Never Land
The American premiere of playwright/director Phyllis Nagy's award-winning play at the Rogue Machine never convincingly lands the expressively garrulous language or avant-garde tome on sure ground. In an attempt to break from the mold, Nagy’s brilliant but often times rambling streams of consciousness, poetic soliloquies, and exaggerated dramatic outbursts come across as stilted interruptions peppered between the otherwise languidly interminable interludes. This three-act play then, is not for the faint of linguistic ear or complacent viewing as it runs with two intermissions and confronts the audience with an unsettling sense of intensity throughout. Nevertheless, Nagy’s stark, moodily evocative examination of a family of self-resolved foreigners in their own homeland creates a fascinating surrealist portrait distorted by lunacy seen through the lens of enabling love.
The level of dysfunction runs high in the Joubert trio, as they abhor the perpetual rainy seasons of the French provincial countryside by adopting a British attitude and condescension. Henri (Bradley Fisher), the emasculated patriarch reenacts the funny walk from “Fawlty Towers” hoping it will invariably lead him straightaway to England. His booze-addled wife Anne (Lisa Pelikan) spoils him with handmade suits made from the finest materials and flashy colors in the sincere belief that the suit definitely makes the man. Their indifferent, caustic and manipulative daughter Elizabeth (Katherine Tozer) is the product of their blissful enablement and is unable to receive or give love without sacrificing herself like a glassy-eyed martyr. A presumptuous offer made by their delightfully English neighbors, Nicholas (Christopher Shaw) and Heather Canton-Smith (Shannon Holt) leads to a flurry of hope in their flood-swept gypsy-raided home, but a chance for normality is abruptly extinguished further teetering the Joubert’s over the edge.
Nagy’s expatriates grapple with displacement and separatism in terms of geography even while pushing their own personal boundaries too far and their estrangement lies within and not as they conclude without. Threatened by the foreign invading their home by gypsies and Elizabeth’s African-American lover, Michael Carver (William Christopher Stephens), race, class and the expectations and prejudices of these explode but fail to reach beyond an anti-didactic showdown. Indeed, the last two acts veer sharply from what seems to be a deliberate buildup of strangers in a strange land personalities and the vicious sexually charged encounter only adds more shock than value in the totality of the show. There is much needed pruning and this obtrusive scene, while powerful, offers no climatic recourse other than a shouting match of crudities.
The last two acts avoid the initial seriating surrealism and finds solid footing between Henri and his perfumery employer, Albert Montel (William Dennis Hunt) and Henri’s tenuous relationship with his neighbor’s wife Heather. These scenes provide all three characters further illumination and an opportunity for lighter moments of comedy. Henri’s powerlessness and impotence to change the course of his family’s misfortune becomes more readily apparent and his character made sympathetic for the shattering denouement.
The cast is excellent given the enormous task of making dialogue better read more palpable to the ear. Katherine Tozer is bravely effective and Lisa Pelikan simmers underneath the tumultuous surface of addiction. As the uptight sophisticate, Shannon Holt gives splendid and amusing turns tenderly rendered. Michael Carver commands the stage with sexual bravado; William Dennis Hurt leaves a lasting impression in his stoically played cameo and Bradley Fisher spins with remarkable emotional complexity.
What dialogue is lost or spent in the rushed pacing finds its complement by the sepia, earth tones of Frederica Nascimento’s simple but lush set design. As the play progresses the Jouberts’ furnishings slowly disappear until there’s nothing left to hold them to their fractured home. Frequent use of rainfall adds to the dark mood, but occasionally distracts from the scenes. Plants in the wings complete the feeling of isolation beautifully. The continual pulling of the curtain between transitions breaks the productions’ momentum and the scene changes are too long for such a small space.
Nagy’s play breaks new ground that is both thrilling and frustrating in this long-awaited premiere. The language is breathtaking, both for the actors and the listeners, and to fairly judge the work one should read it first before seeing it set onstage. It is a play loaded with symbolism, mysterious portents and fragmented ideas lost in the wave of speedy flow. There is so much to absorb that its best performance probably plays out better in the imagination. After all, there are never any bad plays only bad audiences. See this play for the wash of its otherworldly words.
“Never Land”
Runs through Nov 15
Thurs thru Sat at 8pm
Sundays at 2pm
Rogue Machine
Theater Theater
5041 Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
PH: 323-960-7774
www.roguemachinetheatre.com