SCOTTISH STAR AS ERUDITE PLAYWRIGHT: Ewan McGregor in Tom Stoppard’s ‘The Real Thing.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

THE REAL THING
Written by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Sam Gold
Through January 4, 2015
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
(212-719-1300), www.RoundaboutTheatre.org

By David NouNou

Although Tom Stoppard is not the easiest playwright to sit through, one must give him credit for being one of the most erudite dramatists ever. Certainly The Real Thing is a perfect example of how his mind works and his beliefs on the complexities of marriage and infidelity and, as presented on Broadway in January 1984, under the superb direction of Mike Nichols, one got to see the guts and the marrow of broken marriages, infidelity, passion, love, betrayal and guilt. However, director Sam Gold  has stripped the heart and soul of this show, as he did to another British import, the 2012 revival of John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger at the Laura Pels Theatre. Mr. Gold’s obsession with free form, non-grounded, minimalistic sets where “not just less but much less is more” is absolutely maddening. After all, the play was first done in England in 1982 and showed intellectual, well-to-do playwrights/characters in the play in their natural habitat of posh flats.

As if the play and its settings aren’t confusing enough, Mr. Gold and his set designer David Zinn have added another layer of “where are we now and what year is it?” to Stoppard’s play to make it almost incomprehensible. Adding doo-wop songs between scene changes, sung by the actors, leaves the audience at a loss for words.

Starting out are Charlotte (Cynthia Nixon) and Max (Josh Hamilton), a married couple having a to-do over the fact that she has gone to Geneva without her passport. This starts a row between the couple in which Charlotte leaves Max. This is followed by a doo-wop songfest in which the actors come on and rearrange the set and the lights come on Charlotte and Henry (Ewan McGregor). In this scene. we learn that Charlotte and Max were doing a scene from Henry’s latest play, House of Cards. On this particular Sunday, Max and his wife, Annie, another actress (Maggie Gyllenhaal), are visiting Henry and Charlotte. They are all friends in real life. However, in this life, it is Henry and Annie who are having the passionate love affair. Needless to say, the scene ends on a down note, but the director has his actors going into another doo-wop scene change.

This time Annie and Henry are living a blissful, passionate life, Max is wallowing in his sorrow and Annie is getting pleasure out of his misery and is totally okay with it. They do love each other; Henry has the usual writer’s block and things start going south. Another scene change, more doo-wops, Annie starts getting antsy and has an affair with a much younger fellow actor. This is where life imitates art; it is Henry who is jealous and has to keep his covetousness in tow, for he desperately loves Annie and, as she explains to him, “I love you, too, and you are my chap.”

Mr. McGregor and Ms. Gyllenhaal are movie stars who are making their Broadway debuts here. Ms. Nixon and Mr. Hamilton are seasoned theatrical actors, all four of them have theatrical experience and are pros in their field and add marquee value, but together they totally lack any chemistry. They deliver their lines devoid of any real feeling or the motivations behind them. If only Mr. Gold could have confined them in a real setting where they didn’t have to break character and waste time changing sets and do all those damn doo-wops and instead tried to elicit some genuine emotions from them, it would have made a far more interesting and enjoyable evening and made Mr. Stoppard’s work a pleasure to sit through.

TROUBLED COUPLE: Cynthia Nixon & Ewan McGregor in Tom Stoppard’s ‘The Real Thing.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

NIXON’S SECOND TIME IN SHOW: Cynthia Nixon (left) played young Debbie in the 1984 production of ‘The Real Thing’ & returns as Charlotte, seen here with playwright Henry (Ewan McGregor) in the latest Broadway revival of the show. Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 6, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on November 5, 2014

The post Star-Studded Revival Not Quite ‘The Real Thing’ appeared first on StageZine.

SISTERS OF THE EMPIRE: (left to right) Rosemary Harris, Romola Garai with Bhavesh Patel in ‘Indian Ink.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

INDIAN INK
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Carey Perloff
Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre
111 West 46th Street
212-719-1300, http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/

By Scott Harrah

An epic about an English poetess and an Indian painter in British Raj-era India circa 1930 is heady, tricky stuff for a stage saga.  This formidable revival depicts, in exhausting detail, a story that goes back and forth between colonial India and 1980s England, using limited, colorful sets as a backdrop for this overstuffed tale of Anglo-Indian politics and art, Hinduism and metaphysics, and Britain’s exploitation of its “Empire.” It is this glorious culture clash of two worlds that gives Tom Stoppard’s 1995 drama its consistently riveting force.

When the ailing poetess Flora Crewe (Romola Garai) arrives from England in Jummupur, a native region of India (ironically, in the same year as Gandhi’s famous salt march), she is greeted by subservient men who place marigold garlands around her neck and carry her in a sedan chair as if she were actual royalty. Back home, Flora was anything but regal.  She wrote a scandalous book, A Nymph and Her Muse, and was vilified by the press and public for creating an “obscenity,” but in this land of saffron and oppressive heat, she is an instant celebrity. She will be painted by artist Nirad Das (Firdous Bamji) while fighting off the affections of a garish rajah and a British colonial officer, and struggle keeping the truth about her illness a secret.

Juxtaposed amongst all this romancing of the Raj is time travel back to England in the mid-1980s and Flora’s sister, Eleanor Swan (Rosemary Harris). Eleanor must contend with American author Eldon Pike (Neal Huff), a man determined to get some juicy tidbits for a possible biography and a book of Flora’s letters.  While serving Victorian sponge cake and lots of tea, she must also deal with the probing questions of Anish Das (Bhavesh Patel), the son of the painter Nirad.

Staying focused on everything happening in India and England simultaneously is challenging.  In addition, there is much chatter about “rasas”, tonal schemes uniting forms of Indian art, the blue hue of the god Krishna, and dialogue peppered with endless Anglo-Indian words and phrases. All this might be impressive to British Indian historical scholars. However, talk of going “up the country” and being “sent back to Blighty in a dooley feeling rather dikki” is downright confusing to modern American audiences.  Regardless, Mr. Stoppard’s play keeps us enthralled with many twists about the mysteries of Flora’s Indian escapades. Indian Ink is based on Mr. Stoppard’s 1991 BBC radio play In the Native State, but here, with the help of Neil Patel’s gorgeous sets, everything unfolds magnificently  in the dusky yet vivid colors of the subcontinent.

It is always a pleasure to see the great Rosemary Harris, a nine-time Tony Award nominee and a veritable stage legend.  Her Eleanor is elegant and musical, and we are enraptured by her very presence anytime she is on the stage. Ms. Harris gives everything she has and more to this supporting role.

Romola Garai is winsome in all the right places as Flora, exuding the right mix of charm and enigma to the role.

Besides Ms. Harris, there are many other fine supporting performances, particularly that of Mr. Patel as Anish Das, the dashing son of the painter with whom Flora allegedly had an “erotic relationship.”  Neal Huff is also quite effective as the Texas professor Eldon Pike, a man who is a composite of every scurrilous American biographer digging for dirt.

Director Carey Perloff makes all the time and locale-shifting action gel, but that is a tall order indeed with the complications of Mr. Stoppard’s sometimes bombastic dialogue.  As in many of Mr. Stoppard’s works, it is draining just comprehending everything at times, for all the visual and verbal symbolism gets tiresome.  Still, Indian Ink, although hardly one of Mr. Stoppard’s better plays, is worthwhile for many reasons, particularly its portrayal of the inane self indulgence of the English during the “Empire” era.  Granted, the British Raj is an endless source of nostalgia for Anglophiles, but Mr. Stoppard brilliantly shows what nincompoops the colonial Brits truly were, “ruling” a faraway land that didn’t belong to them.

STAGE LEGEND RETURNS: The great Rosemary Harris with Bhavesh Patel in ‘Indian Ink.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

‘RASAS’ ARE ALL THE RAJ: (left to right) Firdous Bamji & Romola Garai in ‘Indian Ink.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

ARRIVAL IN JUMMAPUR: Romola Garai (center), Ajai Naidu (with umbrella) & cast of ‘Indian Ink’. Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 1, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on September 27, 2014

The post Tom Stoppard’s ‘Indian Ink’: Romancing the Raj appeared first on StageZine.