Theater For A New City (off-Broadway) presents an historic remounting of “ORSON’S SHADOW”, by AUSTIN PENDLETON through Dec. 1st., 2024.
What makes this presentation truly historic at this venerable Off B’way bastion of vital, mostly contemporary plays, is that the multiple producing organizations involved: Oberon Theatre Ensemble and Strindberg Rep were joined by Axial Theatre, Michael Howard Studios, Fortify.Space, and Amanda Quinn Olivar to drive forward the November remount at Theater for the New City. It was received so well by critics and audiences alike, that Crystal Field, Artistic Director of Theater For A New City, authorized a REMOUNTING of this revival in the glow of autumn, which was unprecedented in this venue’s five-decade history.
This work was first conceived by Pendleton, a more than 60-year veteran of New York, Regional, and International theater, as well as prominent player in more than 250 films, back in 2000 and was first presented at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and became a significant Off-B’way hit in 2005 when presented by The Barrow Group. He has revisited it with meticulous revisions ever since and, for the first time, has had his expert hand in directing this handsome production, along with his longtime director collaborator, DAVID SCHWEIZER.
Dear Reader, this is a PLAY! It runs little more than 2 hours but stays with you as long as the memories of these six characters, five of them legendary and one unforgettable nonentity, live on in the annals of theater and film.
The shadow of the title casts as large as the man, and Orson Welles was, in every way, as large as one can get. The wunderkind from Wisconsin made New York Theater history barely at the age of 20 in 1935 with his production in Harlem of his “VOODOO MACBETH”. This and further collaborations with producer, John Houseman went on the create The Mercury Theater on Broadway and soon on CBS Radio when, on October 30th, 1938, the nation was shaken with Welles’ broadcast of their version of H.G Wells’ novel,” War Of The Worlds”. It’s impossible for us in the second decade of the 21st century to fully comprehend what that broadcast wrought with millions of listeners, many who because they came into it later than its introduction as fiction, believed that Martians had landed in Grovers Mill, New Jersey and were well enroute to destroy the Big Apple and indeed, DID (in the broadcast).
What was meant to be a Halloween Eve prank generated sufficient panic with the gullible, even a swallowing of poison by at least one hysteric, soon after generated as well specific legislation never to permit a fictional disaster to be depicted as an actual newscast on mass media again.
It nearly landed the Boy Genius in jail, but instead garnered him the most audacious Hollywood contract ever devised by 1940 at RKO. He was authorized the final edit of whatever films he chose to produce, write, direct, and star in as “as was his wont”.
This total control gave birth to what has been seriously considered by global critics and lovers of movies in general, as perhaps the greatest American film, or that from any nation, ever made: “CITIZEN KANE”.
He did this before he turned 26. Such prodigious mastery in a popular medium not often considered to be art, offered at so youthful a talent, comparisons with Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn, having achieved such phenomena. This was in 1941, and his reputation’s descent, for innumerable reasons and calumnies, evolved, as though an infernal machine from Greek lore, like Sisyphus, with his carrying up a mountain with the boulder of his latest project, only to fall again and again for the rest of his career. He would indeed bring his stagecraft, and utter mastery of film to heights he considered to excel Kane, and quite possibly did, but never to the greater public’s awareness, or critical consensus.
I’ve dwelled on this character in Pendleton’s play chiefly because it is Welle’s shadow that is indeed cast over the proceedings. The playwright’s perspective of this larger-than-life legend evolved from the time when he had worked with him in 1970 on Mike Nichol’s film of “CATCH 22”. Pendleton has gone on record that it was an uncomfortable two-week experience. Welles took the job of portraying General Dreedle merely to raise money for one of his own films and was undisguisedly pissed off that he himself was not also in the director’s chair, rather than the new,” golden boy”, Nichols.
Over the years however, 30 to be accurate, Pendleton through his own research and voluminous experiences as an award-winning actor and director himself came to a more sympathetic understanding of this complicated creator of some of the most fascinating works of theater, radio, and television of the 20th century.
So, when the playwright learned of a number of details regarding a rather notorious production Eugene Ionesco’s: “RHINOCEROS” in London in 1960 with the personalities of such luminaries as Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Joan Plowright, and the esteemed and highly influential critic, Kenneth Tynan involved in its making with the direction of Orson Welles, well, apparently THAT was a play that simply had to be written!
And now, a sumptuous rendering of this meticulously wrought text has been lovingly served now twice this year with virtually the same ensemble that received well deserved kudos last spring. The players are keenly cast and expert in their credibility and fascination of their character’s qualities.
PATRICK HAMILTON is lovingly insufferable as the brilliant yet often intentionally cruel theater scribe who seemed determined to kill Ms. Leigh’s stage career, while fawning on his player hero who just happened to be her husband, Olivier. The Olivier’s 20-year marriage which produced Churchill’s favorite film,” THAT HAMILTON WOMAN” during Britain’s “finest hour” of a war depicting the Napoleonic one, as well as several significant stage productions of Shakespeare, Shaw, and Terrance Rattigan, had, by 1960, run its often mad-plagued course due to Ms. Leigh’s bi-polar condition atop her tubercular malady.
RYAN TRAMONT captures the caprice of Olivier’s quirks and brilliance delivering some of the greater comic moments of him endeavoring to follow Welles’ direction while pursuing a real-life adulterous affair with the much younger Ms. Plowright who shared a recent stage success at THE ROYAL COURT THEATRE where the rehearsals of this production are revealed in the informed conjecturing of Pendleton’s very playful play.
CADY McCLAIN provides a convincing portrait of the young soon to be third wife of the English stage legend. She represented all that was new and revolutionary in the post-war British wave of theater and film and The Royal Court theatre was indeed its headquarters. Its most successful proponent playwright, John Osborn wrote “THE ENTERTAINER” for Olivier and gave the player his greatest contemporary triumph, there, on Broadway, and soon later film.
NATALIE MENNA breaks one’s heart as Leigh, and as Leigh did in life, Olivier’s, and many others who knew and played with her. Menna possesses that sensitivity that projects a palpable pain for the audience. Her knowledge that the title of Lady Olivier will, though follow her to her death, never ring true as it had.
LUKE HOFMAIER thankfully plays a happy invention of Pendleton’s as a young and inexperienced stage manager, lately Welles had encountered in Dublin while he’d mounted a production of his decades wrought adaptation of Shakespear’s Henry IV plays, “CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT”. The strategic laughs, so necessary to the success of this play and production are most skillfully rendered by this up-and-coming actor of voluminous promise.
That leaves last, but far from the least BRAD FRYMAN who’s saddled with perhaps the most daunting of challenging tasks to bring to life the man who cast this shadow of Welles. Kudos to Fryman for providing more than mere resemblance to the middle-aged master of The Mercury Theater and all that was yet to come, the often-thwarted victim of an ego in direct relation to his genius and immeasurable gusto for life.
Austin Pendleton has offered here an extraordinary product as he’s one of the most astute observers of human nature and experiential knowledge of this business called” show”. This is far from a mere engaging presentation of renowned characters of our culture. It is rather a serio-comic construction of investigating the frailties of Humans, of Artists, who despite past successes of enormous importance, struggled with themselves and one another to create something worth an audiences’ most precious possession: their Time and Attention.
Dear Reader, if you’ve read this far, I entreat you to give those two gifts to this play running through the first of December. Reciprocation will follow in full.
Photos are courtesy of “Orson’s Shadow”
Theater For A New City 155 First Ave.( 10th E. St.), NYC. Opened Nov. 10th and is playing through December 1st., 2024 Tickets: $25, $18 (seniors), Tues. (Pay what you will).
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