for at least three months, giving them sufficient time to build up breath control. Even so, they wheezed and gasped their way through speeches, slogging through endless clauses with nary a caesura in sight. Additionally, Marlowe never learned what all good dramatists know: you have to give actors something to do onstage. Overwritten language reduces actors to talking heads, whereas artful porousness gives actors the opportunity to use their voices and bodies--in effect, to act.

Marlowe, though, was all about Marlowe, which is why he was a superb poet but an incompetent dramatist and spy. Accomplished dramatists yield up their narrative voice, just as spies forego a stable, uniform self. Marlowe couldn't let go of either one, and his solipsism cost him theatrical and mortal longevity.