The Follies and Failings of Love, On and Off Broadway
It’s after Thanksgiving, I’m still digesting my feast - and there’s no better after-dinner topic than stories of unrequited and surreptitious love. This month, I’ve managed to find some time to check out a few very different and exciting pieces of theater on my few nights off. I’m going to do two mini capsule reviews, if you will, of some of the shows I’ve seen lately. The two are very different pieces of theatre, but both dealt with the follies and failings of love, each in their own idiosyncratic ways. Read on to find out what I thought of Betrayal and Cyrano!
There’s perhaps no playwright I loathe more than Harold Pinter - I usually enjoy absurdism, but the bleakness and misogyny that fills his plays makes me less likely to want to read, let alone see, one of his works. The latest revival of his Betrayal, however, was an absolute surprise. This play is a seemingly simple story of a love triangle between two men and the woman they both are in love with. The play consists of long relationship-driven scenes that trace Jerry’s affair with Emma, who’s married to Robert, Jerry’s best friend. Betrayal’s big artistic device is that the story goes backwards in time, so there’s a layer of dramatic irony coating the whole thing. We know the affair is happening and the characters all know about it at the beginning, so as the evening progresses and time moves back to the beginning of the affair, the stakes in the relationships keep shifting. On the page and in most productions of this play, I’m utterly bored by these characters - but Jamie Lloyd’s imported West End production finally made me care about these three people who just keep cheating on each other. Lloyd’s production is minimalist (no set to speak of besides some chairs and some food and wine props) and entirely relies on excellent lighting design, soundtrack choices, and a perfectly watchable cast to keep the audience engaged. The lighting work actually felt like we moved around in time and location with the characters, and the soundscape was ambient, with pops of unexpected samples of music fitting the mood of every moment. Design aspects aside, the main reason this production sold out most of its run was because of its extremely talented male cast. Marvel superstars Tom Hiddleston (Loki) and Charlie Cox (Daredevil) both gave charming performances as Jerry and Robert - but the best performance in the play for me by far was Zawe Ashton as Emma. While reading the play I couldn’t care less for Emma’s character, but Ashton’s performance was mesmerizing. She plays Emma as almost the mastermind behind every part of the story, keeping calm and in control as the men in her life argue and fret and drink, and even when she’s not part of a scene she’s eminently watchable sitting at the back of the stage eating an apple or drinking wine. I’d recommend this production almost entirely for her performance. If you didn’t get to check this production out, I’m sure the play will be revived again in a few years. The cast and design of this Betrayal were fantastic, and while the script is one of my least favorites, it was a damn good revival of a play I’d never see otherwise.
Going into Betrayal I knew everything that was going to happen, text-wise, and the production surprised me. Aside from the fact that Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage was the title role I went to see Cyrano at the Daryl Roth downtown, I knew very little of the Cyrano story or anything of the production. I went in totally blind. Little did I know that this off-Broadway gem was going to blow me away! The story is a tale of unrequited love set in 1840s France. The witty poet and expert duelist Cyrano de Bergerac has had romantic longings for his childhood friend Roxanne who is now of age, but he fears he can never act on his longings because he isn’t conventionally attractive. (In the original story, Cyrano has a very large nose. Here, Dinklage’s short stature is why he’s a bit of an outcast.) When Roxanne falls in love with the handsome but lunkheaded cadet Christian instead of the conniving De Guiche, Christian calls upon Cyrano to write love poems for Roxanne in his stead so they can fall even more in love. There’s a famous balcony scene reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet where Cyrano hides in the dark, pretends to be Christian and speaks poetry of love to earn Christian a kiss from Roxanne. But romantic complications ensue, characters are sent to war, and the story goes in a heartbreaking direction I did not expect! This production surprised me in so many ways. First of all, it’s a musical adaptation with an absolutely ravishing new score with songs by the alternative/folk rock band The National. The songs are seamlessly integrated into the storytelling of Erica Schmidt’s new adaptation, so when characters’ emotions run so high they end up singing their thoughts, it flows like poetry. The poetic, melancholy songs fit both Roxanne and Cyrano’s longings extremely well. There’s a part late in the second act when soldiers are on the battlefield writing letters to their loved ones, and the song they sing writing their premature goodbyes had me ugly crying in the fourth row.
Second, this cast is top notch. Peter Dinklage is an intense and charismatic actor, but who knew he had a rich, Leonard Cohen basso profundo? His Cyrano is instantly definitive. Jasmine Cephas Jones, so sultry in Hamilton as Maria Reynolds (and Peggy!) is a darling and mesmerizing Roxanne - who wouldn’t fall in love with her? These two give such magnetic performances you can’t help but root for them to eventually realize their feelings. Also of note are Scott Stangland (my favorite Pierre standby in Great Comet!) and Grace McLean (also of Great Comet fame - we love a reunion) in multiple supporting parts, all handled with aplomb. Third, the choreography work by the Kupermans (responsible for the hypnotic dance and movement work in Alice By Heart) is so staggeringly good in this show, you find yourself watching the ensemble instead of the leads a lot of the time. It’s amazing. This entire production left me moved to tears; it’s a gorgeously-wrought production and deserves your time and attention. Check it out before it closes December 22nd.
One show I went in blind and loved, and another I went in loathing but left thoroughly impressed. The beauty of theatre is that it gives you so many opportunities to connect with the text: You can go into shows knowing absolutely nothing and come out in love with a new favorite, or you can go to a play you’ve read before and see it realized in a way you didn’t think could be staged. Ah, theater, there’s nothing quite like it.
Photo by Monica Carboni.
