Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
Playwright Shelagh Delaney grew up after World War II weathering the bleak conditions depicted in this, her first play. Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop accepted the poorly typed manuscript in 1958. Its production program commented that Delaney was “…the antithesis of London’s angry young men. (A kitchen sink theater movement dealing with social issues lead by John Osborne.) She knows what she is angry about.” Delaney spoke for her class, generation, women, blacks, and homosexuals.
Rebekah Brockman and Ade Otukoya
Eighteen year-old Jo (Rebekah Brockman) has been traipsing around after her indomitable, young mother Helen (Rachel Botchan) for years, from job to job, man to man, flat to flat. We meet the two mid perpetual argument as they move into yet another cold, dirty, communal-latrine-down-the-hall apartment in Delaney’s home town of Salford-slaughterhouse out the window.
Harry Feiner’s Set Design employs every shade of drab, muddy brown and a dash of washed-out orange. Its backdrop is an evocative, charcoal-like drawing of sooty rooftops. The single street lamp and wrought iron fence at back remind us there’s no escaping environs. It’s a wonder the audience isn’t coughing in sympathy.
Rebekah Brockman and John Evans Reese
Helen is softly voluptuous and aware she’s attractive despite a hard, brassy edge lubricated by liquor. Appearance is paramount. It’s kept them both afloat. Jo is plain, yet takes no care with her looks except to be particularly scrubbed. Still, she refers to herself as beautiful and her sketchbook art as genius. Whether or not a front, the young child/woman lives by it. She’s feisty, sure of her opinions and choices even when unaware of reasoning, yet reads children’s fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
About the same time Jo is basking in the attentions of a soft-spoken, black sailor named Jimmy (Ade Otukoya) – one can’t help wishing Delany told us how they met – Peter (Bradford Cover), the womanizer Helen left, tracks her down, and, like a bull in a china shop, offers marriage, comfort, ostensible security, and a regular bar stool. He has no interest in dealing with Jo.
Rebekah Brockman and John Evans Reese
Jimmy’s leave comes to an end. He unknowingly leaves Jo pregnant, promising to return and marry her. She knows better. Helen gives in to Peter and disappears in a cloud of hope-against-hope proudly wearing her new weasel fur stole. She has no idea her daughter is knocked up. (Popular then, these stoles were made of full animal pelts with each creature’s mouth clamped on one another’s tail. Brava Costume Designer Barbara A. Bell who makes everyone look just right.)
The rest of the play concerns Jo’s survival and immensely moving (not saccharine) relationship with friend turned caregiver, the gay Geoffrey (John Evans Reese.)
Dialogue is effective, characters well drawn. The play gives us an unfussy glimpse of another kind of life. Part of its power lies in isolation, however, a kind of episodic ‘we two form a multitude.’ Though Director Austin Pendleton does a superb job with natural characterization, pacing, and stage visuals, he makes, to my mind, two mistakes that annoyingly interfere with dramatic impact.
Firstly, in this interpretation, Helen and Jo both periodically address the audience, soliciting sympathy, jarring us out of the drama instead of drawing us in. Secondly, the physical omnipresence of a three man jazz band who literally share the couch with characters, are asked to move when Geoffrey cleans, and look on so close to action that one’s eyes can’t help but drift where they should not, detract.
Music is a constant. People keep bursting into two or four bars of lyric. Helen sings something she once performed at clubs. The trio, it should be noted, is seriously good, the music well chosen. Unfortunately, however, we’ve gone way past period atmosphere into what are they doing in plain sight?! It’s as if Pendleton were insecure about the piece standing on its own.
Rebekah Brockman and Rachel Botchan
Acting is wonderful. Accents are excellent (and intelligible, not a given.) Unique physicality is well crafted. Rebekah Brockman (Jo) reads real whether sullen, having a tantrum, poignantly reaching out, or reflecting on complex possibilities. Rachel Botchan (Helen) offers just the right balance of selfish, irresponsible floozy and overbearing mom. Both performers portray iconoclastic survival tactics with uncompromising commitment. Arguments are fiery.
All the men are good as well, with John Evans Reese a stand-out as loyal, tender Geoffrey. A role that could have been milquetoast, emerges whole and nuanced in this actor’s purview.
Photos by Russ Rowland Opening: Rachel Botchan and Rebekah Brockman
The Pearl Theatre Co. presents A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney Directed by Austin Pendleton Musicians: Max Boiko-Trumpet, Phil Faconti-Guitar, Walter Stinson-Bass The Pearl Theatre 555 West 42 Street Through October 30, 2016
In a note on 1953’s A Day by the Sea, its playwright N.C. Hunter suggests that 40 signifies “…a foot in two worlds, half way between youth and age, promise and achievement…(with time) to succeed, to reshape one’s life…” The terms “urgency,” “crisis,” and “last chance” are employed. Think of films during that period when a woman that age was matronly, a man irrevocably settled into his future. Now reflect on contemporary timelines.
Pointedly featuring five generations of characters each of which views life from its own perspective, the piece gives us a glimpse into an upper class (civil servant) strata of British society, its morality, judgments, and expectations.
Front: Jill Tanner and George Morfogen; Back: Julian Elfer and Philip Goodwin
Julian Anson (Julian Elfer), a mid level, type A, foreign service diplomat, inherited the family manse from his father, but spends practically no time there. His idealistic, self-glorified responsibility is improving international relations, eschewing all leisure and personal relationships. He eats, sleeps and breathes his job finding inadequacies everywhere, attending profoundly larger issues than the construction of a new pig sty.
The estate is run by Julian’s stolid mother, Laura Anson (Jill Tanner), who can’t really talk to her son. She’s as oblivious to world affairs as he is to the vicissitudes of running his childhood home. Puritanical, maternal concern permeates every conversation. When Julian waxes on about a brighter future, her reaction is “You’re getting quite eloquent, dear. We must find you a soapbox in Hyde Park.”
Katie Firth and Jill Tanner
Additional occupants are Laura’s elder, infirm brother David (George Morfogen) and his paid attendant, Doctor Farley (Philip Goodwin). David clearly lived a robust life now drifting in and out of exotic memories. The doctor is an often angry, philosophizing drunk, thought to be cheaper than someone more qualified. Having lost wife and son, at 56, he’s retreated to this position with bitterness.
Summer visitors include Frances Farrar (Katie Firth) and her two children. Orphaned quite young, Frances was raised on the estate side by side with Julian, but hasn’t been back in 20 years. Her first, considerably older husband died a soldier. The second, a much younger and more fragile man, attempted suicide when she left him causing scandal. Life has happened taking its tolls. Nanny Maddie (Polly McKie), a lonely spinster at 35, affectionately manages Frances’s two children.
Polly McKie and Philip Goodwin
Long story short: Priggish Julian is forced to reconsider his life when the earth shifts beneath him. Frances receives some discomfiting resolution. Doctor Farley is presented with an option. Laura kind of gets her son back.
Hunter’s work has been compared to that of Chekhov. His characters are less earthy and fiery, but familial context, reflection of an era, and reexamination of one’s identity conforms. The play feels slow. Others despite clocking in at almost three hours do not. It’s impossible to tell how much of this is attributable to the script and how much to the production, which is not, in my opinion, up to high Mint Theater standards.
Julian Elfer and Katie Firth
George Morfogen’s David is pitch perfect. Every time the character speaks, reality infuses the scenario. The actor moves and watches like the old man. The same can be said for Polly McKie’s Maddie (Miss Mathieson) with whom we feel instant, then increasing empathy. (Her Scottish accent is sublime)
As played by Katie Firth, the underwritten Frances is a bit slow on the uptake even for her personality, but the actress has made plausible decisions which hold. Both Julian Elfer (Julian) and Jill Tanner (Laura) have long, effective segments one wishes were more dependable. Philip Goodwin chews scenery.
Julian Elfer and Jill Tanner
Austen Pendleton’s Direction is radically uneven. There are wonderful small gestures – Julian formally sits without unbuttoning his suit jacket while the doctor buttons his when Frances approaches. In crisis, Julian sits dejectedly on a swing; his mother comes up behind, holding both ropes as she consoles him. A dramatic scene between Julian and Frances shows both actors to their best, nuanced advantage as does a poignant one between Doctor Farley and Maddie. On the other hand, we have children in the space doing nothing (like sticks); there are actors who seem to disappear when not speaking, intermittent lack of focus during dialogue, and cast members so theatrically flamboyant embodiment is left in the dust of bravado.
Minimal, painterly Set by Charles Morgan is pleasantly evocative. Love the tree swing and use of overhead paintings. Martha Hally’s Costumes effortlessly put us firmly in time, place, and class.
Amy Stoller’s Dialect Coaching achieves a mishmash. Some accents are clearly faux, some inconsistent, some non-existent.
Also featuring: Curzon Dobell as William Gregson, estate accountant, a splendid Sean Gormley gracefully inhabiting the role of diplomat Humphrey Caldwell, with the immensely self conscious Kylie McVey and Athan Sporek as Frances’s two children.
Photos by Richard Termine Opening: Katie Firth & Julian Elfer
Mint Theater Company presents A Day by the Sea by N.C. Hunter Directed by Austin Pendleton The Beckett Theater 410 West 42nd Street Telecharge.com
