| My review of TIME AND THE CONWAYS: Elizabeth McGovern stars in J. B. Priestley’s time-piece | |
| Posted by: jesse21 12:23 pm EDT 10/10/17 | |
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| - There’s a pervasive feeling watching Time and the Conways that you’ve heard the same veddy British drawing-room chatter many times over on the likes of “Masterpiece Theatre.” To add to the impression, the Roundabout Theatre Company has imported the expatriate American actress Elizabeth McGovern, best known as Lady Cora, chatelaine of Downton Abbey, to play the matriarch in this moldy 1937 drama by J. B. Priestley that opens tonight on Broadway. In a program note, Todd Haines, the Roundabout’s artistic director, writes that the play “is more relevant today than ever.” Maybe he confused it with Stephen Daldry’s hit revival of Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (London 1992; Broadway 1994) which actually had resonance. Back in 1937 at its London premiere, Time and the Conways offered, among other things in its dual time frames, a state-of-England theme contrasting 1919 post-World War II idealism with complacency leading to dissipation as the then present threat of German fascism and war loomed on the horizon. Today, are we supposed to substitute the alt-right for Nazis? But really, it is a stretch to attempt to make such resonant connections with our current state from this play and this production. Or if we view the play from the standpoint of the family’s greed and self-absorption that results in eventual loss as a cautionary tale for our times, well, that is common to all eras as in “So what else is new.” However, the main feature of the play, besides class-conscious England and family squabbles, is Priestley’s typical philosophical consideration on the meaning of time that’s based on J.W. Dunne’s Serialism theories where time is not linear but something abstract that incorporates past, present and future. The notion comes alive in this production’s most creative contribution: Neil Patel’s scenic design. Rather than having an intermission in this three-act play between the first act (set in 1919) and the second eighteen years later, a duplicate living room (but redecorated) as seen in Act One is lowered onto the stage while the 1919-furnished one slides into the background behind a scrim where we can see one of the six Conway siblings, Carol (Anna Baryshnikov), who didn’t live to have a role in Act Two. That scenic transformation is more interesting than the dialogue. In Act One, Mrs. Conway (Elizabeth McGovern) is throwing a high- spirited 21st-birthday party for another of her four daughters, Kay (Charlotte Parry). The act brims with prospects of bright futures, happiness and success for the well-to-do Conway brood. Besides Carol and Kay, the other two sisters are Hazel (Anna Camp) and Madge (Brooke Bloom). The brothers are Alan (Gabriel Ebert) and Robin (Matthew James Thomas). Eighteen years later in Act Two, things haven’t turned out very well. The family solicitor (Alfredo Narciso) informs Mrs. Conway that her finances are a mess and that she no longer can keep the house. Daughter Kay, who dreamed of becoming a novelist, is now a journalist. Madge, originally a social and political reformer, has lost her mission. Hazel is unhappily married to Earnest (Steven Boyer), a successful businessman who seems to have sadistically wed her to get back at the family who looked down on his lower social status. Robin, golden boy soldier-come-home-from-the-war in the first act and always Mrs. Conway’s favorite, has become an alcoholic traveling salesman who won (or can’t) help his mother in her financial crisis, and is estranged from his wife Joan (Cara Ricketts). That second act is a fierce shake-up following the dreary first act, and is by far the best part of Time and the Conways. There is tension and recrimination and dramatic shouting. Elizabeth McGovern is at her best here when she gets angry. The actors are generally good under the direction of Rebecca Taichman who won a Tony last June for directing Indecent. Charlotte Parry has the dominant role as Kay who always appears in the play’s pivotal moments. Her dreams of becoming a successful novelist have failed, but she is an independent woman and, unlike most of the others, she knows where she stands and how she still may be able to change. Of the ten actors, Gabriel Ebert turns in the play’s best performance as the nerdy Alan who has admittedly no ambition and is intent on remaining a clerk for the rest of his life. Yet he is a philosopher and it is left for Alan to deliver Priestley’s message at the end of Act Two. In a monologue (addressed to Kay), he explains in detail Dunne’s Serialism theory. But, alas, even as gifted an actor as Ms. Ebert cannot make that speech sound entirely like natural dialogue. Nor can Ms. Taichman entirely overcome the mechanics that drive the play. If interest peaks in the dynamic second act, then you’re let down again after the single intermission. Act Three takes us back to 1919 in an attempt to explore how the characters ended up the way they did almost two decades later. It is really a variation of points established in Act One and, frankly, comes off as just more drawing-room chit-chat. Time and the Conways was staged on Broadway in 1938, a year after its London premiere, with Dame Sybil Thorndike as Mrs. Conway and a 29-year-old Jessica Tandy as Kay. It lasted only 32 performances and hasn’t been seen on Broadway since. After watching the current revival, I certainly understand why. ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ - Jesse SIDEBAR: TIME AND THE CONWAYS opens Tuesday, October 10, 2017, at the American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street, New York City. A Roundabout Theatre Company production. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission. Acts One & Two: 1 hour, 23 minutes. Act Three: 41 minutes. Limited engagement. Tickets currently on sale through November 26, 2017. Link to website. - |
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