IN THE SHADOW OF A SMILE
But sometimes such exposure only serves to make clear the artist’s confusion and undermines his intent. Adam Langer’s new play In the Shadow of a Smile, disarmingly subtitled “a play about exposures,” presents images of voyeurism, violence, and pornography. But watching the play didn’t teach me anything about the social ills it addresses; instead, it seemed to expose a playwright as insensitive to these issues as the characters in his play.
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Flynn’s picture-taking is symbolic of his desire to control and dominate Sara. If he can flatten her out into a photograph, he won’t have to put up with her mood swings and she’ll always be there for him. His need to control her, to reduce her to a fantasy, is so strong that he spends a lot of time inventing the perfect way to murder her.
The play is told mostly from Flynn’s point of view. Such a tactic might have been quite powerful if that point of view were constantly held in question, the technique that made Bob Fosse’s Star 80 so powerful; we sympathized with Eric Roberts’s violently misogynistic character even as we hated him. Flynn, like every other character in Langer’s play, is sketchily drawn and doesn’t grow an inch. He’s despicable, but we just don’t care enough about him to feel either hate or sympathy; if anything, we end up thinking he’s a little on the tormented side but basically just one of us–something we never feel about Eric Roberts in Star 80. It’s almost as if Langer can’t decide what he wants us to feel about Flynn. And more importantly, he hasn’t clarified his own feelings for Flynn.
What frustrated me most about this production was the talent evident onstage. All of the actors are sensitive, intelligent performers; Horsley is particularly strong, with a comfortably grounded presence and a keen intuitive sense. They either don’t see the misogyny in the show that I see, or they see something I missed.
