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Pig Iron's 'Hell Meets Henry Halfway'
Robert Zaller
Dancing over an abyss
ROBERT ZALLER
The Pig Iron Theatre Company is offering that Philadelphia rarity, avant-garde drama, in its spring residency at Drexel University. The avant-garde itself, of course, is getting a bit long in the tooth, and Pig Iron’s most recent offering, Hell Meets Henry Halfway, is itself an adaptation (by Adriano Shaplin) of the Polish master Witold Gombrowicz’s 1939 novel, The Possessed. As will be recalled, 1939 was not exactly a vintage year for Europe, or for Poland in particular. The imminence of social if not political collapse hangs heavily over the Gombrowicz’s tale, in which the play’s antihero, Henry Kholavitski (Dito van Reigersberg), ministers to an elderly and ailing aristocrat (Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey), while his bored wife Maya (Sarah Sanford) vamps a lethargic tennis pro, Walchak (Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel).
Henry is clearly a stand-in for the interwar bourgeoisie, clinging to the coattails of a decadent nobility. His own dependent status leaves him unable to rein in the flapperish Maya or to challenge the declassé Walchak, who is apparently used accustomed to providing whatever services are required of him. A louche physician, Dr. Hincz (Geoff Sobelle), insinuates himself into the household as well, undermining Henry’s ill-defined employment—-- is he manservant, accountant, go-fer? The troupe is filled out by Jon the Ballboy (James Sugg), who serves as a general butt of amusement and symbolizes the social inanity of his betters.
The play’s first act, a good hour long, is mainly expository, and exhausts its slender material well before the lights come back on. There are a lot of sight gags involving tennis balls and a revolving closet. The second act picks up, though, as Henry’s world slowly disintegrates, and his anguish and helplessness break through his stiff-collared façade. Everyone, however, is more or less guilty, and more or less doomed; as one character remarks, “The evil inside matches the evil outside.” Hell, in short, meets us halfway because we traverse the other half, and those more nimble than Henry will not escape judgment much longer.
The players are uniformly capable, and their sinuous physicality reminds one of Grotowski’s Polish theater of the sixties’60s, with its emphasis on acting through the body. Hell Meets Henry Halfway won an Obie in New York after premiering at Philadelphia’s 2004 Live Arts Festival, and toured internationally. It is good to have Pig Iron back home— the company was founded here in 1995— and good to have Drexel’s Mandell Theater, one of the city’s most capacious, put to serious professional use. Hell Meets Henry has its longueurs and shows its age, or at any rate Gombrowicz’s, but it dances over an abyss that is perennially with us.
Pig Iron will return for a cabaret evening at the Rotunda on May 7, and for a final season production, Love Unpunished, starting June 1.
ROBERT ZALLER
The Pig Iron Theatre Company is offering that Philadelphia rarity, avant-garde drama, in its spring residency at Drexel University. The avant-garde itself, of course, is getting a bit long in the tooth, and Pig Iron’s most recent offering, Hell Meets Henry Halfway, is itself an adaptation (by Adriano Shaplin) of the Polish master Witold Gombrowicz’s 1939 novel, The Possessed. As will be recalled, 1939 was not exactly a vintage year for Europe, or for Poland in particular. The imminence of social if not political collapse hangs heavily over the Gombrowicz’s tale, in which the play’s antihero, Henry Kholavitski (Dito van Reigersberg), ministers to an elderly and ailing aristocrat (Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey), while his bored wife Maya (Sarah Sanford) vamps a lethargic tennis pro, Walchak (Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel).
Henry is clearly a stand-in for the interwar bourgeoisie, clinging to the coattails of a decadent nobility. His own dependent status leaves him unable to rein in the flapperish Maya or to challenge the declassé Walchak, who is apparently used accustomed to providing whatever services are required of him. A louche physician, Dr. Hincz (Geoff Sobelle), insinuates himself into the household as well, undermining Henry’s ill-defined employment—-- is he manservant, accountant, go-fer? The troupe is filled out by Jon the Ballboy (James Sugg), who serves as a general butt of amusement and symbolizes the social inanity of his betters.
The play’s first act, a good hour long, is mainly expository, and exhausts its slender material well before the lights come back on. There are a lot of sight gags involving tennis balls and a revolving closet. The second act picks up, though, as Henry’s world slowly disintegrates, and his anguish and helplessness break through his stiff-collared façade. Everyone, however, is more or less guilty, and more or less doomed; as one character remarks, “The evil inside matches the evil outside.” Hell, in short, meets us halfway because we traverse the other half, and those more nimble than Henry will not escape judgment much longer.
The players are uniformly capable, and their sinuous physicality reminds one of Grotowski’s Polish theater of the sixties’60s, with its emphasis on acting through the body. Hell Meets Henry Halfway won an Obie in New York after premiering at Philadelphia’s 2004 Live Arts Festival, and toured internationally. It is good to have Pig Iron back home— the company was founded here in 1995— and good to have Drexel’s Mandell Theater, one of the city’s most capacious, put to serious professional use. Hell Meets Henry has its longueurs and shows its age, or at any rate Gombrowicz’s, but it dances over an abyss that is perennially with us.
Pig Iron will return for a cabaret evening at the Rotunda on May 7, and for a final season production, Love Unpunished, starting June 1.
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