Varieties of Shame
KANFER, ETHAN
On Stage Varieties of Shame By Ethan Kanfer Known today chiefly for his novels, W. Somerset Maugham once enjoyed a considerable reputation as a playwright. A lively revival of his 1926...
...The most moving portion of the play is the pivotal breakup scene, with Anton remaining on stage, observing his younger self...
...Sandy's studious stability and Anton's freewheeling lust for life just might have made an unbeatable combination...
...Underneath the veneer, however, lies a deep codependency...
...Unable to embrace a gay lifestyle, Sandy has no choice but to break his lover's heart, and damage his own soul in the process...
...He might well have dragged Anton down with him...
...Trying to "cure" his homosexuality, Sandy seeks help from a psychoanalyst, Dr...
...he enjoys his work...
...Young Anton (Harner) notices the stranger sitting alone at Le Singe and invites him to his apartment...
...Constance then bluntly asserts what they both know to be true...
...His vacation is coming soon...
...The trouble is, he has a penchant for Enron-type companies and has alienated his Hollywood clients...
...Without spelling it out, she approves of Sandy's lifestyle...
...Culver (Lynn Redgrave), is more pragmatic...
...There is nothing for him to do but make a desperate trip overseas—a last-ditch effort to rescue some of his money from offshore accounts...
...Ready at last to let go of his friend, Anton consummates the relationship with one final act of love...
...The curtain rises on a posh London drawing room, where Martha (Enid Graham), Constance's brittle sister, steams with indignation...
...Both flagrantly unfaithful and fiercely loyal, Constance will return and John cannot help but take her back...
...The two soon become lovers...
...She's found herself a new young lover and wonders if Constance might not be kind enough to let John down easy...
...Jagged and incongruous pieces slowly fit together to form a picture of the events leading up to this ugly tragedy...
...In her new incarnation John sees her as "the most maddening, willful, capricious, wrongheaded, delightful, and enchanting woman man was ever cursed with having for a wife...
...The two share whatever they are able to scavenge...
...Selekcja': The hybrid Latin and Polish word is heard once, twice, many times...
...Anton has no family, no roots, no grown-up obligations...
...Michael Krass'jazz age costumes and Paul Huntley's hair and wig designs reflect a time when women strove (often unsuccessfully) to find a new look to go with their emerging political power...
...He befriends a fellow Italian, Alberto, whose streetwise ways help keep both of them alive...
...Like Ibsen's Nora, Maugham's protagonist is a privileged lady who learns to assert her independence as she discovers the widening cracks in her supposedly perfect life...
...At the camp, he hears desperate talk...
...Sher poignantly captures the music of Levi's phrasing, which keeps the narrative buoyant through the most solemn moments...
...His shoulders are stooped, his carriage heavy with a sense of obligation...
...As John runs off to treat MarieLouise (Kathryn Meisle) for a mysterious knee ailment, Constance conspires with her mother...
...Financial mogul Sandy Sonnenberg (Ron Rifkin) is coldly berating his young right-hand man Burt Sarris (Jason Butler Harner...
...The life of a free spirit is okay for younger people, but now both men are senior citizens...
...One learns quickly enough to wipe out the past and the future when one is forced to...
...She will not, in fact, be going on a trip to the Continent alone...
...Anton reads it aloud, but skips over a crucial confession...
...A different kind of unconventional loyalty animates Jon Robin Baitz' The Paris Letter, at the Laura Pels Theater...
...Over a barrel, the philanderer has no choice but to concede...
...Sandy's firm is prosperous...
...The decline and fall of Sandy's banking empire is also sketched only minimally...
...Constance declines, but the seed is planted in her mind...
...For viewers versed in the literature of the Holocaust, this unusual Broadway entry will serve as a welcome addition to the canon...
...In time Sandy's thwarted passion vents itself in his relationship with Burt, clouding his normally sound financial judgment...
...Each day, more are taken away...
...Primo 's searching mind struggles to make sense of the suffering, but it is too daunting a task...
...John wonders why she can't wait a bit...
...Alone with Constance, Marie-Louise ironically has a favor of her own to ask...
...Cumpsty is delightfully ill at ease as the gander who finds himself ladled with the same sauce as the goose...
...Bankruptcy and scandal impend, and Sandy's cruel suggestion is that Burt's only option is to kill himself...
...Burt figured the eventual influx of wealth would wash away any misgivings, but the strategy has failed...
...Her mind is on an old suitor, in town for a brief visit...
...Unfortunately, Baitz gives short shrift to some of the other characters...
...The effort fails, and Sandy ends up alone in a cold-water garret in Paris...
...John is appalled, but his bluster is no match for her irrefutable logic and integrity...
...When Constance enters, Barbara offers her a position at her interior design firm...
...Constance diplomatically tells her off and ushers her out the door...
...Privately, Anton admonishes Sandy about his sporadic trysts with younger men...
...It is an affront to her gender that men should be allowed to carry on so without fear of reprisal...
...At the Music Box Theater, Primo presents a condensed version of Italian author Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz...
...The evening opens with his capture in the hills of Italy, followed by a long, disorienting train ride, and a disarmingly cordial ceremony in which families are separated and internment begins...
...A lively revival of his 1926 comedy The Constant Wife, at the American Airlines Theater, makes it easy to see why...
...She wishes to take Barbara up on her offer of employment...
...Through a series of glimpses covering the 1980s and '90s, we watch Sandy form a contented family with Katie and Sam (Daniel Eric Gold), her son by a previous marriage...
...No longer the flighty bon vivant, a mature Anton will return to New York where orphaned Sam can use his help...
...Levi's memoir is remarkable for its simple, moving descriptions of dayto-day life in a concentration camp...
...The existing prisoners, with their striped uniforms and emaciated bodies, seem at first like otherworldly puppets...
...Alone with Constance, Bernard confesses he has loved her ardently for decades...
...What will it take to win her back—groveling contrition, a lavish gift...
...It is a shame known only to those who have witnessed man's most horrific depravities and stood by helplessly, unable to act...
...Culver to leave at once...
...In a final confrontation, Sandy insists that he did the right thing...
...Katie, stricken with cancer, lies dying as the Paris letter arrives...
...To cover the losses, he has pilfered from a stable of loyal, conservative investors who have been with the firm since it belonged to Sandy's father...
...Despite their being far more tragic, Baitz' protagonists have something in common with Somerset Maugham's marital rule-breakers...
...The entire production is disarmingly straightforward, in keeping with the tone of Levi's prose...
...A third perspective is provided by Barbara Fawcett (Kathleen McNenny), a longtime friend who has eschewed love in favor of financial independence...
...Sandy writes that he never felt anything profound for Burt, but has always been in love with Anton...
...Men are by nature wicked and promiscuous, she says, and every woman knows it...
...Subtle exchanges tell even more of the Middletons' marital history than is revealed in Maugham's richly comic dialogue...
...Adapted and performed by Antony Sher, this oneman show offers a sober alternative to more mainstream efforts to dramatize the Holocaust...
...The Germans need skilled workers to staffa rubber factory in the vicinity of the camp, and Primo is among those chosen as possible employees...
...Other rumors are circulating...
...Many lives intersected there, including those of Sandy, Anton and Sandy's wife Katie Arlen (Michele Pawk...
...Speaking little German and no Yiddish, he struggles to learn both the rules dictated by the SS and the social hierarchies controlled by brutal kapos and toughened veteran inmates...
...When Sandy departs, Burt literally (and graphically) blows his brains out...
...When she learns of his dishonesty, Katie leaves him...
...In an inventive reversal of a classic farcical scenario, it is the Wronged Woman who furnishes the quick-witted alibis...
...Harner and Glover are also effective in their collaborative portrayal of a scarred but unbowed individualist...
...The supporting women's roles are less nuanced, but still afford ample comédie opportunities...
...Primo 's education also proves handy...
...The process is arbitrary...
...Actually her needs are quite simple...
...High-rolling Burt is little more than a cameo, and Katie goes from charming to rageful without much development...
...Silver-haired Bernard Kersal (John Dossett) is so attractive that Constance reaches for her handkerchief the moment he arrives...
...If the visitor is as handsome as she remembers him, she will casually spread a handkerchief on the piano...
...He would be most obliged if Constance could take care of this unpleasant chore for him...
...At Le Singe, Sandy's mother Lillian (Pawk) meets Anton...
...Anton travels to Paris, finding Sandy psychologically shattered...
...Just as Dr...
...As Primo walks through the door to freedom there is no feeling of elation, no spring in his step...
...Bernard Kersal will be her traveling companion...
...In the eyes of the young Red Army soldiers Primo sees a mirror of the shame he himself feels inside...
...Anton Kilgallen (John Glover) emerges from the shadows and narrates the story as if assembling a jigsaw puzzle...
...The alertness is nearly palpable, keenness trembling within like his pilot light...
...Finally, the conflicting feelings prove to be too much...
...Redgrave is by far the funniest, drawing on years of stage experience to judge when to steal the scene and when to pass the baton...
...Director Doug Hughes creates a seamless relationship between the younger and older editions of Anton and Sandy...
...Still, Primo is luckier than many of the others...
...As for herphysicianhusband's infidelity, she seems entirely unperturbed...
...Those wishing to educate the young on this painful subject would do well to take them to see Primo...
...For Anton, it is the not knowing that is the horror, one he will have to live with for the rest of his life...
...Pawk is both endearing and terrifying as the inappropriately coquettish Lillian, but struggles with the underwritten Katie...
...The unhealthy spousification only adds to Sandy's identity confusion...
...Nevertheless, there is plenty here for the Roundabout Theater ensemble to work with...
...John wishes to end his relationship with her, but fears she won't take it well...
...How could he ever have suspected his pristine wife and stalwart best friend...
...Burt is a new breed of investment banker: fast, impulsive, high risk...
...This will signal Mrs...
...On the bottom...
...Director Mark Brokaw keeps the pace brisk and finds a vibrant physical life beneath the drawing room banter...
...If social contracts decree that a financially responsible man may do as he pleases, surely a woman of equal means is entitled to equal rights...
...John Lee Beatty's set design and Catherine Zuber's costumes anchor each of the scenes in its time and place, adjusting easily to the rapid shifts required by the mercurial script...
...With winter comes an outbreak of disease, and Primo is again lucky...
...In the darkest passages, Sher's eyes burn with a haunted expression familiar to us from photos of concentration camp victims...
...For the uninitiated, it is recommended as a gentle but powerful introduction...
...It is a year later, and Constance is busy packing for a holiday of her own...
...John's cigarette case was discovered under Marie-Louise Ts pillow—irrefutable evidence she's been carrying on with him...
...Between Constance and John, though, there will be no denials...
...In a riotous bit of physical business, Mrs...
...He conceals Katie's death, preferring to let Sandy's last dream be a peaceful one...
...Moritz Schiffman (Rifkin...
...Primo finds no joy in being spared...
...It is his sacred duty to recall every detail, to tell the story so that those who perished will not be forgotten...
...She must have left it with Marie-Louise during a visit...
...Dossett makes a formidable rival, radiating boyish sincerity as the suitor whose every gesture is fueled by the torch he has carried since youth...
...For the first five years of their marriage they were very much in love—not a bad run, all things considered—but the ensuing 10 have been smooth, agreeable and entirely devoid of passion...
...Startlingly, its most violent incident is the opening one...
...Gunfire and explosions are heard in the distance, and word from outside tells of the advancing Russian Army...
...Sandy (Gold) is 20, a shy Princeton student...
...Quarantined with scarlet fever, he is left behind while the healthy prisoners are evacuated...
...Had the catastrophe been explored in greater detail, it might feel less like a device...
...The play covers four decades in the tumultuous relationship between two volatile men...
...Sandy maintains it's Anton who could benefit from self-examination...
...Martha takes the whole thing personally...
...Constance declares the cigarette case is hers...
...Gold foreshadows the dark clouds that will gather over Sandy's horizon, while Rifkin seasons his performance with hints of the shyness and sexual energy that drive Sandy's younger persona...
...Hildegard Bechtler's set design consists only of unadorned concrete walls...
...His malfeasance has been exposed and his assets have been seized...
...For Sandy, ecstasy is followed by waves of crippling guilt...
...She'll slip her son some cash, but in return he must take her on weekly "dates...
...Marie-Louise's husband Mortimer (John Ellison Conlee) stomps into the room demanding answers...
...they could go together...
...Schiffman couldn't erase his homosexuality, living a gay life wouldn't have cured him of depression...
...Allen Moyer's set design is humorous in itself, parodying the 1920s craze for "Oriental" overkill...
...Determined to fulfill her wifely obligations, Constance has deposited £ 1,000 in John's bank account—a year's keep...
...Here I am, then," he states...
...As long as the man provides, then his inevitable dalliances are best overlooked...
...Flash back to the early 1960s...
...By 2002, Burt's death and the collapse of the Sonnenberg banking dynasty have destroyed Sandy...
...Nearly 80 years after its debut, Maugham's mordant comment on the rigors of intimacy remains fresh, funny and insightful...
...She emerges as a wily soldier in the battle of the sexes, always a step ahead of her would-be captors...
...Inevitably, John's affair is exposed, with the entire social circle present...
...He apologizes on bended knee, while Constance mimes instructions to him to buy forgiveness with a string of expensive pearls...
...Burton imbues Constance with an earthy sexuality and crackling intelligence...
...Some 20,000 inmates are marched out of the camp, never to be seen again...
...Now defunct, Anton's restaurant, Le Singe d'Or (the Golden Monkey), was once frequented by such luminaries as Truman Capote and James Baldwin...
...Constance's internal gears are fuming, and in the third act her master plan goes into effect...
...Lacing a glass of bourbon with poison, he tells of glad (if false) tidings from home...
...Sandy's legacy is his story, and Anton's tribute is the telling...
...Culver forgets the meaning of the gesture and it takes an eternity of hankies to get her out of there...
...By night he suffers deprivation and indignity at Auschwitz, by day he functions in a clean, well-mannered office...
...Alberto is among them...
...Given an exam, he is surprised at how easily his ingrained knowledge of organic chemistry comes flooding back...
...The two part acrimoniously, avoiding a question that has haunted them both throughout the years...
...Constance also has a few choice words for John...
...Under the direction of Richard Wilson, Sher's unassuming presence embodies a quality the writer Philip Roth found in Levi when they met in the mid1980s: "In his body, as in his face, you see—as you don't in most men—the face and the body of the boy that he was...
...But he finds the whole experience ironic...
...Before long Primo becomes one of them...
...Although his business has taken him halfway around the globe, he has never forgotten her...
...The inmates struggle to comfort one another, but their fate remains unknowable...
...Kate Burton, who plays the wife, Constance, has aptly described the story as "a fluffy Doll's House...
...This only serves to further complicate matters, because he needs money to pay for his sessions...
...So sincere is her tone that she soon has poor Morty convinced he is the one misbehaving...
...Her mother, Mrs...
...Constance's husband John (Michael Cumpsty), it seems, has been having an affair...
...They may even be falling back into their own eccentric version of love...
...More pressingly, Marie-Louise is on her way over...
...There is little doubt as to its meaning...
...She is also eager to escape from her arid marriage to Sandy's offstage father...
...When the Russians arrive the doors of the camp are opened...
...He loses any instinct for rebellion and obeys his domineering father's orders to take over the odious family business...
...Although difficult to define and impossible to contain, their love stays constant in a changing world...
Vol. 88 • July 2005 • No. 4
