After what felt like a prolonged theater drought, I’ve been SEEING SOME STUFF finally. Just two plays, though. But I feel like it’s been more, but I think that’s only because they’re both blockbuster plays that feel like more than just two.
The first I saw was All My Sons, which was sadly not anything worth writing home about apart from Sally Field who was expertly being the kind of Sally Field she’s become an icon for. Kudos for that. Otherwise, it’s another kitchen table drama—yes, one of the original kitchen table dramas, but what does that mean in 2019?
Characters stare wistfully out into the audience and comment on the weather in metaphorical terms. There are weary mothers and brutish men. The American Dream is shown, very heavy handedly, to be futile and horrific—a daring idea back in the 40s when the play was first put on, but come on, take a look around. Obviously we still, ~as a society~ need to be told these things today, but the production of this play doesn’t even try to put a new spin on anything. It opens and closes with a kind of zoom-in, zoom-out, world-weary, “This Is America,” in-your-face ploy that comes off with all the subtlety of a high school PowerPoint presentation, and it’s just not a good idea to make me roll my eyes in the first two minutes of the curtain rising.
Gosh I’m being a bit mean. (And there’s no actual curtain in this play—when did these theaters just collectively decide to get rid of curtains? It’s been ages since I’ve seen a show with an actual curtain. Anyway.)
But Sally Field was great! But also, what else could she possibly be? That’s her baseline. Ok, I’ll stop now.
I also saw Rosmersholm, another classic play (maybe lesser known, but by a classic playwright), which was first put on historically even earlier than All My Sons, and explores even darker, more tumultuous themes with more grace. Rosmersholm skips the wambulance (rude again, sorry) of the American Dream (Norwegian in this case?) and cuts right into the essential questions of humanity, religion, politics, and particularly female politics.
Hayley Atwell stars and gives one of the greatest performances I’ve personally ever seen (right up there with Imelda Staunton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). She has a scene at the beginning of act two where she absolutely goes for broke and provoked in me that kind of bubbling, visceral reaction only theater can. She completely floored me and to that I say, go get that Marvel/Disney money sis, as long as it lets you keep doing work like this.
The play itself is bleak—bleaker than A Doll’s House, which I remember reading in college and feeling equal feelings of ooph. Things do threaten to get a bit too melodramatic near the end, but the actors throw themselves so willingly into each probing monologue and existential wail that you can’t help but allow yourself to be carried away with them.