WTF No. 2: Stoppard's HAPGOOD Takes No Prisoners

Note the woman wearing the suit in the Williamstown Theatre Festival illustration for Tom Stoppard's Hapgood shown above. She's carrying a briefcase. And the shadowy pair we see on the wall are exchanging a briefcase, as well. Briefcases, shadowy pairs, a working woman in the center of things, trying to stay one step ahead... That's what Stoppard's stylish 1988 play is all about.

Watching the play, you might first conclude it's about spies, or maybe about twins, or maybe even about the uncertainty involved in truly knowing, whether that's applied to people, physics or espionage. There are some trademark clever, dense, bewitching Stoppard speeches about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the Seven Bridges of Königsberg given to another character, a scientist/spy named Kerner, but it's still Hapgood, played in Williamstown by the flinty, classy and engaging Kate Burton, who forms the central question in the play. She's a female. She's a mother. Her fellow spies call her Mrs. Hapgood as a courtesy title even though she's not married, her code name is Mother, and there are definitely gender issues involved in how she is regarded by those around her. Like so many women, Hapgood is trying to balance it all, whether "it" means her job, her sex life, or her kid and his soccer practice. She's also in charge of a whole division of intelligence agents, some of whom respect her. Some keep coming on to her, making it clear they still see her as a woman foremost, whether she's the boss or not.

That was the surprise of the Williamstown production, how much it was about her as a her. Yes, Stoppard's delightful dialogue and perfectly crafted speeches do set up paradoxes and puzzles around the notion of twins and the "duality of reality," as dramaturg Christine Scarfuto puts it in her program notes. Yes, Hapgood's duality is mirrored in Kerner's duality (or possibly triality or quadrality or quintality) and in all the twin spies and all the murky masks everybody hides behind all through the play. But it still all comes back to Hapgood herself, as we hang with her through all the puzzles Stoppard sets up and pays off, wondering whether she can keep her job, keep her son, keep her lover, keep her subordinates in order, bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let all the men around her forget they are men.

At Williamstown, director Evan Yionoulis, who is herself a woman, balanced all those thorny issues with a slick, cynical, snazzy production that never let up on pace or theatrics. Everything about this Hapgood flowed beautifully, from the sharply choreographed opening scene involving briefcase drops, swimmers, towels and doors to Kerner's musings on continuous and discontinuous light, and the crosses and doublecrosses in Act II.

Kate Burton is on target throughout, and she is nicely matched by Jake Weber's world-weary Kerner, whose sad eyes and soft Russian accent make him seem the regular Joe he says he is, as well as canny, cagey and very attractive, all at once. It's a laugh line when Kerner promises us he "will be magnificent" at the end of Act I, and yet Weber actually lived up to that billing. The role of Kerner has been played by two of my favorite actors, with Roger Rees originating the part in London and in Los Angeles (the US premiere) and David Strathairn taking it in New York. I wish I'd seen both of them, but for now, filing Jake Weber's Kerner in my memory bank is just fine.

Yionoulis's cast also included Reed Birney, thoughtful and strong as Hapgood's boss, and Euan Morton, quite good as a sneaky little rat terrier who may be more than he appears. The only misstep in the cast was the young man who played Hapgood's son. The script says he's eleven, but an actor who appeared to be over 18, playing down to perhaps 16, took the role in Williamstown. I'm sure there were good reasons why nobody under twelve was available and it certainly isn't mop-top Adam Langdon's fault he got stuck trying to look young, but it significantly changes the tension surrounding the boy if he's not really a boy.

I traveled all the way to the corner of Massachusetts to see this play, one I had long hoped to get to experience. How lovely to get such a terrific production, with the ideas, the wit and the heart fully developed.

HAPGOOD
By Tom Stoppard

Williamstown Theatre Festival

Director: Evan Yionoulis
Scenic Designers: Christopher Barreca and Christopher Heilman
Costume Designer: Michael Krass
Lighting Designer: Donald Holder
Sound Designer: Alex Neumann
Original Music by Mike Yionoulis

Dialect and Vocal Coach: Deborah Hecht
Production Stage Manager: Liza Vest

Cast: Stephen Amenta, Reed Birney, Kate Burton, Nicholas Carter, David Corenswet, Brady Dowad, Philip Esposito, Adam Langdon, Euan Morton, Christian Schneider, Sathya Sridharan, Jake Weber and Victor Williams.

July 10-21, 2013

WTF No. 1: A Sharp New PYGMALION with Robert Sean Leonard

Heather Lind as Eliza Doolittle at the Williamstown Theatre Festival

Ah, masculine privilege. Was it ever more on display than in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, where brilliant, aristocratic Professor Henry Higgins plucks a common girl who sells flowers at Covent Garden from her lowly existence with the intent to turn her into a lady, simply to win a bet? As guttersnipe or society's darling, Eliza Doolittle is still just an artifact, a tool, a toy for Higgins to play with in order to boost his ego and show off his prowess with language. He hasn't a clue that Eliza, or any other female for that matter, has a brain or a backbone of her own. Gender, class, privilege, arrogance... Shaw's play pokes holes in all of it.

That's why My Fair Lady, the Lerner and Loewe musical version of Pygmalion, isn't altogether satisfactory, since it pastes a "happily ever after" ending onto Shaw's story, telling us that it's just fine for Eliza to get stuck bringing Henry Higgins' slippers for the rest of her life. Nicholas Martin's production of Pygmalion, which originated at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre and played at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts last week, offers a different ending, one more in keeping with Shaw's intent. As Higgins sits alone in his home, staring into space, we see a closing tableau wherein he is doomed to a life of loneliness, as Eliza marries another suitor, defiantly charting her own course. It's a very specific ending, one that smacks more of finality than fantasy, of Henry Higgins getting his comeuppance at long last.

Martin's production is elegant and wry, very smartly accomplished throughout, with a Higgins who seems younger and more attractive than most as personified by Robert Sean Leonard. His Higgins is a willful social misfit who doesn't see why he can't be rude and selfish simply because he's so very smart. Even so, it's easy to see why one might wish for this Higgins to actually get the girl, or at least to understand what an ass he's been and change his ways, as Leonard layers enough warmth under the arrogance to keep his Higgins appealing, and he and Heather Lind, a most adorable Eliza, share excellent chemistry throughout.

Lind's Eliza begins the show as more than a ragamuffin. This girl is a screamapillar, a shrieking harpy with a big mess of hair that looks like she's been sleeping under a haystack. Certainly that gives her some room to change under Higgins' and his friend Colonel Pickering's tutelage, and Lind is lovely once her Eliza gets a bath and an upscale wardrobe. The scene where she painstakingly shows off her new look and new accent to Henry's mother and some fancy acquaintances with a tale of how her aunt was "done in" by villains who "pinched" her "new straw hat that should have come to me" is a comic highlight, and her quietly miserable post-ball appearance (where her unhappiness goes completely unnoticed by Higgins and Pickering, who are celebrating her triumph as their own) is more eloquent than all her dialogue.

Paxton Whitehead is such spot-on casting for Pickering there's never a doubt that he won't acquit himself well, while Maureen Anderman makes an excellent Mrs. Higgins, stylish yet compassionate, and Don Lee Sparks' towering Mr. Doolittle, Eliza's dad, is as funny and outrageous as he needs to be. Sparks, along with Whitehead and Leonard, is a holdover from the San Diego cast; he's one who definitely deserves his place.

Scenic designer Alexander Dodge, lighting designer Philip Rosenberg, sound designer Drew Levy and composer Mark Bennett also came with the production from the Old Globe, although costume designers Gabriel Berry and Andrea Hood are Williamstown additions. Dodge's scenery is quite elaborate and handsome, with a leather-and-wood "laboratory" for Professor Higgins that looks like he's quite the collector of esoterica, and a rather overpowering (and quite feminine) drawing room for his mother. The fussy William Morris wallpaper alone must've been a massive undertaking, although it does make it all a bit claustrophobic as the play wears on.

Costumers Berry and Hood create a puzzle of styles, seemingly moving the action through decades of the early 20th century as Eliza's journey takes her from an Edwardian flower girl in a mashed hat to a capable career woman in a sweater and long skirt that wouldn't have looked out of place in the 30s.

This Pygmalion is a pretty satisfying package, all told, with a more interesting Higgins than most, a lovely new Eliza, and the quintessential Pickering. Williamstown sends shows to Broadway and off-Broadway fairly often, although there hasn't been any word that this particular production is going anywhere. I'd like to see it happen.

PYGMALION
By George Bernard Shaw

Williamstown Theatre Festival

Director: Nicholas Martin
Scenic Designer: Alexander Dodge
Costume Designers: Gabriel Berry and Andrea Hood
Lighting Designer: Philip Rosenberg
Sound Designer: Drew Levy
Original Music by Mark Bennett
Hair and Wig Design by Cookie Jordan
Dialect and Vocal Coach: Deborah Hecht
Production Stage Manager: Jillian M. Oliver

Cast: Maureen Anderman, Patricia Conolly, Maura Hooper, Robert Sean Leonard, Heather Lind, Dan O'Brien, Caitlin O'Connell, Federico Rodriguez, Alex Siefe, Ariana Seigel, Don Lee Sparks, Paxton Whitehead.

July 17-27, 2013