'Scenes from a Marriage' and 'Love Letters'

Two compelling plays opened last week that dispute those lovely lyrics.

Scenes from a Marriage, Ingmar Bergman’s acclaimed 1973 television miniseries and film, has been reconceived for the stage by the daring director Ivo van Hove. If ever there were a challenge to that sugary stanza above, this is it.

Known for breaking down classical texts, here van Hove breaks down the institution of marriage, as well as the physical walls of the New York Theatre Workshop, where his marathon 3-1/2 hour production is being staged. The theater’s interior has been gutted and reconfigured into three mini-theaters with a common space between them. Before entering, the audience is divided into three groups, each of which will see scenes from the marriage of Johan and Marianne — played simultaneously/continuously by three different pairs of actors — in each of the three performance spaces during Act I. These scenes represent three chapters of a long-term marriage, so you might see them in or out of order, depending on your group.

“I’m capable of love . . . ”

In the first scene, we see Johan and Marianne, who’ve just been written up in a popular magazine for their “ideal marriage”: two young professionals on an upward trajectory of success and connubial bliss. But is it all that perfect? Apparently it is, at least in contrast to their friends Peter and Katrina, who are locked in a miserable marriage on the brink of self-destruction. But when Marianne announces that she’s pregnant, she doesn’t get the response she’d hoped for from Johan. Are there cracks in the smooth surfaces? As doubts begin to cloud those clear marital skies, Marianne’s question hangs in the air with a Cassandra-like prophesy: “Do you think it’s possible for people to spend their whole lives together?”

Moving into a new space for the second scene, we see Johan and Marianne some years later played by another pair of actors. While their marriage is functional, we see them struggling to balance work, children, family obligations, friends, social pressures, and at the same time keep their sex life from stagnating. What outlets do they have for intimacy and creativity? Johan (a professor) writes poetry but is afraid to show it to Marianne, for fear of her criticism. Marianne can’t get the support of the complacent Johan to stand up to her demanding mother so that they can spend time alone. Meanwhile, Marianne (a divorce lawyer) is haunted by the words of one of her clients: “I’m capable of love, but it’s like it’s in a locked room. . . .” The cracks are widening.

In the third scene, played in yet another space with yet another pair of actors, the previously easy-going Johan makes a shattering announcement. He’s met Paula, he’s taken a sabbatical, and he and his lover are leaving for Paris the following morning. “I want to disappear. . .dematerialize,” he explains to Marianne, who is so stunned that she actually offers to pack for him and pick up his dry cleaning. Desperate, she telephones friends, only to learn that they’ve known along.

Asynchronous simulaneity

The story may sound familiar, but it’s the way in which van Hove has staged it that makes it so arresting and new. As you sit in one room listening to an individual “scene from a marriage,” you can see through the set into a common space, as actors gather from the other two rooms where different scenes are simultaneously unfolding before other audience groups. Moreover, you can actually hear the dialogue from the other scenes from a marriage while you’re watching your own — dialogue you may have heard before or are about to hear. The cumulative effect is powerful, and soon you find yourself thinking about your own marriage (or relationship) — past, present, and future.

After an intermission, during which the walls of these four rooms are broken down, you reenter the theater as a united audience to watch a stunning Act Two in a unified playing space. It includes the couple’s inevitable divorce, followed by a dramatic reversal I won’t reveal. For this denouement, van Hove assembles his entire cast, so you have three sets of couples acting Johan and Marianne’s final scenes simultaneously. It’s a unique coup de théâtre that will leave you exhilarated from its insights as well as theatrical ingenuity.

“Do you think that two people who live together can really be honest with each other?” Marianne’s question resonates in the final moments of these mesmerizing scenes that dig deeper into the mysteries of marriage than almost any modern work I’ve encountered.

So far and yet so near

Uptown on Broadway, another play is plumbing the fathomless depths of love and marriage in a diametrically opposite way. Instead of 3-1/2 hours of immersion, A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters lasts a mere ninety minutes and offers no theatrics whatsoever, just two actors sitting side by side at a desk, reading letters written over a period of 50 years.

But oh, what letters, and oh, what actors. Andy and Melissa’s story — stories — begin in grade school, where they met, and last a lifetime, during which they grow up, go separate ways, marry others, have families and professions, and experience separate triumphs, defeats, joys, and tragedy. Their parallel lives intersect only briefly, but their lifelong bond resonates with a passion and a fidelity that match any long-term marriage. “I know you more from your letters than I do from seeing you in person,” says Andy. “I feel like a true lover when I’m writing you. . . . [My letter is a] present of myself to you. It’s me.”

The performance that I saw in this luminous production, skillfully directed by Gregory Mosher, featured a stalwart Brian Dennehy and a remarkable Mia Farrow giving the stage performance of her career. (The casts will rotate in the months ahead.)

“You’re all I have left,” says Melissa. Doesn’t that say it all about love, or marriage, or both?

Above right: Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy take their opening-night curtain call. (Photo © David Gordon via theatermania.com)