{"id":2746,"date":"2011-10-31T10:58:46","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T14:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2746"},"modified":"2011-11-01T21:05:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-02T01:05:00","slug":"actors-nightmare-with-wisecracks-barrymore-at-the-rep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2746","title":{"rendered":"Actor’s Nightmare, With Wisecracks: Barrymore at the Rep"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theater Reviews Page<\/a> | Previous Theater Review | Next Theater Review<\/a><\/p>\n

Actor’s Nightmare, With Wisecracks: Barrymore at the REP<\/h2>\n
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Nigel Reed as John Barrymore<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0Posted on BroadwayWorld.com October 31, 2011<\/p>\n

With apologies to\u00a0Christopher Durang<\/a>, who nearly appropriated the phrase \u201cactor\u2019s nightmare\u201d with his hilarious play of that name, \u201cactor\u2019s nightmare\u201d is actually a phrase in wide use, at its root referring to the anxiety dream that comes at one time or another to almost anyone who\u2019s ever trodden the boards: you\u2019re supposed to go onstage but have no idea of your lines.\u00a0\u00a0In real life, few actors would let themselves encounter this situation \u2013 which is why it\u2019s only a trope in nightmares.\u00a0\u00a0But it did happen to the legendary actor\u00a0John Barrymore<\/a>, who by the time of his death in 1942 at age 60 had lost his memory for lines, perhaps owing to his prodigious thirst for alcohol, perhaps secondary to the effects of Prohibition-era booze, much of which was dangerous, or perhaps from other causes.<\/p>\n

The loss of this skill, critical for stage actors, became the peg on which dramatist\u00a0William Luce<\/a>\u00a0hung his 1996 play\u00a0Barrymore<\/em>, now being revived at Columbia\u2019s Rep Stage.\u00a0\u00a0In Luce\u2019s conceit, Barrymore (here portrayed by\u00a0Nigel Reed<\/a>) has rented out a Philadelphia theater for a single 1942 evening (evidently the eve of his death, or close to it) to attempt a revival of his career, and the play takes place during his long night of rehearsing with a prompter named Frank (D. Grant Cloyd).\u00a0\u00a0But it is apparent that however brilliantly Barrymore can put across a line or two, he cannot do a whole speech.\u00a0\u00a0He is given, I think, one coherent delivery, of the \u201cto sleep, perchance to dream\u201d soliloquy from\u00a0Hamlet<\/em>, primarily, no doubt, so that the audience does not doubt that Barrymore had once been great, but this is delivered in a manner that suggests it is a recollection of a performance, not a part of the rehearsal.<\/p>\n

Clearly, stuck as he is in his actor\u2019s nightmare, Barrymore is at the end of a career and a life.\u00a0\u00a0So this show, sort of an opened-out one-man show about a celebrity (a genre unto itself) becomes a retrospective on the life and art of the man.\u00a0\u00a0To all appearances, it had been a riotous life, full of wine, women and public acclaim, as well as ample contacts with other celebrities (including members of his own well-known acting clan).\u00a0\u00a0So there\u2019s a lot to work with.\u00a0\u00a0Still, there\u2019s a problem with the play.\u00a0\u00a0Playwright Luce faced a dilemma and never resolved it.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, Luce could have produced a sort of gossipy as-told-to biopic about Barrymore\u2019s hijinks and those of his circle.\u00a0\u00a0Or he could have told the story of an actor confronting mortality, which is an excellent on-ramp to exploring an important and universally-encountered experience.\u00a0\u00a0But he tries to combine them, and this proves quite an unstable combination.\u00a0\u00a0At least on the evidence of this play, Barrymore was not a very thoughtful or perceptive fellow.\u00a0\u00a0True, the character is candid and impenitent about his alcoholism and his swordsmanship (of both the literal and the colloquial varieties), but all his self-awareness is smothered in wisecracks.\u00a0\u00a0The closest he comes to acknowledging any downsides is in discussion of his four marriages, but this too devolves mainly into wisecracks.<\/p>\n

Two gags from the show underline the relentless superficiality of this treatment.\u00a0\u00a0Early on, Barrymore says men aren\u2019t old until regrets take the place of dreams.\u00a0\u00a0Later, though, he says that his great regret is he couldn\u2019t sit in the audience \u201cand watch me perform.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0If that\u2019s his big regret, then deep down he\u2019s shallow (in Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey\u2019s phrase).<\/p>\n

And at the end, he makes his final exit with a joke about daiquiris which is not remotely appropriate to the occasion: the exit is clearly a metaphor for his demise, and the joke has nothing to do with it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course there is no absolute requirement that depictions of the last gasp of a dying thespian actually come to grips with the sadness of life or death.\u00a0\u00a0But this play has still chosen to flirt with the theme.\u00a0\u00a0Many of the interactions with Frank the prompter stir the consciousness of mortality.\u00a0\u00a0The fact that Frank has command of all the lines and Barrymore can recall almost none of them is itself a stark reminder of Barrymore\u2019s losses, but it goes further: at times Barrymore muses that perhaps Frank is death or death\u2019s emissary.\u00a0\u00a0Indeed, it is possible to interpret this play as occurring entirely inside Barrymore\u2019s mind, in which event the case for Frank\u2019s role as\u00a0memento mori<\/em>\u00a0would be all the stronger.<\/p>\n

Yet that hypothesis is largely undercut by the playwright as well.\u00a0\u00a0Death is a character in many dramatic productions (think of the chess-player in\u00a0The Seventh Seal<\/em>\u00a0or the mysterious woman in Cocteau\u2019s\u00a0Orpheus<\/em>) and one of the characteristics of such a character is the absence of the characteristics that stem from a human past.\u00a0\u00a0Frank, on the other hand, we learn lives unfashionably outside Manhattan with his mother, is gay and draft-classified 4F because of it, which is way too much detail for a conventional Death figure.\u00a0\u00a0Most of all, he evinces a fanboy\u2019s determination that the show go on: he is frustrated almost to the point of leaving by Barrymore\u2019s lack of\u00a0\u00a0cooperation, by his lapses into raconteurism and his failure to commit to pulling it together so he can resurrect his career.\u00a0\u00a0He wants Barrymore to live long and prosper, not to succumb to the blandishments of death.<\/p>\n

No, it must be accepted that the play is something of a mess.\u00a0\u00a0Which is not the same as to say that it does not go over well.\u00a0\u00a0The audience certainly had a good time, laughing at all the potty-mouth humor (of which there is plenty), and lapping up the impressions Barrymore delivers of his brother\u00a0Lionel Barrymore<\/a>, of\u00a0George\u00a0<\/a>Bernard Shaw<\/a>, of Louella Parsons, and many more.<\/p>\n

The big reason for the audience\u2019s enjoyment, however, is the performance of\u00a0Nigel Reed<\/a>\u00a0as Barrymore, who absolutely inhabits the legendary old ham\u2019s persona, grandiose and gross and catty and orotund.\u00a0\u00a0A strong physical resemblance to the man does not hurt either.\u00a0D. Grant Cloyd does a fine job in the deceptively important role of Frank the Prompter, much of it spent dimly lit, sitting very still, but delivering dead-pan zingers from time to time that move the action along.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s fair to say that the Rep, under the direction of Steven Carpenter, has squeezed everything good that can be squeezed out of this play.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s just a shame there wasn\u2019t a little more substance there to squeeze.<\/p>\n

Barrymore<\/em>, by\u00a0William Luce<\/a>, directed by Steven Carpenter.\u00a0\u00a0Through November 13, at Rep Stage, Smith Theatre, Horowitz Center, Howard Community College, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, MD 21044.\u00a0\u00a0Tickets $22-$33.\u00a0\u00a0443-518-1500,\u00a0www.repstage.org<\/a>.\u00a0 Adult language, description of sexual situations.<\/p>\n

Read more:\u00a0http:\/\/baltimore.broadwayworld.com\/article\/BWW-Reviews-Actors-Nightmare-With-Wisecracks-Barrymore-at-The-Rep-20111031_page2#ixzz1cVOk3BQ7<\/a><\/p>\n

Theater Reviews Page<\/a> | Previous Theater Review | Next Theater Review<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big reason for the audience\u2019s enjoyment, however, is the performance of Nigel Reed as Barrymore, who absolutely inhabits the legendary old ham\u2019s persona, grandiose and gross and catty and orotund. A strong physical resemblance to the man does not hurt either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theater-reviews-and-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2746"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2752,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions\/2752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}