After a long hiatus, playwright Michael Weller has returned to the stage with two plays, Beast at the New York Theatre Workshop and Fifty Words presented by Manhattan Class Company at the Lucille Lortel. It's always heartening to have an intelligent writer back in the theatre fold, but was the hiatus worth it? Decide for yourself.
Review
Beast
New York Theatre Workshop
October 3, 2008
Morgan Wycks
mwycks@nyconstage.org
Beast pretends to be an anti-war play but I didn't buy it. Every scene is pure cliché from its opening to its closing, and its theme that the ravages of war turn soldiers into beasts is pretty tired - Full Metal Jacket anyone? I'm all for works about wars' barbaric destruction of things mental, physical and spiritual but Mr. Weller doesn't present any new insights or take us anywhere but to the obvious. How many times have we seen the following scenes: combat friend (in this case a one-armed Jimmy) wailing beside the coffin which holds his colleague (in this case the burned and mutilated Benjamin) just before its transport (There is a surprise here in that Benjamin isn't dead, but the revelation is ludicrous.); arms dealer entrepreneur who has the power to get Ben and Jimmy out of the country is rotten to the core and does evil things; Benjamin, with Jimmy in tow, visits his wife only to find her with another man. And the list goes on. There is one original set-up in which a pimp who specializes in servicing maimed and disfigured combatants provides Benjamin and Jimmy with blind prostitutes. Initially one thinks this might go somewhere but actually ends up with the same old dialogue we've heard before where one hooker wonders at length if she's pretty and Jimmy freaks out when being touched.
It doesn't help that the performers don't or can't go beyond the material. Corey Stoll as Benjamin is hampered by his golem-like prosthetic mask and resulting growly voice. His progression from man to beast is more than a foregone conclusion. As his buddy, Jimmy, the once promising actor Logan Marshall-Green just seems to get phonier with each subsequent performance. Here he takes on not only a character we've seen hundreds of times but presents him as merely an idea with annoying energy. Dan Butler must do double duty as the black market entrepreneur and, in the ridiculous final scene, as President Bush. He can't be blamed for trying. Though possibly an impossible task, the text cannot find a cohesive tone under Jo Bonney's direction. At least Eugene Lee's set as lighted by David Lander gives us something to appreciate.
Most people are angry about the current war and a play like Mr. Weller's emphatically reminds us just what a mess it is, but I don't think this was the intentional means to that end.
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