"Orson's Shadow' at PTC (third review)

A drama without tension

STEVE COHEN

As entertainment, Orson’s Shadow provides a fun evening for people with an interest in theater history and backstage gossip. But as drama, it falls short.

This is Austin Pendleton’s imagining of what might have happened when the handsome master of Shakespearian declamation, Laurence Olivier, worked with the temperamental director Orson Welles on a 1960 London production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. Olivier’s wife, Vivien Leigh, his mistress, Joan Plowright, and critic Kenneth Tynan are prominent in the cast.

In the play, Orson tells Olivier that the problem in their production of Rhinoceros is to keep the audience in suspense. Strange, then, that the new play contains the same flaw. Almost everyone who comes to Orson’s Shadow knows that Rhinoceros is not going to be a triumph for either of the men. Most also know that Vivien Leigh will die soon, and that Welles will never again return to glory in Hollywood.

About Tynan they might know little, but the script, with the character’s numerous fits of coughing, telegraphs that he’s dying from emphysema.

Shades of Ed Sullivan

So there’s no suspense, little tension and scant significance. Instead we have a series of "impressions," as entertainers used to do on the Ed Sullivan show. ("Here’s my impression of the late, great W. C. Fields...")

These are performed with great flair. There’s witty repartee, juicy gossip and intense gamesmanship between the men who were rivals in Shakespearian acting and directing. Playwright-actor-teacher Pendleton takes everything that’s known about these people and adds plausible detail. A good cast, directed by James Christy, gives spot-on impersonations.

Although the title suggests that the main character will be Welles, it is Olivier who occupies center stage most of the evening. The part is strongly written, and Brent Harris pulls off a stunning recreation of the man’s enunciation, posturing and panic attacks. The role of Welles is written with less color; he seems too reasonable and unthreatening. Wilbur Edwin Henry does a decent job suggesting Welles’s looks and his voice but can’t find anything in the script to inspire a transcendent performance.

An earlier Welles

A more vivid Welles trod the boards here in Philly in 2001 when Scott Greer portrayed him as a younger man in Jason Sherman’s It’s All True, produced by Interact Theatre. Of course, Orson’s Shadow is set in 1960, when Welles was two decades older and perhaps was depressed by repeated failures.

Susan Wilder dazzles as the unstable Vivien Leigh, and Rachel Botchan gives us a restrained Joan Plowright whose character emphasizes the contrast between the two women in Olivier’s life. Joe Hickey’s Kenneth Tynan is problematical; his character often seems like an intruder rather than a complementary foil, and his stuttering and coughing may be accurate but they are overplayed. Derick Loafmann competently handles the small role of an assistant to the director.



To read Robert Zaller's review, click here.
To read Dan Rottenberg's review, click here.