“I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty. I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well.”How we memorialize the creative talents who have contributed to American culture is often measured in terms of award ceremonies and statues erected in their honor (a statue of George M. Cohan stands in Times Square).
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| The Times Square statue of George M. Cohan, who wrote "Give My Regards to Broadway" |
Broadway theatres have been renamed in honor of playwrights (David Belasco, Eugene O’Neill, August Wilson, and Neil Simon), composers (Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, and George Gershwin), actors (Helen Hayes, Ethel Barrymore, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne), critics (Brooks Atkinson and Walter Kerr) and a variety of producers, directors, impresarios, theatre owners, and real estate developers (John Cort, David T. Nederlander, Sam Minskoff, Sam S. Shubert, Gerald Schoenfeld, Bernard B. Jacobs, and George Broadhurst). A beloved caricaturist who captured the soul of the theatre community for decades (Al Hirschfeld) also has a theatre named in his honor.
When one explores the list of creative artists buried in Westminster Abbey, names like Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Laurence Olivier, Henry Purcell, George Frideric Handel, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Robert Browning, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Aphra Behn, William Congreve, and John Gay are quickly revealed. Even more astonishing is the legion of talent who have either been commemorated there or had their memorial services performed at Westminster Abbey (but are buried somewhere else).
Two legends of the British stage (one alive, one deceased) made their presence felt in Bay area theatres this month. Each made a substantial contribution to the performing arts and has long been a beloved and/or respected member of England's cultural landscape. A brief reacquaintance with their work provided plenty of food for thought.
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I was lucky to see several wonderful British performers on Broadway stages during my teens. From Norman Wisdom in Walking Happy and Harry Secombe in Pickwick to Tommy Steele in Half A Sixpence and Anthony Newley in The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd, some delivered truly impressive performances. My one regret is that I only got to see Beatrice Lillie perform onstage once (in 1964's High Spirits), when she took on the role of Madame Arcati in the musical adaptation of her friend, Noel Coward's, 1941 hit: Blithe Spirit.Her entrance (astride a bicycle) was every bit as endearing as her appearances in previous stage vehicles where she would arrive onstage wearing roller skates underneath her evening gown.
Noted for her comedic work onstage (in 1958 she replaced Greer Garson as Auntie Mame on Broadway for four weeks before opening the London production), the following two clips give a sense of Lillie's mischievous personality, undeniable charisma, and fearless stage presence.
Having seen her last screen performance (she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease during the filming of 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie), I was surprised to learn that Lillie and Franklin Pangborn made their feature film debuts together during the silent film era. As part of its one-day mini-festival entitled A Day of Silents, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presented a screening of 1926's Exit Smiling, in which Lillie plays the stagestruck wardrobe mistress working for a touring theatrical company.
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| Beatrice Lillie as Violet in 1926's Exit Smiling |
Though Violet is determined to become an actress (and has been busy memorizing everyone's lines), she needs a lucky break. When the company's leading lady is indisposed, Violet is more than happy to go on in her place. But a bigger opportunity awaits her when the leading man (Jack Pickford) fakes an illness so that Violet can slap on a fake mustache and go on in his place.
New York's drama critic, Brooks Atkinson, described the somewhat androgynous Lillie (a master of deadpan comedy, coy innuendo, and physical stunts) as the funniest woman in the world. Robert Benchley stated: “If we never had Beatrice Lillie we might better never have been born." In Every Other Inch a Lady: An Autobiography of Beatrice Lillie, the actress recalled that:
“The job I was doing in Exit Smiling didn’t strike me as anything to set the world on fire. Most of the time, I couldn’t make out what the show was all about. Neither could anyone else. Sweet reason had no part in making movies, and there was no audience to learn from -- only the grips and gaffers and the rest of the nice people who made up the tribe of strangely named apostles of the faith. I was used to working for months to perfect a gesture or a piece of business. Here, we were due to finish in five weeks, and it was hard to believe that these disconnected scenes could possibly be patched together to make a movie with any kind of plot.”
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| Harry Myers and Beatrice Lillie in a scene from 1926's Exit Smiling |
“Jack Pickford was the hero, a bank clerk wrongly suspected of theft, who even more wrongly suspected himself of being an actor, according to the ramifications of the plot. Franklin Pangborn, who turned up again later when we made Doctor Rhythm with Bing Crosby, played Cecil Lovelace, the touring company’s leading man, swishing around in a style the censors disallowed for years after that. When Sam Taylor announced that the shooting was over, I couldn’t believe that we’d completed a picture. They assured me that it was ‘in the can,’ but I wasn’t sure where that was.”
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| Doris Lloyd (left) and Beatrice Lillie (right) in a scene from 1926's Exit Smiling |
The audience gathered in the Castro Theatre didn't seem to mind about the holes in the plot. With live musical accompaniment by Wayne Barker, everyone present had a grand old time watching some great slapstick moments as a young Beatrice Lillie demonstrated her craft.
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When it comes to mastery of craft, many people point to Britain's Tom Stoppard as a playwright whose formidable intelligence imbues his scripts with a gravitas rarely found onstage. The problem in many of Stoppard's plays is that his prowess at arguing a point (and then dissecting the argument to prove its weaknesses to the audience) can, at times, become tedious. Tedious enough that one might even start wishing Stoppard could let his characters just shut their mouths for a while and fuck each other's overworked brains out.Stoppard has occasionally referred to 1993's Arcadia as "a thriller and a romantic tragedy with jokes." After all, not too many playwrights can make merry (and keep an audience's attention) with talk of iterated algorithms, a young woman's attempts to prove Fermat's last theorem, a 19th-century understanding of heat exchange (the second law of thermodynamics), 20th-century chaos theory, and the centuries-old mystery surrounding a most mysterious hermit.
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| Max Forman-Mullin (Septimus Hodge) and Amanda Ramos (Thomasina) in a scene from Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Along the way Stoppard's audience gets to witness a teenager's growing curiosity about the meaning of "carnal embrace," a vain poet's cuckolding by the teenager's tutor in the gazebo of an English country house, the curious role Sidley Hall plays in revealing the ramifications of a sexual indiscretion that took place 200 years ago, and the professional meltdown of a pompous academic fool who has the floor pulled out from beneath his cockeyed theorizing.
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| Aaron Murphy (Bernard Nightingale) and Jessma Evans (Hannah Jarvis) in a scene from Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Hailed by many as a modern masterpiece, Arcadia offers actors the kind of fiercely intelligent, multi-layered script that allows them to delve into the social climate of the early 19th century (as well as that of the late 20th century).
Add in England's long history as a society often defined by class, some professional rivalry mixed with curatorial sleuthing, and a set of magnificently-etched characters from two distinct eras, and an audience is greeted with a cornucopia of dramatic riches wrapped in a delicious sense of irony.
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| Danielle O'Hare as Lady Croom in Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
The Shotgun Players is currently presenting Arcadia, a 3-1/2 hour play which handily disputes Mae West's claim that "too much of a good thing can be wonderful." In his program note, dramaturg Dave Garrett explains that:
"The beauty of Arcadia is that it works on a variety of levels. On the surface, it’s a fun detective story, with slowly revealed plot points that the audience puts together just ahead of the characters as they dig through historical documents. Beneath that, it is a playful commentary on human nature, with lost loves, jealousy, ambition, honor, and sexual repression all tossed into the mix. Beneath that, it is an exploration of scientific discovery in a post-Newtonian universe, of the use of mathematics to describe the world around us, and of genius and madness. And, beneath that, it is a Joycean puzzle, rich with historical allusions and oblique references (literary and otherwise). It provides fodder for cross-disciplinary theses and in-jokes between Ph.Ds."
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| Amanda Ramos as Thomasina Coverly in a scene from Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
"Arcadia’s enduring popularity is a testament to Mr. Stoppard’s skill in layering these elements between two different stories taking place in 1809 and 1992. The play itself is a testament to the spirit of discovery, to loss and rediscovery, and to getting lost along the way. And echoes of echoes of echoes. Misplaced letters and Fermat’s last theorem. Lord Byron and the second law of thermodynamics, The history of landscape architecture and chaos theory. Forbidden love and literary scholarship. Plotting grouse populations on an x/y axis and a duel at dawn. A dwarf dahlia and the inevitability of death that awaits us all. Oh, and carnal embrace in the gazebo. Twice."
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| Amanda Ramos (Thomasina) and Adam Niemann (Captain Brice) in a scene from Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
As enthusiastic as Stoppard fans might be, as directed by Patrick Dooley this production has the curious distinction of being staged in the round, with members of the audience seated in three sections of chairs onstage as well as in the theatre's main seating area. With so much text needing to be rapidly spit out and delivered with clarity, Deanna Zibello's unit set puts the audience at a distinct disadvantage every time an actor turns his back on a particular group of theatregoers.
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| Deanna Zibello's unit set for Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
In no way would I fault the hard-working ensemble for this problem. As the characters from 1809, Max Forman-Mullin does some beautiful work as the tutor, Septimus Hodge (a friend of Lord Byron), with Amanda Ramos as his precocious 13-year-old pupil (Thomasina Coverly) and Dean Koya as Thomasina's younger brother, Augustus. Danielle O'Hare is a forceful presence as Thomasina's mother, Lady Croom. Adam Niemann portrays the handsome Captain Brice, with Justin DuPuis as the prissily posturing Ezra Chater (whose repeated cuckolding by Septimus Hodge leads to a duel). For the record, Chater later succumbs to a monkey bite in Martinique.
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| Justin DePuis as Ezra Chater in a scene from Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
In the scenes of Arcadia that take place in 1992, Aaron Murphy holds forth as the pompous, bloviating Bernard Nightingale, with Jessma Evans as the fact-checking Hannah Jarvis. Also present is Gabriel Christian as Valentine Coverly (a graduate student specializing in mathematics), Gianna DiGregorio Rivera as Valentine's younger sister, Chloe, and Dean Koya as Gus (their younger brother, who has been mute since the age of five). Doubling as the butler, Jellaby in 1809 and Richard Noakes in modern times, David Sinaiko is a slyly subservient scene-stealer.
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| David Sinaiko (Jellaby) and Danielle O'Hare (Lady Croom) in a scene from Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
This was the third production of Arcadia I've seen and, although the size and intimacy of Shotgun's stage helped with the intermingling of characters from two different centuries, a great deal of confusion persisted. Carley Perloff (who directed American Conservatory Theater's 2013 production of the play) points to one of Arcadia's frequently overlooked strengths:
"Because I've been doing a lot of work on gender disparity lately, one of the things I have really noticed in the play is that it's about how women's voices are consistently muted. If Thomasina had been a man, her equations would have been taken seriously. If Hannah were not a female scholar working on what we would now call feminist criticism about Caroline Lamb, she would have been taken seriously. The way Bernard pisses all over Hannah's work is often how male star academics treat women. Unlike many American playwrights of his generation, Tom [Stoppard] writes spectacularly interesting women and is deeply respectful of women. He really has an appetite for three-dimensional women, and I think that cannot be underestimated. When you look at his counterparts in America, they are not like that. I think it's really worth noting."
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| Jessma Evans (Hannah Jarvis) and Gabriel Christian (Valentine Coverly) in a scene from Arcadia (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
With sound design by Cliff Caruthers, costumes by Brooke Jennings, lighting designed by Sarina Renteria, and choreography by Allison Paraiso, Shotgun's production was handsome to watch. Alas, as the first act lumbered on (for nearly 1-3/4 hours), the temperature in the auditorium rose to a point where it was often difficult to maintain one's attentiveness to the proceedings.
Performances of Arcadia continue at the Shotgun Players through January 6 (click here for tickets).
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