In London: Three Plays, Double Standards
‘Ghosts,’ ‘Blurred Lines’ and ‘The Pass’ in London
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| Susannah Wise, left, and Lorna Brown in"Blurred Lines." |
LONDON — The exorcists’ job is far from over, it seems. More than a century after they were first conjured, the title figures of Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” those remnants of corrosive societal traditions, are still clinging to us like leeches.
That, in any case, is the evidence provided by three very different yet surprisingly complementary hot-ticket plays here. The first is “Ghosts” itself, which has been given a riveting revival at Trafalgar Studios by Richard Eyre, starring Lesley Manville as Mrs. Alving, a convention-imprisoned widow with subversive thoughts.
The others are contemporary works that take place many years and many miles away from Ibsen’s provincial Norway of the late 19th century. And that’s exactly what makes the National Theater’s “Blurred Lines,” and “The Pass” by John Donnelly, so stimulating and so disheartening as conversation starters.
Their central characters — who include a frustrated throng of stereotyped actresses (“Blurred Lines”) and a closeted gay soccer star (“The Pass”) — turn out to be as much victims of sexual hypocrisy and double standards as Mrs. Alving is. In other words, we haven’t come a long way, after all, or not nearly as far as we like to think.
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| Russell Tovey, left, and Gary Carr in “The Pass,” at the Royal Court. |
“Blurred Lines” was commissioned by the National Theater for the Shed, the barnlike temporary structure that has been set up in the National’s courtyard as a home for experimental works of topical immediacy. It is no coincidence that the title of this play is the same as that of a certain chart-topping recording by Robin Thicke.
That song, as you probably know if you follow pop culture even out of the corner of your eye, generated a firestorm of debate over its portrayal of women. The lyrics — which include the repeated phrase “I know you want it” — are not sung in “Blurred Lines” the play. (Permission to do so was evidently denied by Mr. Thicke’s record company; that denial has been worked into the show’s script.)
Instead, the female cast of eight sings vintage numbers like “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss),” Tammy Wynette’s “Don’t Liberate Me” and the Beastie Boys’ “Girls.” Such songs are performed not joyously but robotically or sorrowfully or desperately. Often the emotional content is — if I may use the adjective — blurred, suggesting a flailing state of confusion about to boil into rage.
As conceived by the dramatist Nick Payne (“Constellations”) and the director Carrie Cracknell (the New York-bound Young Vic production of “A Doll’s House”), this show is no flat-out slice of doctrine. Some scenes, like one in which a husband and wife discuss his use of prostitutes, are overextended and perhaps overly familiar.
But much of this 80-minute collage, which was developed in collaboration with the cast, has a visceral kick that makes you sit up and think, or rethink. This is especially true of the parts about life in showbiz for women.
In the marvelous opening sequence, the actresses takes turns stepping forwarding to deliver, in the telegraphic lingo of casting directors, descriptions of roles they’ve been up for: “bitter first wife,” “broken-down alcoholic” and a whole lot of mistresses and serial-killer victims.
The simulation of a TV-drama murder scene finds one actress being throttled repeatedly before finally being asked to do it one more time — in stiletto heels. Toward the end of “Blurred Lines” we meet a bloviating (male) theater director dominating a panel discussion that includes his new production’s leading lady.
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| From left, Adam Kotz, Jack Lowden and Lesley Manville in Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” which is being revived at Trafalgar Studios in a production directed and adapted by Richard Eyre. |
He explains why putting her in skimpy underwear for a central scene is not objectification but a statement about objectification. Delicious as it is, this sequence would be even stronger without the actress waking up to what a jerk her director is and walking out. It’s at moments like that when “Blurred Lines” crosses the line between arresting theater and agitprop.
“The Pass,” a sold-out hit for the Royal Court’s intimate upstairs space, crosses its own lines from subtlety into blatancy. But it’s electrically acted by a cast led by Russell Tovey, under the direction of John Tiffany (the current Broadway “Glass Menagerie”). And with the recent coming-out of the British Olympic diver Tom Daley (as bisexual) and the retired soccer play Robbie Rogers, its story could scarcely be more timely.
Mr. Tovey (of “The History Boys” and the HBO series “Looking”) portrays Jason, a soccer player, from the beginning to the twilight of a stellar career that would seem to rival David Beckham’s. Set in a series of hotel rooms across more than a decade, “The Pass” is about the sacrifices that fame demands, especially of a gay man in the world of sports.
Not that Jason would ever define himself as gay. The script and Mr. Tovey’s terrifically astute performance convey the warping force of will required to become a star and the self-delusion it takes to remain one.
But we never doubt that even after he marries and has children, Jason really loves a boy he left behind. That would be Ade (Gary Carr), a former teammate who didn’t have the ruthlessness to rise as Jason did (but does wind up in a happy, stable relationship with another man). The play’s first scene, in which the teenage Jason and Ade romp into something beyond horseplay before a big game, is first-rate. So is an encounter between Jason and a party girl (Lisa McGrillis), in which the levels of deception keep multiplying.
It’s at the end that “The Pass” slides into neon clichés. In its final scene, after a disastrous reunion with Ade, our Jason, who would seem to have it all, realizes he has nothing, nothing, nothing as he keeps popping painkillers and swilling vodka.
At such moments it is hard for me not to think of Neely O’Hara, the singing supernova who burns too bright, too fast in Jacqueline Susann’s “Valley of the Dolls.” Don’t get me wrong. I think Susann probably came as close as any fiction writer in accurately charting the destructive effects of fame. But if this is true, it means that it is true as well that what extraordinary fame does to people is not only sad but also rather boringly predictable.
Jason isn’t nearly as intelligent or as self-aware as Mrs. Alving in “Ghosts.” But that doesn’t mean that Mrs. Alving doesn’t pay an equally harsh penalty for pretending to be other than she is. Ms. Manville’s performance just won her the Critics’ Circle Theater Award here for best actress, and she revitalizes a well-worn role, finding a genuine hope for change in her character that makes her horrible final entrapment all the sadder.
As directed by Mr. Eyre, who is also the adapter of this breathless 90-minute version, “Ghosts” is steeped in an unforgiving clarity. Nobody is let off the hook. That includes the pious and cowardly pastor (Adam Kotz), whom Mrs. Alving once loved, and her free-living son, Oswald (Jack Lowden).
As for the resourceful, accomplished Mrs. Alving, she may read all the latest, forward-thinking books about marriage and religion and women’s independence, but the damning fact remains that she has waited too long to act on the precepts of those books. The cost of her remaining in a loveless relationship with a dissolute husband registers here with an impact that I’ve never before felt quite as acutely.
During the curtain calls for the performance I saw, the cast members looked utterly wrung out, with none of the usual grateful smiles. While audience members applauded fervently, you sensed that they, too, felt exhausted by what they had just witnessed. And that perhaps these theatergoers would go home wondering about just what prices they had paid in the name of conventions they didn’t even believe in.
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