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The Grand Manner by A.R. Gurney

Directed by Mark Lamos

Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, New York City

June 2-August 1, 2010

Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo

American playwright A.R. Gurney’s work immerses audiences in Northeastern WASP culture. Much of his material draws from his background in this milieu. Born in Buffalo, Gurney graduated from St. Paul’s prep school in Concord, NH, then attended Williams College in Williamstown, MA, and the Yale School of Drama. While teaching at MIT, he began to write plays. In 1981, he debuted The Dining Room, a comedy of manners exemplifying Gurney’s career-spanning terrain. Like Jane Austen, Gurney understands that close readings of social microcosms yield universal truths; with ample doses of wit and wisdom, Gurney dramatizes hidden agendas and blatant pretensions. Yet barbed as his humor can be, Gurney brings an insider’s affection to his characters and their foibles.

Longtime Gurney colleague writer Romulus Linney described his fellow Yale graduate as bold and adventurous, referring to Gurney’s interpretations of theater conventions.1 For example, Gurney’s The Fourth Wall (1992), soon to be staged by TheatreWorks at The Fourth Wall Theatre in Upper Montclair, NJ, challenges the invisible barrier, or “Fourth Wall,” between actors and audience. In this play, Gurney conflates the “real” and the imagined by eliminating the fragile boundary between the stage and the seats. The Fourth Wall also expresses Gurney’s doubts about his career direction at mid-life and a playwright’s influence beyond the footlights.2

In June, Gurney’s most recent work, The Grand Manner, opened at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, directed by Mark Lamos.3 A poignant, compressed drama laced with signature Gurney humor, The Grand Manner recounts a brief meeting between the young Gurney, called Pete, and a theater legend. At the time, Gurney was at St. Paul’s. His father insisted he become a physician, but Gurney toyed with pursuing a less secure career choice. In February 1948, he traveled to New York with a ticket for a performance of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra at the Martin Beck Theater, starring First Lady of the Stage Katharine Cornell.4 The Berlin-born Cornell was raised in Buffalo. Wherever she went, whatever location she chose for a residence, Cornell considered Buffalo as her home. When Gurney’s grandmother writes to Cornell to arrange a meeting with the boy post performance, Cornell readily accepts. Gurney’s father believes the visit will squelch the theater bug but, again, the boy has other plans.　

Cornell’s legendary status derives from two tributaries: her never-failingly gracious, well-bred presence, and her pioneering efforts to revitalize American theater. “Grand” in the noblest sense, Cornell had every advantage that wealth and prominence affords. Unlike Gurney, whose family disparaged the theater, Cornell’s father was an amateur director and, later, managed a local theater. When Cornell put on backyard plays, he encouraged the child’s passion. By the time her mother died in 1915, Cornell had already set her sights on Broadway. With inherited money, she moved to New York. Soon Cornell’s glamorous looks and engaging personality began to win leading roles.

Dubbed “Kit” as a child because of her boyish features, Cornell cultivated interior qualities. She understood the human need to be recognized, as well as the appeal of good manners and humility. To her, audiences were not faceless crowds of ticket holders. Her words, smiles and tears were for individuals. They knew it and became devoted fans. For admirers from her hometown, Cornell’s welcome extended to backstage visits for the sharing of news and memories. She opened some of her plays in Buffalo, and whenever she appeared there while on tour, Cornell performed her most convincing role: hometown girl.

In 1921, Cornell married actor/director Guthrie McClintic. The production company they formed put little-known playwrights to work and exposed audiences to rarely performed works (including those by George Bernard Shaw and Shakespeare). They employed many actors who became legends, including Orson Wells, and they gave work to others who might otherwise have forsaken the stage. McClintic directed his wife in some of her most famous projects; for example, Candida (1924), The Brownings of Wimpole Street (1931), Lucrece (1932), Alien Corn (1933) and St. Joan (1935).

In Gurney’s flashback, Pete’s visit comes at a juncture in Cornell’s career. In her mid fifties, she feared but accepted the fickle nature of celebrity.5 Connecting her fate with the decline of live theater Cornell dreaded being pigeon-holed as a tragedienne, too “grand” to play grittier parts. A wide-eyed Pete decides to be accommodating and readily critiques her performance as Cleopatra. Too long protected from genuine criticism by her husband, her faithful personal assistant, Gert, and the notable reviewers who counted her a friend, Cornell hungers for truth. Without it, she tells Pete, theater is dead. Television and film, she cautions, capture dead performances. Even at the end of her career, when producers offered few parts, Cornell scrupulously avoided both. Roles, she believed, were created between actor and audience.

Exuding charm, Kate Burton (The Constant Wife; The Elephant Man) plays Cornell from all sides: confident professional, aging has-been, vain celebrity and humble Buffalo gal. As Pete, Bobby Steggert (Ragtime) is suitably awe-struck, the perfect blank-slate against which the others reveal their secrets. Gurney gives his ironic, quick-shot jokes to McClintic (Boyd Gaines) and Gert (Brenda Wehle). Gaines (Gypsy; Twelve Angry Men) as McClintic alternates with increasing rapidity from sophisticated producer to flawed human being. Wehle’s (Pygmalion) Gert organizes Cornell’s life with military precision, gruffly advising Pete on the ways of the world from a Broadway perspective. Hints of a magnanimous spirit and love for Cornell will endear Gert to audiences, while a pathetic seduction of Pete punctures McClintic’s pomposity.

The Grand Manner might be considered a coda to Gurney’s Buffalo Gal (2008), also directed by Lamos. Buffalo Gal examines the predicament of aging film star Amanda, who returns to her hometown Buffalo for a revival of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Working under a director who represents the unsung stalwarts of regional theater, Amanda begins to note uncomfortable parallels between her own life and that of her character, Madame Ranevsky. Both go home hoping to recapture a magic that exists only in memory. In reality, home is already lost to them. In the end, Amanda decides that Hollywood’s promises trump live theater’s rewards. With The Grand Manner, Gurney allows another Buffalo Gal to tell a story in which live theater is the victor.

1 “A.R. Gurney” in BOMB (96/Summer 2006): http://bombsite.com/issues/96/articles/2838. Linney met Gurney in the 1950s at Yale.

2 Opening on September 24, 2010, the TheatreWorks production features Gurney’s The Fourth Wall and Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound. For more information, go to: http://www.4thwalltheatre.com/index.html

3 The Grand Manner opened at Lincoln Center on June 2, 2010, and runs through August 31.

4 Cornell was so fashioned by New Yorker critic Alexander Woollcott.

5 Born in 1893, Cornell gave her birth date as 1898. She died in 1974.

Phantom by Susan Kay

Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo

Twenty years after publication, English novelist Susan Kay’s response to Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra ranks among the most powerful portraits of one of the most psychologically complex characters in literature.1 Owing in part to its rarity, Kay’s novel Phantom (1990) has acquired cult status. Although in wide circulation in the 1990s, today Kay’s story is available in expensive editions from small publishers and in used copies from out-of-print booksellers.

Comparatively few readers own copies of Leroux’s book, yet the Phantom’s story is well known throughout the world from recreations in books, film and theater; the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical have become classics. In fact, the English composer’s theater adaptation has earned the fine distinction of longest-running Broadway show in history.2 In her Author’s Note, Kay briefly mentions the wide range of sources informing her version of Erik’s story, including Chaney, and Michael Crawford in the original London cast (1986).3 In the final analysis, Kay judges a 1967 full-length cartoon to be most faithful to Leroux’s vision.

Beyond her insightful panoramic view of Erik’s inner and outer landscapes, Kay’s brilliance can be traced to hundreds of minute details rendering Erik a sympathetic figure, without shying from his volcanic rage and unquenchable thirst for revenge. With his goliath-like physical strength, intellect rivaling Einstein and Hawking, musical genius and unnerving skills as magician and thief, Erik comes off as a flesh-and-blood human being needing, as we all do, acceptance and love.

After escaping while still a child from his mother’s deeply wounding care, Erik travels the world, acquires great wealth, erects monumental buildings, and produces an array of inventions variously futuristic and simple that heal, destroy or merely lend convenience. He makes a few friends, men who admire his talents yet fear the truth behind his mask, which they believe covers a depraved soul. To some he reveals the extent of his depravity by confessing the many murders he has committed (some in self defense, others to assuage his burden of grief and guilt). Mostly, Erik acquires enemies who mock, taunt and tease.

Given the scope of Kay’s novel, readers might be surprised to learn that her epic journey to the heart of the Phantom took only eighteen months to complete. Referring to Leroux’s novel, Kay says:

“The little black book began to live on my bedside table, and I returned again and again to those passages which intrigued and puzzled me. Increasingly, I found my attention drawn to the final three pages, to the brief historical outline in which Leroux accounts for the Phantom’s earlier existence.”

Since Leroux’s work and all subsequent adaptations chronicle a six-month period preceding the Phantom’s death at approximately age 50, Kay decided to uncover his past from birth to ruler of the Paris Opera’s labyrinthine underworld.

Kay sections her novel into first-person narratives offering varying viewpoints of Erik and the characters’ experiences with him, including two sections related by Erik himself. Erik’s vain and spoiled widowed mother Madeleine speaks of the years from birth (1831) to his departure from her home (1840); Erik picks up the tale, describing his mother’s often harsh, mostly indifferent treatment of him to explain the desperation leading to his incarceration as an exhibit in a traveling gypsy show. By this time, Erik has learned to expect torment and abuse from his fellow humans. Escaping to Rome, his precocious knowledge of architecture attracts an elderly Italian stonemason named Giovanni; thus, Erik’s history resumes in Giovanni’s words. Next, readers hear from chief of police Nadir of the years Erik spends in Persia as favorite of an easily manipulated shah and the dominatrix who is his mother-in-law. Erik’s shock when shown kindness and his tenderness toward animals, orphans and abused creatures cannot fail to move readers. Kay’s concluding sections are told by, again, Erik as he works as a contractor in Belgium, then returns to Paris; Christine Daae, Swedish soprano at the Paris Opera; and her childhood friend and suitor, Raoul.

Although at this point Kay deals with a history written by Leroux, not surprisingly she adds layers of depth and possibility to Erik’s biography. For example, upon returning to Paris, Erik laments radical changes obscuring the chaotic beauty of a city he loves. In his voice, Kay tells readers:

“The romantic old city which I had once explored as a wide-eyed fugitive boy–the variegated Paris of Voltaire and Desmoulins–was being swept into oblivion beneath the hands of the emperor and his grand prefect, Baron Haussmann.”

Consisting of wide-open, uniform spaces, Haussmann’s aesthetics appall Erik. Heartbroken by arriving too late to participate in a competition to design and build an opera house for Paris, he forces himself on the winner, Charles Garnier (1825-1898). Together, they develop mutual admiration and respect as co-workers and wary friends. But just as the 2,200-seat Neo-Baroque structure begins to take shape, the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and civil unrest further threaten the old city and their masterpiece.

Disfigured from birth, Erik has spent his life searching for unspoiled beauty and perfect love. Conflicted himself, Kay’s Phantom expects people to be faithful, true and kind. Never satisfied with their behavior or his own, Erik spirals into depression, delusion and addiction. As others have mocked him, he mocks himself in what he considers to be his magnum opus, a musical score called Don Juan Triumphant. Kay connects Erik’s obsessive love for Christine to tragic tales he tells her in his underground sanctuary (Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose, for instance), as well as to operas performed on the stage above them (Faust, Aïda).

Remembering the Angel of Music conjured by her father, Christine identifies Erik as her promised guide and support. Fragile, innocent and remarkably naive, Christine discovers his dark side and flees from this Angel of Death. But for the mass market, love, however dark and futile, prevails. In the end, Kay’s novel triumphs as popular entertainment that will keep readers enthralled for many more decades. Twenty years down the line, Kay’s own magnum opus is worth savoring and revisiting when “reality,” with all of it horrors, makes one wish the world away.

1 French writer Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra was serialized in Le Gaulois from September 23, 1909, to January 8, 1910, before being issued in a single volume. Poor initial reception to the book resulted in out-of-print status for periods during the twentieth century.

2 Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to his Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies, is currently playing in London and set to open in New York in fall 2010.

3 Crawford’s portrayal has left indelible marks on public conception of the Phantom. After three and a half years and more than 1,300 performances of the show, on April 29, 1990, Crawford bowed out of the role.

Norman Kulkin. Female Furniture. 2009
(From the series entitled: “Encapsulations”)

This is a multi-media artistic collaboration. The performance of dancers pulls you from room to room, live musicians will play in complex harmony around you, and you are both audience and participant. You choose the pace, but the experience created will be continuous.

Video art, installations, dance, music and more. Envision and visualize the possibilities. This event runs September 25th and 26th at 8pm.

View dance promo:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFiJn_8VpfM

To find out more about ticket purchase visit:
www.phcollective.wordpress.com/the-artists/

Email: bahareh1182@gmail.com for more information.

Stephen Nachamie, director; Vic DiMonda, choreographer; Kimberly Matela, costumes

Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo

For most people, attending the theater is a special event. Live performance gives real life all of the energy of which it is capable, and more. Bright lights, brilliant colors, period scenery and costumes, memorable songs, these are what we hope to experience from a musical. In December, as the holidays draw near, the prospect of attending a show can be the highlight of an already overcharged season. Although one may not live in or near New York City or London, there are many local productions that, thanks to the participation of talented performers, bring the professional stage closer to home. (more…)

Winner of the London Fringe Report Awards 2006 Best Play-Relationship Drama, Stefan Peca’s The Sunshine Play will be performed in English at the Lafayette Street Theatre in New York City.

Directed by Ana Margineau, the play features Daniel Popa, Isabela Neamtu and Cosmin Selesi and a set design by Ina Isbasescu.

Stefan’s play explores the ways in which unexpected events and strangers can profoundly affect our lives in equally unexpected ways. The action takes play in a single setting, a sloping rooftop in Romania on a summer’s evening. The taut dramatic tension is relieved by subtle humor and insights into human nature and life within a society of people convinced of being in control of their lives but subject to the many whims of real time.

Schedule:
Wednesay, August, 15 at 7 p.m.
Friday, August 17, at 9:45 p.m.
Tuesday, August 21, at 3:30 p.m.
Thursday, August 23, at 7 p.m.
Saturday, August 25, at noon

For tickets and more information, call (212) 279-4488 or go to www.fringenyc.org, www.thesunshineplay.ro and www.mondaytheatre-greenhours.com.

The Lafayette Theatre is located at 45 Bleecker Street in New York City.

Following a series of three pre-festival commissions beginning in late 2005, Manchester’s first biennial festival will open on June 28, 2007.

The Manchester International Festival purports to be the world’s first international festival of new works created for the event by some of the most celebrated international artists. The works represent a wide spectrum of the arts, from visual art to popular culture and music.

True to the area’s heritage, the festival will place a particular emphasis on music. Large-scale commissions will premier in inside and outdoor locations.

Many of the productions and events will debut in Manchester before touring to New York, Paris, Berlin and other cities internationally; others will be featured in various media: national television and radio, newspapers and magazines, the Internet, books and theaters.

The Press Conference Invite is scheduled for Tuesday, March 20, from 11:45 a.m. to 3 p.m., in Bridgewater Hall. (Lunch and first-class return travel on Virgin Train is included.) For participation, please contact Manisha Ferdinand: Manisha@ideageneration.co.uk

Manchester International Festival
Idea Generation
10 Greenland Street
London, England
Telephone: (44) 020 7428 4949
Web site: www.manchesterinternationalfestival.com