THE BAY AT NICE
The premises of both plays are certainly serviceable enough for coffee-table drama. In The Bay at Nice the 1956 acquisition by the Leningrad Art Museum of a painting that may or may not be an unfinished masterpiece by the late Henri Matisse results in the summoning of Valentina Nrovka, formerly a student of Matisse’s, to identify it. This errand also provides the occasion for her daughter, Sophia, to announce her intention to leave her boring bureaucrat husband for a lover twice her age and half her social equal (Peter is 63 and works for the department of sanitation). Valentina, after fondly recalling her flamboyant youth as an art student in Paris, dogmatically advises Sophia and Peter to abandon their romantic fancies of freedom and self-fulfillment. “What’s involved in facing up to being an adult is sacrifice and discipline,” she declares, citing her decision to give up her own career as an artist and return to Russia with her fatherless child. “Freedom . . . I never called it principle. I called it selfishness.” When Sophia is determined to proceed, Valentina reluctantly allows her daughter to embrace her and asks to have the grandchildren come and visit her.
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But technique can only stretch so far. In spite of the hard work of an excellent cast and technical staff, the nebulousness of Hare’s epistemology leaves us oddly empty upon leaving the theater–however entertained we may have been moments earlier. Out of sight, out of mind.
