University of Delaware's REP presents Bernard Pomerance's 'The Elephant Man'

The Resident Ensemble Players at the University of Delaware provide a fine revival of this 1979 Tony Award-winning drama. While I would love to see it performed on a small stage, it feels intimate in director Sanford Robbins’s production at the spacious Thompson Theater. Linda Buchanon’s scenic design creates a tall, vast, semi-circular space reminiscent of a hospital operating theater, lit in cool blues by Michael Lincoln. Upstage center, behind a scrim, a trio of musicians enhances the action with Lindsay Jones’s lovely, subtle strings.

Focus on a man

The design work focuses our attention on the man in the circle’s center: John Merrick (Michael Gotch), the title character, whose real-life story is enhanced by projections of actual photos from the time. We meet him in 1884, when Merrick is a sideshow attraction, treated little better than an animal. London Hospital’s Dr. Treves (Mic Matarrese) happens to see him, briefly studies the bizarre growths on his head, legs, and one arm, and then releases him to his unscrupulous keeper.

After a harrowing experience in Europe, Merrick returns to London, where Treves offers a safe home in the hospital. Treves cultivates cultured visitors who enrich Merrick’s lonely existence, especially Mrs. Kendal (Elizabeth Heflin), who becomes a close friend. Whether the high-society people actually care for Merrick or are just more discreet gawkers is left to us to ponder.

Pomerance’s The Elephant Man – unlike the 1980 David Lynch film with the same title, which is based on Treves’s memoir and other books, not the play – the actor playing Merrick does not wear realistic makeup. When we first see Gotch, he is normal, wearing simple white shorts; as Treves describes him, the actor bends his limbs and face to approximate Merrick’s deformities and their effects on his mobility. The authentic black-and-white photos from Treves’s initial examination are shown briefly, but for most of the play, we see Merrick’s deformities through others’ eyes.

The horror

Merrick’s “keeper,” Ross (Stephen Pelinski), invites crowds to “gape and yawp at this freak of nature.” Londoners, encountering him on the street, accuse him of “public indecency” and attack him. Even veteran hospital workers are repelled. Reactions are so severe that Merrick wears a sack over his huge, misshapen head and requests to be boarded in a home for the blind, to finally be spared the horrified stares.

Gotch plays Merrick with a simple wisdom and patience that’s almost childlike, though his intelligence and wit peek through and his frustrations inevitably boil over. Robbins’s production supports the script’s humanist contention that no one’s reaction to Merrick makes them evil. Some are overwhelmed, others are ignorant; even Ross and others who wish to profit from him are more pragmatic than demonic.

The Elephant Man has a brisk episodic quality that's enhanced by projections of scene titles, Treves’s narration, and quick changes executed by the cast. The story feels much larger than its 90 minutes, especially when one considers that in the more enlightened 21st century, our society still wrestles with difficulties caused by the fear of people who are perceived as “other,” whether they're disabled, Muslim, or transgender. The Elephant Man remains relevant because there are always John Merricks around us, and we’re all potentially someone else’s sideshow freak.