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Lantern's "The Great Divorce'
Dan Rottenberg
Destination: Heaven
DAN ROTTENBERG
Amid a thundering rainstorm, a wretched academician finds himself alone in a deserted town whose center seems unreachable no matter how long he walks toward it, because the town’s selfish inhabitants are constantly expanding its boundaries by moving to its outer limits in order to avoid each other. The scene could be America’s atomized suburbs of 2007, where everyone gets what they want (except a community) and everyone wonders why they’re unhappy; in fact, it’s C.S. Lewis’s 1946 vision— part Dante, part Kafka, part Freud— of the afterlife as a place where souls are condemned to heaven or hell not by God but by their own psychological baggage. Here the departed are free to move back and forth between the physical heaven and hell— since, after all, some folks are miserable even in Paris while others find joy even in Detroit.
This adaptation of the Lewis novel, brilliantly conceived and performed by Anthony Lawton, vividly evokes a succession of surreal scenes (without benefit of any scenery or props) as well as a broad range of characters who speak in many dialects. My favorites include a henpecking wife who, having driven her husband away, yearns for the burden of setting him straight again, but on her own terms (“I must be given a free hand”); a curmudgeon who finds hell boring because it lacks fire, brimstone and devils with pitchforks; and a cautious soul who must summon the courage to excise the worst of his demons, with whom he has grown all too comfortable.
Lawton's preoccupation with the psychological nature of heaven and hell begs the question of what happens in the afterlife to people who feel perfectly fine about themselves (Osama bin Laden, say, or George W. Bush) but cause real physical damage to others. (In one interlude, a murderer winds up in heaven, much to his victim's consternation.) But this is a minor quibble. Lawton's one-man, one-act play of just 75 minutes constitutes as intelligent and provoking an evening as I’ve spent at the theater in a long time; it’s often devastatingly funny as well. As performed during the week of Gerald Ford’s death, it also provides a cogent explanation as to why Richard Nixon remained in hell even when he reached the White House, and why Ford remained in heaven even when he left it.
Incidentally, The Great Divorce demonstrates the benefits that accrue when an actor writes his own material— at least, when the actor's interests extend beyond the narrow world of the theater. (For more thoughts on entertainers' infatuation with themselves, see my review of Chicago.) I haven't encountered Lawton before (I missed the Arden Theatre's recent A Prayer For Owen Meany), but I'll watch for his name in the future, and so should you.
This review originally appeared on December 31, 2006. The Great Divorce is currently revived at the Lantern through January 4, 2009.
DAN ROTTENBERG
Amid a thundering rainstorm, a wretched academician finds himself alone in a deserted town whose center seems unreachable no matter how long he walks toward it, because the town’s selfish inhabitants are constantly expanding its boundaries by moving to its outer limits in order to avoid each other. The scene could be America’s atomized suburbs of 2007, where everyone gets what they want (except a community) and everyone wonders why they’re unhappy; in fact, it’s C.S. Lewis’s 1946 vision— part Dante, part Kafka, part Freud— of the afterlife as a place where souls are condemned to heaven or hell not by God but by their own psychological baggage. Here the departed are free to move back and forth between the physical heaven and hell— since, after all, some folks are miserable even in Paris while others find joy even in Detroit.
This adaptation of the Lewis novel, brilliantly conceived and performed by Anthony Lawton, vividly evokes a succession of surreal scenes (without benefit of any scenery or props) as well as a broad range of characters who speak in many dialects. My favorites include a henpecking wife who, having driven her husband away, yearns for the burden of setting him straight again, but on her own terms (“I must be given a free hand”); a curmudgeon who finds hell boring because it lacks fire, brimstone and devils with pitchforks; and a cautious soul who must summon the courage to excise the worst of his demons, with whom he has grown all too comfortable.
Lawton's preoccupation with the psychological nature of heaven and hell begs the question of what happens in the afterlife to people who feel perfectly fine about themselves (Osama bin Laden, say, or George W. Bush) but cause real physical damage to others. (In one interlude, a murderer winds up in heaven, much to his victim's consternation.) But this is a minor quibble. Lawton's one-man, one-act play of just 75 minutes constitutes as intelligent and provoking an evening as I’ve spent at the theater in a long time; it’s often devastatingly funny as well. As performed during the week of Gerald Ford’s death, it also provides a cogent explanation as to why Richard Nixon remained in hell even when he reached the White House, and why Ford remained in heaven even when he left it.
Incidentally, The Great Divorce demonstrates the benefits that accrue when an actor writes his own material— at least, when the actor's interests extend beyond the narrow world of the theater. (For more thoughts on entertainers' infatuation with themselves, see my review of Chicago.) I haven't encountered Lawton before (I missed the Arden Theatre's recent A Prayer For Owen Meany), but I'll watch for his name in the future, and so should you.
This review originally appeared on December 31, 2006. The Great Divorce is currently revived at the Lantern through January 4, 2009.
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