Movie Box Review

Although a great work of art is great forever, the relevance of a given piece to a current moment in time does tend to fluctuate.  It turns out that Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN, written 63 years ago, is so remarkably attuned to this here and now that despite its period setting, it feels more contemporary than almost any play on Broadway.

It isn't just that the current economy is bad, or that Willy Loman, like so many middle-aged men with houses and families, is losing his job and having trouble making ends meet.  The words "the 1 percent" are never spoken in Miller's text--that catchphrase didn't exist in 1949--but its undercurrent is felt throughout the play.  Salesman captures the peculiar ambivalence Americans have for wealth:  Willy's mix of disdain for and envy of his neighbor's son Bernard, who plays tennis and argues before the Supreme Court, could be echoed by the Republicans who can't bring themselves to vote for Mitt Romney, while Willy's awe of his brother Ben, who walked into the jungle when he was 17 and walked out rich, evokes the admiration of ordinary people today who can't get enough of watching the rich parade the accoutrements of their wealth and tweet their often fatuous opinions.

Perhaps fueled by the affinity between Miller's vision of America and the world around us, the new production of Salesman directed by Mike Nichols (which is still in previews, so subject to change) makes no effort to jazz up the play or make it more "contemporary."  Indeed, the production makes a point of recreating Joe Mielziner's original 1949 set design, and using Alex North's incidental score.  Nichols' choices seem to stand for the proposition that what was disturbing and moving in 1949 can be just as powerful today--and he's right.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Willy is also suited to our times, with a self-knowledge that breaks his own heart, and ours.  His Willy is a big man, as Lee J. Cobb was in the original show, but sunken in his heft.  Hoffman doesn't have Cobb's bluff, bullying heartiness:  it doesn't come as a surprise that this Willy was never as successful as he wanted his family to believe.  There's a desperation in him that isn't new--he may have reached the end of his rope, but the rope has been fraying all along, and on some level, Willy has always known it.  Hoffman's Willy isn't just now discovering the wreck of his life; he's just starting to acknowledging it.  

The role of Linda, Willy's wife, is a notorious trap for preachy sentiment, but Linda Emond gives a marvelously plain-spoken, crisp reading of the part.  Andrew Garfield, as older son Biff, who can never live up to the dreams with which his father has infected him, is excellent in the flashback sequences  but somewhat problematic in the play's present-day, not because his performance is ever less than fully thought-out or passionately performed, but for simple reasons of logistics:  Garfield is 29, and a very young 29 (as you may have heard, he'll be spinning webs as a high-schooler in just a few months as The Amazing Spider-Man), and he's not able to convey the world-weariness of a 34-year old character who's been traveling a hard road around the country for the past decade.  Supporting roles, including John Glover as Willy's idealized brother and Finn Wittrock as younger son Happy, are ably filled.

Paradoxically, this Death of A Salesman, embracing the form and style of its past, feels remarkably of the moment.  Its history lesson turns out to be a bulletin of Breaking News.

VENUS IN FUR exists, at this point in its Broadway life, as two overlapping but not identical entities:  it's a deft new play by David Ives, but also, and more prominently, it's become the Star-Is-Born vehicle for its lead actress, Nina Arianda, who's currently giving about as dazzling a performance as you're likely to see on a Broadway stage.  

No one had ever heard of Arianda before she starred in the initial 2010 Off-Broadway production of Venus, and fittingly, in the play she's introduced as an unknown aspiring actress.  Her name is Vanda, and at the end of a long day, hopelessly late, she blows into an audition hall like a scatterbrained force of nature, desperate to try out for the lead in the play Venus In Fur--a character coincidentally also named Vanda.  The only one still in the audition room is writer/directorThomas (Hugh Dancy), who's packing up to leave, but Vanda talks herself, in her seemingly bubble-headed, flaky-funny way, into being allowed to read.  Once she begins, everything changes.

Thomas' play is based on the real late 19th century novel of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.  His name became the root of the term "masochism," and that pretty much tells you the subject matter of the work.  It concerns a man named Severin and his obsession with Vanda, before whom he finds sexual satisfaction in abasement and humiliation.  Thomas claims to have written the adaptation out of purely academic fascination, with no personal feelings attached, but when Vanda convinces him to take the role of Severin opposite her, it's no surprise that before long, his real emotions begin to show.

The role of Vanda (the actress) is spectacularly mercurial, presented initially as a sort of savant who doesn't have a thought in her mind when she's being herself, but instantly takes on--embodies--all the necessary characteristics (accent, bearing) as well as the complexities and nuances of Vanda (the character) as soon as she's reading the role.  And there are increasing hints that she may not just be a gifted actress...

Venus In Fur (the play) is ultimately more of a game (and a satire on actor/director politics) than a serious commentary on male/female relationships, as Vanda the actress and Vanda the character constantly shift and begin to merge, and the balance of power between her and Thomas/Severin inevitably comes to resemble the story they're enacting.  But what a game!  The role of Vanda is a gift to a performer in the way that split-personality roles like Sybil and The 3 Faces of Eve have been gifts to actresses in the past:  Arianda gets to become less and more intelligent, submissive and powerful, American and European, seductive and revolted, 21st Century and 19th, all with split-second hairpin turns of body language and voice.  It's the very definition of a tour de force, and she pulls it off gloriously.

Dancy's work is less overwhelming than Arianda's, but shouldn't be underestimated.  He also has to transition between eras, characters-within-characters, and contrasting positions of power, and does so with seeming ease  Ultimately, though, his character's throughline is more clearly preordained, and Thomas is destined to be Vanda's foil.  

Walter Bobbie's direction brings a welcome clarity to what could have been a mess of confusion:  even when we don't know exactly what's going on, or who a character 'is," we always feel comfortable that we know as much as the play wants us to at that given moment, and where we are in Ives' process.  John Lee Beatty's set design and Peter Kaczorowki's lighting design are also notable for squeezing a remarkable variety of changes out of a single fixed set.

Venus In Fur is constantly enjoyable, even if not particularly profound, a satisfying, sexy, funny exercise in theatrical gamesmanship (gameswomanship?).  It's destined to remembered, though, mostly for unleashing Nina Arianda and her powerhouse set of skills onto an audience that finds itself more than willing to yield.

The Tony Awards aren't quite like any other televised awards show.  They're happily, unapologetically insular (and so are the ratings--thank god for CBS, where "young" audience is a relative term), and there's hardly ever anything like an upset; this year the closest was probably Mark Rylance winning Best Actor In a Play for Jerusalem over Joe Mantello for The Normal Heart, and do you see what I mean by insular?  Here, then, are 10 moments you'd probably only see on the Tonys:

10.  Brooke Shields:  First she was supposed to be a "spontaneous" audience participant in host Neil Patrick Harris' opening number about Broadway not just being for gay people anymore (itself an "Only the Tonys" moment, but a self-conscious one), except that she couldn't read her 3 lines off the teleprompter.  Then, trying to make amends later while presenting an award, all she managed to do was get herself thoroughly bleeped.

9.   Bono and The Edge:  When the two came out to introduce a song from the latest incarnation of Spider-Man The Musical, Bono paid respect to their Broadway infamy by noting that the reason they used to be famous was just because they were in U2.  (The power ballad they introduced didn't do the show's cause any favors.)

8.   Anything Goes:  Even in a cut-down version, the presentation of the Act I finale was a demonstration of what Broadway musicals are all about.  (The production deservedly won Best Musical Revival.)

7.   Best Play  The Tony show producers have never ever figured out how to showcase the nominees for Best Play.  One year they show out-of-context excerpts, the next they have the playwrights make awkward speeches, and this year, they had cast members try to sum up complex works in 60 seconds or less.  (War Horse, more a spectacle than a play, ended up winning, making the happiest Tony watcher in Hollywood Steven Spielberg, whose film version of the novel opens in December.)

6.   In Memorium:  Let the Oscars worry about which giant dead stars should get the opening and closing spots in the montage.  The Tonys led off with Arthur Laurents, book writer of West Side Story and Gypsy, and ended with Joseph Stein, who did the same for Fiddler On the Roof and She Loves Me.  (Elizabeth Taylor was stuck somewhere in the middle.)

5.   Dueling Hosts:  Neil Patrick Harris was again a sparkling, enthusiastic host, and never more so than when he and Hugh Jackman did a number made almost entirely of theatre in-jokes, both of them seemingly having a terrific time.  (OK, maybe Harris was even more so in his triumphant last couple of minutes, where he rapped/rhymed a closing credits bit summarizing the entire show that must have been written just seconds before he delivered it.)

4.   Frances McDormand:  Other award winners will say that they love what they do.  But winning Best Actress In a Play for Good People (in a slightly perplexing denim jacket over her gown), McDormand roared out the words so we'd know she goddamn well meant it.  I forgive her in advance for co-starring in the new Transformers movie.

3.   Chris Rock:  For sheer honesty.  By the time he presented Best Musical, The Book Of Mormon had (deservedly) won so many preliminary awards that Rock said going to the trouble of reading the other nominees made as much sense as taking a hooker out to dinner.  "Either way, you know you're gonna get laid," he explained.  He was right--about Best Musical, I mean.

2.  Mark Rylance:  He followed up his classic non sequitur accceptance speech for Best Actor In a Play in Boeing Boeing a couple of years ago by winning again for Jerusalem, and delivering an address about walking through doors.  He seems to see acceptance speeches as his chance to audition for David Lynch.

1.  Sutton Foster:  Winning Best Actress In a Musical for her thrilling performance in Anything Goes, she had the ultimate "Only the Tonys" moment when she managed to keep her composure while thanking the cast, the director, even the love of her life--and only broke into crazy tears when she got to her dresser, who's moving to Cape Cod to become the greatest artist in the world. 

Congratulations and good luck to Sutton Foster's (ex) dresser, and to all the other people who make up that special subspecies of the business called Broadway.