Who's afraid of "Tiny Alice"?
A better question: Who isn't?
Edward Albee's knotty, allegorical
drama is rarely revived these days, and some archivists have
even blamed it for smearing the rosy reputation the playwright
enjoyed after "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" and
other early successes. Upon its 1964 New York premiere, no fewer
than six major critics blasted the play as incomprehensible.
"Tiny Alice" may never
sit well with most theatergoers, but the beautifully acted, startlingly
powerful new production by Chicago's Touchstone Theatre might
end up forcing a critical reappraisal. Years from now, we may
regard this as Albee's "Moby Dick" - - a masterpiece
too long neglected because it lurched so far ahead of its time.
The script does not seem incomprehensible
in performance now, especially when judged alongside early Harold
Pinter, but neither does it seem, as the author has mulishly
insisted, "quite clear," This is a frustrating text
that demands very close attention. But like all the best works
of art, it repays a rich dividend to those patient enough to
make the investment.
The action, divided into three acts,
is on one level so simple that it almost conforms to the patterns
of myth. Young and beautiful Alice (Amanda Sullivan), the richest
woman in the world, makes an extravagant cash contribution to
the Roman Catholic Church n exchange for an unworldly lay priest
named Julian (Paul Meyers). After an elaborate tease and consummated
seduction, she abandons him to die in her mansion as a ritual
sacrifice.
That sounds a little weird, a bit
hallucinatory, but not hard to follow. What makes the play initially
so confusing is its literariness -- its dense verbosity, dizzying
wordplay, tangled metaphors and heavy Christian symbolism.
Those who wonder if the script might
be a little too dryly intellectual for its own good have a point.
For example, Alice owns and displays
a precise scale model of her mansion. albee baits us by making
much of this replica but never adequately explaining its significance.
Is it supposed to suggest the gulf between reality and appearances?
Or maybe that we are all nothing more than toys in a doll house?
It's hard to say. The model remains a tantalizing puzzle that
the author, for whatever private reason, must feel is vital to
the play.
And yet "Tiny Alice" --
at least in director Ina Marlowe's elegant, riveting, admirably
lucid staging at the Theatre Building -- still packs quite a
wallop. The closing moments of the second act, when poor tempted
Julian buries himself in the curves of Alice's flesh, and of
the third, when the mortally wounded priest slums n a mock Crucifixion
pose, rival the end of Ibsen's "Ghosts" for raw dramatic
power.
Sexy and provocative, "Tiny
Alice" touches on a number of ideas -- decadence, spiritual
decay, treachery, self-betrayal -- while pursing one great theme:
the incompatibility of earthly erotic impulses with higher intimations
of immortality.
Albee has extensively advised this
production (and many others of his work), and he and Marlowe
have assembled a cast of five top-notch, if little-known, actors.
Sullivan, who's as gorgeous as a move star, brings some of Barbara
Stanwyck's iciness to the role of Alice, and Meyers is wholly
convincing as Julian, the entrapped innocent.
Sterling support comes from Alfred
Wilson as Alice's venal lawyer and lover, Kendall Marlowe as
the corrupt cardinal who turns his back on Julian's plight and
the always interesting Larry Hart, as a cryptic butler who seems
like a domestic from a Restoration comedy, as updated by Samuel
Beckett.
Kevin Snow designed the handsome
minimalist set (very tall, rotating wooden panels bordering the
upstage area) and effective lighting, while excellent costumes
are courtesy of Julie A. Nagel.
This "Tiny Alice" is a
big, and welcome surprise.
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