Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

Thomas Kail’s revival of Anna Christie is staged a stone’s throw from where some of the action of the play takes place – a waterfront dive where sailors and prostitutes keep company. Or where they kept company in 1910, when the play is set. The East River flows a handful of yards west of St. Anne’s theater where Michelle Williams leads a strong cast in a sporadically effective staging of Eugene O’Neill’s play.

Prostitutes make for frequently terrific roles. They tend to behave outside the bounds of what many consider to be acceptable behavior and that violation of norms is inherently dramatic. The cynicism that one assumes is part of the defensive equipment necessary to survive hard living often fuels sharp, funny lines. For years, if you wanted to be nominated for awards, playing a hooker bettered your chances as Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Shirley Jones, Shirley Maclaine, Giulietta Masina and Sophia Loren established. In fact, Greta Garbo was nominated for an Oscar for the 1930 film version of Anna Christie and Gwen Verdon shared a best actress in a musical Tony with Thelma Ritter (also playing a prostitute) in the musical version, New Girl in Town. (Not so coincidentally, Williams once played Gwen Verdon.)

The role is still a good one today, and, though there are awkward passages (there are awkward passages in most O’Neill plays), the play can work on its own terms if you don’t burden it with a lot of extraneous crap. The 1993 revival, starring Natasha Richardson, Liam Neeson, Rip Torn and Anne Meara was a straightforward production; it won the Tony and Richardson, Neeson and Meara were nominated.

Michelle Williams mostly scores in the staging at St. Anne’s, but she is indeed fighting some extraneous crap. There is one scene towards the end which should build like crazy as she whips up a passion, but behind her supporting players keep adding new platforms for her to climb on, distracting us from what she’s saying. The memories of what I assume are meant to be former johns keep popping up and dancing behind her and lifting her hither and yon. This adds nothing. It just spells out what we already know, that Anna is haunted by her past. This unnecessary garnish suggests the director’s mistrust of the material. I wish Kail had cut it way back and let Williams, Mare Winningham (terrific, as usual), Tom Sturridge and Brian D’Arcy James do what they quite evidently can do.

Director Craig Baldwin has similarly elicited strong performances in a fussy Red Bull production of Shakespeare’s Richard II, but he sometimes doesn’t keep the story clear. He has Richard looking on from another dimension as his friends Bushy and Green are executed, but later acting persuasively ignorant of their deaths, railing against them for what he assumes is their betrayal. Confusing. On the other hand, when Baldwin lets Michael Urie and Grantham Coleman simply play what the text supplies unburdened by showy lighting and sound cues, they more than deliver the goods.

Richard invites a surprising range of valid interpretations. Derek Jacobi wrenched the heart with his tears during the abdication scene, Michael Pennington displayed his command of wit as if that would persuade the court to return the crown to him because he was obviously smarter than his crude cousin, and David Tennant emphasized Richard’s quicksilver temperament, changing voices and tactics moment by moment. Urie’s Richard is impulsive and immature and only learns necessary lessons when it’s too late. I feel about Urie as I do about Williams – I think both would be better served by less concept-heavy productions.

At least these productions of Anna Christie and Richard II pretty much play the established text. The production of Tartuffe at the New York Theater Workshop is using a new adaptation by Lucas Hnath. Moliere wrote the play in lines that rhymed, and the Richard Wilbur English adaptations maintain the discipline with what I remember as rhymes that are rigorously perfect. Rhymes convey a sense of snap. They help the jokes land. Hnath (whose other work I’ve largely admired) doesn’t bother with perfect rhymes much of the time. This creates a slapdash, sloppy impression and ruins the sense of precision that is necessary for farce.

As for the rest of the production, its tone is almost genteel. A genteel Tartuffe robs the play of its savagery. There’s a reason Moliere had trouble putting the play on. It’s rough stuff. Or it should be. It doesn’t help that the usually reliable Matthew Broderick doesn’t differentiate between Tartuffe feigning high morals and the Tartuffe pursuing his host’s wife. The scene in which he lunges for her is usually tinged with danger, making it both funny and appalling. Here, under Sarah Benson’s direction, it’s played like drawing room comedy. A disappointment.