Pity in History – Heady and Smart

Every summer, I look forward to the productions PTP brings to New York’s Atlantic Theatre. They’re invariably intriguing, timely and well executed. It was PTP that introduced me to playwright Howard Barker whose vigorous work offers complex situations peopled by fallible humanity portrayed with insight. Barker sees ‘the big picture,’ illuminating it with specific situations and relationships that make movement or mindset accessible. His use of language is as rich as it gets. One is invariably startled, moved, angered, amused, and stimulated to afterthought.

Steven Dykes, Matt Ball

This year’s offering, Pity in History, was commissioned by BBC Television in 1984 and only now manifest as a stage production. I’m told we’re watching an unchanged teleplay. Like most of his oeuvre, Barker portrays contemporary concerns by paralleling another time in history. Here we find ourselves during the English Revolution predating Cromwell’s Republic. It’s not, I repeat, not necessary to be aware of the backstory/setting in order to be affected by the play. Commonality with today’s politics, religious beliefs, economic and class divisions is uncomfortably clear.

Onstage war is palpable. Unnerving drums and explosions (Sound Design Cormac Bluestone), smoke, and evocative lighting (Hallie Zieselman) create a battlefield of an almost bare stage. “Why are we fighting?!” Officer Factor (Jay Dunn) calls out. “Because we are right!” his men shout in unison. “Why will we win?” “Because we are stronger!” “Why are we stronger?” “Because God’s on our side!” It might be anywhere at any time in history.

Kaitlynd Collins, Jonathan Tindle 

“Is anyone here in touch with God?” asks the battalion’s cook Murgatroyd (Jonathan Tindle) from his blood-soaked gurney. Here is Shakespeare’s wise fool, a low country, curmudgeonly character who comments on the situation in which he finds himself helpless, injecting humor and pathos, questioning Him, refusing to die despite mortal wounds.

“I never knew a man to die so badly, it disgraces the regiment,” comments Chaplin Croop (Christopher Marshall). In him, we find an articulate radical so against so-called ‘blasphemous’ religions, he commands destruction of the cathedral in which they’ve bivouacked, demolishing invaluable artisan work. Take a moment to reflect on all the ancient structures and historical repositories obliterated in the name of a true God.

Gaukroker, a mason (Steven Dykes), and his young apprentice, Pool (Matt Ball), resolutely continue work on an elaborate church tomb though surrounded by military and carnage. The clear sound of hammer against stone which opens the piece will echo in your brain after curtain. We may not see configuration, but are nonetheless mindful of its taking shape before our eyes. Townspeople have fled but for rich widow Venables (Kathleen Wise) who ordered the mausoleum for her husband.

 Steven Dykes, Kathleen Wise

Oblivious to anything but craft and the pickle missing in his lunch, the mason ascribes no gravitas to idealism or patriotism. Decades pass, violence ineluctably swells, then dissipates; life, in its fashion, goes on. When Pool brings up the futility of continuing their commission, his Master shrugs, “Just because I do an angel’s wing near perfect gives it no rights…” (Lack of attachment to his efforts is one of a very few aspects of the piece about which one might argue. Reference to a single, wistful experience with a museum falls on the side of caring.) Pool joins the army, taking pleasure in obliteration.

War rages. Gaukroker is owed for that which will shortly be destroyed. Murgatroyd grows delirious: “You can’t control me cause you can’t punish me…Get your own breakfast, I’m cooking for Christ now…I’m so lonely…Is this Heaven? Spare us an afterlife if you lot show up…”

Sergeant Boys (Christo Grabowski) tries to get on with it, seemingly the only measured voice in chaos. Chaplin Croop objects to soldiers intent on economic-based revenge rather than religious fanaticism, yet continues to hold sway. Venables, first sidestepping involvement, offhandedly commits murder in the name of art. Eventually soldiers withdraw from what is now rubble. Where does that leave Gaukroker and Pool; art, redemption, perseverance?

Christopher Marshall and the ensemble of soldiers

Fluidly woven into a tapestry of extremism, impotence, defense, and survival, the play’s multiple factions are as familiar today as they are in context.

The company is terrific. Of special note:

Steven Dykes’s Gaukroger is easygoing, honest, practical and proud. Admonishment of the lackadaisical Pool is tinged with benevolence. The actor makes his character’s ironic pitch to the sergeant for memorial work as natural as frustration at the paucity of lunch. Even the mason’s longview is believable. We observe a whole person.

As Murgatroyd, Jonathan Tindle, a sterling member of many PTP casts, persuasively delivers humor, poignancy, fear, feistiness, and anger trippingly off an unleashed tongue. Barely moving his horizontal body, Tindle occupies a  wide range emotion as fully as if he were gesturing wildly.

Matt Ball embodies both Pool’s naiveté and determination with equal skill.

Director Richard Romagnoli, whose skill I‘ve long admired, viscerally realizes this heady play. We feel immersed, focused, subject to events. The sense of army as a single organism, of a commander as buoy and zealot as madman, of class and religious divisions that splinter, of incidental victims and decades of continuity are all palpable in Romagnoli’s hands. Characters are defined. The stage is used with breathless sweep and then intimacy. Economy of gesture serves.

Metal stairs substitute for a workman’s ladder. A ramp, desk and chair provide all else. The church is beautifully indicated by light through stained glass windows and then a projection. (Collaboration of Set Designer Mark Evancho and Zieselman)

Danielle Nieves more or less contemporary Costume Design is authentic. Her choice of a cocktail dress and fascinator for Mrs. Venables, however, feels utterly wrong.

Soldiers: Khari Blue, Connor Wright, Sam Tompkins Martin, Victoria Jane Isquith, Kaitlynd Collins

Photos by Stan Barouh
Opening: Jay Dunn, Steven Dykes, Jonathan Tindle

PTP/NYC Potomac Theatre Project presents
Pity in History by Howard Barker
Directed by Richard Romagnoli
In Repertory with Arcadia by Tom Stoppard Through August 6, 2017
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th Street

About Alix Cohen (1702 Articles)
Alix Cohen is the recipient of ten New York Press Club Awards for work published on this venue. Her writing history began with poetry, segued into lyrics and took a commercial detour while holding executive positions in product development, merchandising, and design. A cultural sponge, she now turns her diverse personal and professional background to authoring pieces about culture/the arts with particular interest in artists/performers and entrepreneurs. Theater, music, art/design are lifelong areas of study and passion. She is a voting member of Drama Desk and Drama League. Alix’s professional experience in women’s fashion fuels writing in that area. Besides Woman Around Town, the journalist writes for Cabaret Scenes, Broadway World, TheaterLife, and Theater Pizzazz. Additional pieces have been published by The New York Post, The National Observer’s Playground Magazine, Pasadena Magazine, Times Square Chronicles, and ifashionnetwork. She lives in Manhattan. Of course.