THREE REVIEWS OF "THE BEAR"/"AFTERPLAY"
 
'The Bear' lumbers happily along, but 'Afterplay' stirs only puzzlement
By JEFFREY DAY
Staff Writer

One of the most talked-about performances at this year's Spoleto Festival USA is the
double bill of one-act plays, Anton Chekhov's comedy "The Bear" and Brian Friel's
"Afterplay," which revisits two of Chekhov's characters 20 years later.

Directed by Robin LaFevre, the production originated early this year at Dublin's Gate
Theatre.

"Afterplay" marks the American theater debut of John Hurt, known for movie roles.

Although connected by Chekhov, the two are very different plays and a rather
unwieldy coupling.

"The Bear" knows exactly what it is: a broad, short and delightful comedy. The director
and actor work it out with elan.

"Afterplay" might be the start of a terrific full-length play or a successful even shorter
piece. As it is, it is neither terrific nor successful.

In "The Bear," the young widow Elena (Elisabeth Dermot Walsh) dons black after her
husband's death a year earlier, vowing never again to leave the house, to prove her love
to her late mate, who she admits was cruel and unfaithful.

Into her home bursts Gregory(Brendan Coyle), "The Bear" of the title, who has come to
collect a debt. He refuses to leave, even when she orders her faithful, feisty and frail
manservant Luka to eject the beast. Luka (Eamon Morrissey) looks incapable of tossing
a small cat.

Gregory says he'll stay until he's paid. He takes off his shoes, sets his eye on a young
maid in the garden and puts the vodka bottle to his lips.

Elena's fierce resistance and insults, rather than offending Gregory, ignite his passions.

The three cast members perform brilliantly.

The dark-haired, porcelain-skinned Walsh is convincing and cunning as the dark,
brooding, immature, vain and suddenly hot widow.

She can whisper and she can shout, and by midway through she's pretty good gripping
a gun.

Morrissey nearly steals the show with his remarkable physical inhabitation of old Luka.

With the constant shouting and macho posturing Gregory requires, Brendan Coyle
hasn't quite as interesting a role, but he blusters very well.

Overall it's a nearly perfect performance of this early Chekhov play.

"Afterplay" is a more complex undertaking that leaves one with the feeling that Friel
wrote too much or too little.

Sonya (Penelope Wilton) and Andrey (John Hurt) meet in a dingy Moscow teahouse.

She's absent-mindedly shuffling reams of paper when he strolls in, wearing a
weather-beaten tux and carrying a violin case beneath his arm. They trade small talk.

As they continue, we learn that Sonya is the niece of the uncle in Chekhov's "Uncle
Vanya," and Andrey, the brother in his "Three Sisters," two plays set at the start of the
20th century.

It isn't necessary to know those plays to get what "Afterplay" offers, but it certainly
helps because that is one of the most fascinating parts of the play, the stories about
those earlier characters and what has become of them.

During the next hour, fables are told, slight flirtations engaged in, digressions taken,
truths revealed and addresses exchanged.

Wilton's performance of this idiosyncratic material is amazing. One moment she's
talking calmly, then she seems to have a momentary physical attack made physical by a
strange gesture that's both disturbing and hilarious.

Much of the time, Hurt is barely there, which doesn't seem to be Friel's intention. At the
Sunday afternoon show, his performance appeared entirely perfunctory.

The two plays run through the end of the festival, June 9, at the Dock Street Theatre.
 

         

 Fri, May 31, 2002
DOUBLE TAKE: Brian Friel's one-act plays shine at Spoleto
By Ken Keuffel
JOURNAL ARTS REPORTER

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Theater at this year's Spoleto Festival USA is off to a splendid
beginning - thanks to a living Irish playwright's intriguing take on a late Russian's
masterful work.

Born in 1929, Brian Friel has done as much as anyone to keep Ireland's rich tradition in
theater strong. He has written prolifically since the 1960s, with such plays as
Philadelphia, Here I Come! and Faith Healer enjoying critical success on New York
stages. 

In Two Plays After, which is receiving its American premiere at the Dock Street
Theatre, he once again finds inspiration in Anton Chekhov (1872-1937), whose works he
has translated and/or adapted for many years. Two Plays showcases Friel's
considerable range. Two very different one-act plays are presented: a loose, often
hilarious translation of The Bear, which was first produced in 1888, and Afterplay, a
more serious and multi-layered work that revisits the lives of two characters from as
many plays.

In The Bear, Gregory Stepanovitch Smirnov (Brendan Coyle) shows up at the home of
the recently widowed Elena Ivanova Popova (Elisabeth Dermot Walsh), who resolves
to stay faithful to her late husband, even though he was an incorrigible womanizer.
Luka (Eamon Morrissey) tries in vain to persuade Popova to stop grieving and to get on
with her life. 

Almost immediately, we get the feeling that she will. The handsomely bearish Smirnov
has come to collect a debt, which Popova rather angrily refuses to pay. When Popova's
anger turns Smirnov on, we sense that a severe meltdown of her frigid ways is only a
matter of time. The performances, though, are convincing, making what would
otherwise be predictable seem engaging. Expect plenty of unbridled sexuality and
earthy humor.

Afterplay, which is performed after an intermission, makes the most lasting impression.
It features Penelope Wilton, a star of many London and New York productions, and
John Hurt, an Oscar nominee (Midnight Express and The Elephant Man) who is making
his American stage debut. 

Wilton plays Sonya Serebriakova, from Uncle Vanya. Hurt plays Andrey Prozorov,
who originally appeared in Three Sisters. Afterplay imagines these characters in a
chance encounter at a cafe - 20 years after their fictional lives ended. Sonya, in Friel's
play, is in her 40s, and Andrey is in his 50s.

Nothing much happens in Afterplay, and yet everything happens over the course of an
evening's conversation. Initially, both characters tell lies, especially Prozorov, who has
just finished a hard day's work as a musician on Moscow's streets. He lies about his
work, saying he's violinist in the pit for a production of La Boheme; about his wife, who
actually left him; and about his son, who has landed in jail. 

As Friel writes in program notes, Andrey is "still an only boy, confused, motherless,
reared in a remote provincial town by a domineering father and three restless sisters."
Sonya is still wrestling with a difficult estate and is still in love with a local doctor. It
helps to know this, to have read the Chekhov plays, but it's not absolutely essential to
our appreciation of Afterplay.

Something about the encounter forces each character to peel away layers of deceit,
resulting in increasing degrees of intimacy and insight. As in life, there is no tidy
ending. The characters exchange addresses, promise to write and make noises about
meeting again and not meeting again.

It's a rare and risky way to write a play, but thanks to Friel's script - as well as Wilton's
and Hurt's convincing realization of it - it comes off.


THEATER
Spoleto doubles your pleasure
LAWRENCE TOPPMAN

CHARLESTON - We go to Spoleto Festival USA for two kinds of satisfaction: excellence
of a level we seldom see in our hometowns, or one-of-a-kind epiphanies that reveal the
world anew.

This year, the festival provided both. Brian Friel's "Two Plays After" was a conventional
experience of uncommon quality. "Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries" is an
unconventional adaptation of biblical stories that will shoot electricity down the spines
of believers and unbelievers alike.

Friel, known for "Dancing at Lughnasa" and "Molly Sweeney," also frequently adapts
Russian literature, and "Two Plays After" -- unrelated one-acts, set in 1890 and the 1920s
-- pays tribute to melancholy Anton Chekhov.

The first play is Friel's colloquial, often vulgar version of "The Bear," Chekhov's
half-hour comedy about a landowner who woos a widow through bullying,
compliments and the grudging admission that she's his equal. (Only on that last basis,
Chekhov implies, can love survive.)

The Gate Theatre of Dublin, Ireland, has sent three regulars to Dock Street Theatre.
Brendan Coyle and Elisabeth Dermot Walsh leave strong impressions in the leads, and
Eamon Morrissey makes a real part out of the nondescript role of a servant.

Friel touches deeper emotions in the one-hour "Afterplay." Two characters from
Chekhov plays, Sonya of "Uncle Vanya" and Andrey of "Three Sisters," meet in a
dumpy cafe in Moscow, 20-odd years after we last "knew" them.

Both have fallen far short of expectations. He, once fawned over by siblings but married
to a wayward woman, is a violinist. She, once the prop of her extended family, presides
over a dwindling estate and longs pathetically for Astrov, the alcoholic doctor who
never understood her love.

Andrey and Sonya establish a tentative connection. But the sad ending, leavened with a
trace of hope, suggests the most terrible thing in life is to settle for misery without
striving for change.

John Hurt, Oscar-nominated for "Midnight Express" and "The Elephant Man," is
excellent as the absurd but uncomplaining Andrey. British actress Penelope Wilton is a
degree finer as Sonya, whose unfulfilled love is killing her but won't let her move on.