Usher nonsense #52 – SIGHT UNSEEN
SIGHT UNSEEN by Donald Margulies (Brooklyn Boy)directed by Daniel Sullivan
(Intimate Apparrel, Brooklyn Boy)
Manhattan Theatre Club at the Biltmore Theatre (261 West 47th Street).
With Byron Jennings (The Foreigner), Laura Linney, Ana Reeder (Small
Tragedy, Hedda Gabler), and Ben Shenkman.
Sets by Douglas W. Schmidt, costumes by Jess Goldstein, lighting by Pat
Collins, and original music and sound by John Gromada.
Well okie-dokie then. I liked this production. Liked, liked, liked it. What a relief –
after The Violet Hour and Drowning Crow, I was leery of suiting up to usher again at
the Biltmore.
This play was first produced in 1992 by MTC and is the story of an old romance
stirred up and spread all over the stage. Jonathan Waxman (Shenkman) is a
successful artist who comes to London for a show and looks up his old lover
(Linney) who is an ex-patriot archeologist. She is married to a squirrelly sort of guy
(Jennings) and they live exactly nowhere, which is a couple of hours north of London
as the crow flies. It’s one of those awkward, revealing visits that happen to people.
If you live long enough, the past is apt to catch you at a turn in the road once or
twice. We get to squirm as well as be surprised.
Juxtaposed with the love story is Waxman’s intense interview with a German
journalist. When he is not examining an old love, he is examining his life it seems.
Busy boy. Love, art, philosophy, and culture are all being remembered, declared,
challenged and discovered.
The performances are quite good. It was a pleasure to see that Linney knows what to
do on a stage as well as on a movie set. Jennings has some sort of internal life that
makes him intriguing and off putting at the same time. Not easy. Shenkman is
onstage nearly the entire time and is always moving into the next thought and the
next. Reeder is OK as the German journalist, but just.
Sullivan also directed Intimate Apparel at the Roundabout. I think this is a better play,
but both productions reveal a director with a solid vision. He takes good care of his
actors. You can tell, because they in turn take good care of the audience. And
Douglas Schmidt’s revolving set made it possible for the actors to step through time
as if they were being beamed up, Scotty.
Give it a whirl.
©2004 Tulis McCall
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |