PASSION PLAY
To expose these complications, Peter Nichols provides the husband and wife, James and Eleanor, with, well, not exactly alter egos, but ids, named Jim and Nell. Anyway, Jim and Nell have full license to say what goes on in James and Nell’s heads. This device allows for a good deal of comic interjection, particularly in the first act, when Jim has lines like, “Her tongue has been in my mouth.” In the second act, which is dreadfully serious, things get confused as all four characters start talking to each other, in various combinations, for no apparent reason except that the playwright was perhaps making an unnecessarily baroque metaphor of a marriage in chaos. More likely, Nichols sensed his dramatic gimmick wasn’t panning out, and so took refuge in the inscrutability of artsiness.
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Stephen Markle, as Jim, gives far and away the best performance. I’ve seen Markle in Houston as Cyrano and in Atlanta in a southern comedy of manners; here he proves to be an actor whose sense of play and ability to inhabit a drama have only increased with age. In contrast, David Darlow (as James) manages only the mannered husk of a character. I feel the same two ways about Nell (played by Janice St. John) and Eleanor (Holland Taylor), respectively. St. John’s performance has bite and self-assurance, and though Taylor’s subtle and accomplished enough in her way, she strikes me as a veteran of large Equity stages whose performance boils down to knowing how to shout and seem like she’s talking. Seanna McKenna (as Kate) seems altogether miscast, and tries to make up for it with the hard-sell sex appeal of a PR agent who’s very glad to meet you. As for the ensemble, there’s no chemistry whatsoever, whether sexual, emotional, or psychological.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Chuck Osgood.
