Lester is perfectly fine, has a perfect American accent and I guess its nice to see him in anything on our stages if he isn't doing Shakespeare here. A few of the supporting characters are very difficult to understand due to bad enunciation or hackneyed accents. But the play itself left a lot to be desired...
SPOILER ALERT
... starting with the hoary conceit of having the story bookended by a reporter's interview with Ian Aldredge, something that never is dramatic no matter what play this device is used in.
Also, there isn't anything particularly fresh or unique in retrodding cliche ridden scenes of actors displaying ego, vanity, pique, reactions to bad reviews or ham acting styles. The play has a lot of stage wait while we watch actors preen, and consequently we don't really get to know the heart and mind of Ian Aldridge. His life was extraordinarily rich and surprising as it is presented in the wonderful timeline of his life that is handed out in a brochure in the lobby. Here was a black actor who married a white woman after knowing her for just six weeks!! Holy cow, why wasn't that in the play?? What must that have been like in that time period? Yet the subject merits one line in the play when she shows up in his dressing room, and there is absolutely no reaction from anyone on stage when it is learned who she is. Totally phony and all to conviently avoided by the playwright. Later on in his life Aldridge slept around with other women, had a child by a mistress who he gave to his first wife to raise. None of that is mentioned in the play either, not even by Aldridge when he is recounting events in his life 20 years on... did his wife and children mean nothing to him? I felt the play, in an effort to declaim how important The Theatre Is, avoided human situations charged with conflict. Even the second act rupture with his French friend is not earned because we are told that they are extraordinarily close friends but it is an afterthought and coda to their lengthy argument about preserving the theatre. Perhaps these two guys were close friends, but we don't ever really see that before being told so by one of them. Where was the act one scene solidifying their commitment to play in London that is destroyed in act two.
Just shoddy playwrighting I felt, with a good lead performance.
|