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Intiman's Sher shines off-Broadway with 'Waste'
Tuesday, March 14, 2000
By JEFFREY ERIC JENKINS
NEW YORK -- Have you heard this one?
An idealistic politician on the verge of great works finds himself distracted by an eager young woman. One is married, the other is not. After their brief dalliance, his promising career is derailed -- as is his brilliant plan for sweeping reforms.
No, you're not about to have an attack of "Clinton fatigue."
The tale under consideration is an early 20th-century play by Harley Granville Barker. Although Barker's work spanned a vastly different era, he has a felicitous interpreter in director Bartlett Sher, who staged the current production of Barker's "Waste" at off-Broadway's American Place Theatre under the auspices of Theatre for a New Audience.
Sher, who recently assumed the artistic helm of the Intiman Theatre Company, is a well-regarded young theater artist about whom the great English director Sir Peter Hall has said, "He combines a wonderful American instinct with a positively European respect for text."
When "Waste" first bowed in 1907, Barker's tale of sex and politics -- and sexual politics -- was denied a license by England's official censor. The examiner undoubtedly objected to the way Barker laid bare the machinations of government as much as to the story of lust gone awry.
Waste. By Harley Granville Barker. Theatre for a New Audience at the American Place Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., New York City. Closes April 2. Tickets $10-$25; 800-432-7250.
Henry Trebell, a model of political rectitude (and private passion) as intensely played by Byron Jennings, is driven to disestablish the Church of England so that the church's assets may be used for the good of the state.
The force of Henry's arguments and his devotion to using the assets for education hold great sway. An independent, he is co-opted by the Conservative government and about to be made a Cabinet minister when the shocking aftereffect of his affair with a married woman becomes public knowledge. At that point, idealism goes out the window and politics-as-usual rules the day.
His erstwhile lover, Amy O'Connell (Kristin Flanders), trapped in an unhappy marriage to an Irish Catholic (scandalous enough in upper-class English society), finds herself pregnant with Henry's child after the affair has ended. She confronts Henry and finds him remote and distracted by his one true love, politics.
Is "Waste" patent melodrama or fine art? Probably neither. Although we can practically hear the clicking of the gears of Barker's dramaturgy, the play (and the production) has more than a few satisfactions. Highest among them is the playwright's interweaving of women's place in the political landscape and his probity regarding the meaning of "waste" in Edwardian society. May a woman's tragic loss be mourned as deeply as that of a man's?
From the opening scene, it is more than clear that politically sophisticated, well-educated women may only prod their husbands onward to achieve conservative goals. When Lady Julia (Pamela Nyberg) -- a cross between Hedda Gabler and Lady Macbeth, without the murderous streak -- states that she has never spoken in public there is almost a hint of pride in her voice. Yet, she is clearly the brains (and energy) behind her doltish husband, George (Bill Buell).
Throughout the play women use their charms to spur men on to greater power and influence, which reflects brighter glory onto the women. Ironically, the one man whom all the women seem to respect, Henry, is the one least susceptible to their charms -- except for one fateful moonlit night in an English garden.
However, Henry is in love with ideas and he quickly loses interest in the married Amy, which leads first to her downfall and then to his.
With its taut acting and spare, flexible scene design by John Arnone, "Waste" is an engrossing three hours that, despite its dramatic structure, has not gone out of date. Men still pursue careers -- in politics and otherwise -- to the exclusion of all else. And women continue to struggle for parity -- political, financial and otherwise. Director Sher also invites us to ask: What, in the intervening century, has been wasted?
Recently featured on the cover of "American Theatre" magazine as a "face to watch for this turn-of-the-century season," Sher is set to direct a major theatrical project -- based on the medieval mystery cycles and featuring a cast of more than 100 -- in collaboration with the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis this summer.
If there had been a list of theatrical "faces to watch for" a century ago in England, playwright Barker's surely would have been among them. It's appropriate, then, that Sher has chosen a work by the English writer as one of his final forays in free-lance directing.
Whether Sher will ultimately match Barker's historical significance is unimportant and unfair to consider. For now, it's enough to know that the Intiman's artistic legacy appears to be in competent, intelligent hands.
Jeffrey Eric Jenkins is a New York-based theater writer for the P-I. He can be reached at 718-789-5553 or by e-mail at Crritic@compuserve.com
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