SEARCH CurtainUp
REVIEWS
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
LA/San Diego
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
On TKTS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
NYC Weather
Right You Are
|
. . .You're all so anxious to find out who other people are and what things are like, almost as if people and things were simply this way or that way --- Laudisi, explaining that he is a different person for each of the assembled relatives and neighbors, that person being based on their perception. |
Tony Randall as Lamberto Laudisi, Mirelle Enos as his niece Dina and, Penny Fuller as Amalia Agazzi
|
The spinmeistering of current news events, the rash of tabloid celebrity stories and TV reality shows make it ever more difficult to tell where truth lies. No wonder, that Tony Randall thought that Pirandello's own Right You Are, which makes a satirical case for truth being subjective and relative, would prove as apt and timely a revival for his National Actors Theatre as last season's superb production of The Persians. Unfortunately, as director Ethan McSweeney made Aeschylus's play soar, director Fabrizio Melano has done little to make Pirandello's farce gain altitude. His production moves at a snail's pace with the actors too often sitting and standing around as if in one of the operas he most frequently directs.
On the positive side we have Eric Bentley excellent translation which is colloquial but never slangy and captures the farcical flavor of a group of provincial gossips bent on pinning down the truth about the unconventional and mysterious behavior of a newly arrived government official, his mysteriously unseen wife and her mother. These players are not actors (as in Pirandelllo's most famous play, Six Characters In Search of an Author) but real and quite ordinary people. Since there are six principal gossips -- the Agazzis (Councillor Agazzi, his wife, daughter and brother-in-law) and their neighbors, Signor and Signora Signelli -- this might well be called Six People in Search of the Truth about Two Strangers. Except for Lamberto Laudini, the more open-minded Agazzi in-law and Pirandello's stand-in, the truth these characters seek is a logical, either/or truth. The truth the author, via Laudini, asks us to accept is one which separates reality from illusion and truth from fiction.
While The Persians evoked sharp parallels to world events, what we have here is an attempt to do the same for a drawing room fable. The sense of a too grand production can be attributed in part to the Michael Schimmel Center's imposing stage which is separated from the front row seats by the equivalent of about four rows and doesn't lend itself to intimate staging. Consequently, James Noone's black and white marble and mirrors set does rather aptly echo the sense of identities reflected and shattered in the mirror of perception (in fact "mirror theater" was a term often used in relation to Pirandello's work like Six Characters in Search of an Author). The set is also a more obvious reflection of the time shift from 1917, when the play was written, to Italy during the 1930s. All that's missing is for one of the two monster statues at either side of the set to be of Mussolini for us to hear the rumblings of facism in the various characters' demands to know the truth about their new neighbors' behavior as a way of protecting the conformity to accepted standards.
The situation that throws the assembled citizens into such a tizzy that the police commissioner and governor of the province must be brought in to help adjudicate the matter is this: Village newcomers Signor Ponza (Brennan Brown), his wife (Florencia Lozano) and mother-in-law, Signora Frola (Maria Tucci) have moved into separate establishments next door to his employer Councillor Agazzi (Henry Strozier). After Agazzi's wife (Penny Fuller) and daughter's (Mireille Enos) social overtures to Signora Frola are rejected, first the widow and then her son-in-law try to explain their behavior to the Agazzis, who are joined by their friends Signore and Signora Sirelli (Peter Maloney and Jurian Hughes) and several curious townspeople (Yolande Bavan and Natalie Norwick). The trouble is that each has a different explanation for Ponza's wife being locked up in the upstairs apartment, so that her mother's visits are restricted to her standing below the window where Senora Ponza stands as a shadowy figure.
Signora Frola, claims that Ponza, keeps her daughter a prisoner, but that she is a prisoner of love and not unhappy which is why she (Signora Frola) accepts this possessiveness as a weakness in her otherwise kind son-in-law. Ponza, on the other hand, states that his mother-in-law was maddened by her daughter's death in an earthquake and that the woman in the window is his seond wife, who has gone along with the pretense to keep the old woman from sinking deeper into madness. The earthquake which did or did not kill Signora Frola's daughter has also destroyed all records so that the truth of these stories is hard to pin down. Laudini is willing to see the " truth" in both stories but not so his relatives and the rest of the increasingly agitated friends and town folks. When, on the Governor's orders the mysterious Signora Ponzi is summoned, Laudini has the last laugh since the truth turns into a Pirandellian enigma.
Maria Tucci as Signora FrolaT
|
With many modern theater goers more familiar with what Pirandello stands for than his actual plays, it would be nice to have a more lively production of this rarely done play, more commonly known as (Right You Are (If You Think So). Too bad that the absence of the title tag, which so perfectly fits the Pirandellian you-be-the-judge ending, is the least of what's wrong with this Right You Are.
LINKS TO REVIEWS OF OTHER SHOWS MENTIONED
The Persians
| Right You Are
Written by Luigi Pirandello Translated by Eric Bentley Directed by Fabrizio Melano Cast: Yolande Bavan, Brennan Brown, Fred Burrell, Mireille Enos, Herb Foster, Penny Fuller, Peter Ganim, Jurian Hughes, Florencia Lozano, Peter Maloney, Natalie Norwick, Tony Randall, Henry Strozier, Maria Tucci. Set Design: James Noone. Costume Design: Noel Taylor Lighting Design: Kirk Bookman Sound Design: Richard Fitzgerald Running time: 90 minutes, plus one 15 minute intermission National Actors Theatre at Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University (Spruce Street between Park Row & Gold St) 212/239-6200 11/25/12/21/03; opening 12/07/03. Tue - Sat at 8pm; Sat & Sun at 3pm-- $60. Reviewed by Elyse Sommer based on December 5th press performance |
Mendes at the Donmar
Our Review
At This Theater
Leonard Maltin's 2003 Movie and Video Guide
Ridiculous!The Theatrical Life & Times of Charles Ludlam
Somewhere For Me, a Biography of Richard Rodgers
The New York Times Book of Broadway: On the Aisle for the Unforgettable Plays of the Last Century
6, 500 Comparative Phrases including 800 Shakespearean Metaphors by CurtainUp's editor.
Click image to buy.
Go here for details and larger image.
