TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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Text File | 1994-02-27 | 6.2 KB | 143 lines

<text> <title> (1986) Theater </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1986 Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> January 5, 1987 THEATER BEST OF '86 </hdr> <body> Bawdy Laughter, Beckoning Doom <qt> <l>WILD HONEY</l> <l>By Michael Frayn, from a play by Anton Chekhov</l> </qt> There is no such thing, alas, as a new play by Anton Chekhov, and certainly not one written in English rather than his native Russian. But Adapter Michael Frayn has achieved the satisfying illusion of one in Wild Honey, a dizzyingly funny romantic farce culled from Chekhov's untitled, and by more estimated unproducible, first extant play. Frayn is best known in the U.S. as the playwright of Noises Off, a slapstick send-up of British sex comedy, and Benefactors, a regretful recollection of the relations between two young professional couples. Wild Honey marries the wry and the rowdy strains in Frayn's writing and at the same time prefigures Chekhov's later plays, notably The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull. The joys this collaboration offers, however, are as much visceral as literary. In chronicling the tomfoolery of a village intellectual, half charmer, half malcontent, Wild Honey provides nonstop bawdy laughter followed by a silencing leap into the abyss. When Chekhov, then 21, finished the play, he brought it to an actress. After the play was rejected, perhaps because its diffuse narrative would take six to seven hours to stage, he destroyed his manuscript. Another copy, found after his death, has given rise to several adaptations. Frayn's, which lasts 2 1/2 hours, shifts the focus from the leading lady to a man, the schoolteacher Platonov, and provides a wondrous star turn for Ian McKellen, who won a 1981 Tony Award for his portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus. As the beau ideal of a dusty country town, McKellen is all boisterous affection and puckish candor. From the moment he capers onto the stage, he seems infinitely more alive than everyone around him. No matter how thwarted or downcast, he never loses his vision of life as adventure rather than mere existence. But as his admirers gradually realize, the very boyish traits that make Platonov so appealing also render him irresponsible: unlike the safe and predictable dullards around him, he has simply never grown up. In the funniest yet most poignant scene, he feverishly debates whether to stay faithful to his wife (Kate Burton) or sneak off to join a handsome widow who has urged a liaison (Kathryn Walker), when who should appear on his doorstep but an old flame (Kim Cattrall), now his best friend's new bride, to whom he impulsively proposed elopement in a stupor after lunch. Doors slam; people hop out from bushes and then back behind them; Platonov carries on simultaneous conversations, and the wrong people hear him. This might be French bedroom farce, except that lives are at stake. Whatever Platonov decides, his little world will not reach equilibrium again. Wild Honey originated at Britain's National Theater. This staging reunites much of the same creative team, including Director Christopher Morahan (TV's The Jewel in the Crown) and Set Designer John Gunter, who delightfully fills the stage with fireworks, birch forests, rustic homes and railroad cars--the last achieved with special effects cheerily akin to "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" at Disney World. The one vital element not imported was the cast surrounding McKellen. Fortunately, the unevenness of the American replacements barely affects the savor of Wild Honey. -- By William A. Henry III BEST OF '86 BIG DEAL. Bob Fosse's sinuous choreography and inspired staging of classic songs--including a sardonic, syncopated chain-gang rendering of Ain't We Got Fun--highlighted a witty, rueful and all too short-lived musical about bumbling burglars and reluctant romance in Depression-era Chicago. BROADWAY BOUND. Jokemeister Neil Simon has proved himself an artist in the trilogy that began with Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues. He reaches a pinnacle in this comic yet unflinching reflection on his parents' troubled marriage and the psychic origins of his own career. EMILY. Stephen Metcalfe's farce at San Diego's Old Globe Theater slyly sent up contemporary mores and materialism. Madolyn Smith's beguiling performance gave the self-absorbed yuppie title character an unlikely likability. FENCES. In Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, August Wilson launched a cycle about black life in each decade of the century. His new work, mounted by the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, Chicago and Seattle and scheduled for Broadway in March, depicts a baseball player turned sanitation worker in the 1950s. James Earl Jones has his most exciting role since The Great White Hope. FIGARO GETS A DIVORCE. Odon von Horvath's 1937 satire about an ousted dictator got a dazzling U.S. premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse near San Diego. Director Robert Woodruff interpolated sly references to the Marcos and Somoza clans, and his expressionistic staging throbbed with energy. THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES. John Guare's zany yet compassionate portrait of losers who live in awe of celebrities is having an impeccable Broadway revival. Swoosie Kurtz's mad housewife was the performance of the year. LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. Jonathan Miller's swift, funny rendering of an often lugubrious work was not so much a revival as a rediscovery. It proved that O'Neill's lyric family tragedy can work as gritty naturalism. ME AND MY GIRL. Effervescent, corny and completely irresistible, this 1937 British musical about a Cockney turned lord has conquered Broadway. Robert Lindsay's seemingly matchless star turn is gloriously rivaled by his once and future successor, Jim Dale. RUM AND COKE. Keith Reddin, who was four years old during the Bay of Pigs invasion, sensitively evoked its tragicomic excesses and catastrophic outcome for Cuban exiles and American scions of privilege and for the Government they both served. WILD HONEY. Chekhov's first play, shrewdly revamped by Michael Frayn. </body> </article> </text>