FringeReview UK 2024

Here in America

Orange Tree Theatre

Genre: American Theater, Biographical Drama, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre Richmond

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

Art keeps intoning the play’s title “Here in America” like a nagging leitmotif we’re likely to forget; till finally his “brother” Gadj takes it up, acknowledging something. If in The Crucible Arthur Miller could equate the McCarthyite witch-hunts with the Salem witch trials of 1692, perhaps David Edgar in Here in America can, on a more modest scale, invoke those fraught times in 1952 with post-truth.

Directed at the Orange Tree by James Dacre till October 19^th Edgar’s play takes as its kernel those three pages in Miller’s 1987 autobiography Timebends and amplifies that meeting with Elia Kazan, the director of genius who helped Miller to fame. Kazan or “Gadj” – his nickname for fixing anything theatrical – confesses he will testify to House UnAmerican Activities and name former Communist comrades.  Like Art the resourceful son of immigrants (indeed an actual immigrant at four) he desperately wants Art’s nod, if not blessing.

Gadg (Shaun Evans) and Art (Michael Aloni, making a remarkable stage debut) are joined by Gadj’s wife Day (Faye Castlelow) and sometimes avatar, sometimes real Miss Bauer (Jasmine Blackborow) who’s more recognizable as Marilyn Monroe, and, finally someone else. Blackborow slides in and out of each man’s memory, taking up residence as quasi-psychoanalyst, cheerleader, even antagonist. Just occasionally she slides into real time, meeting Castlelow’s Day.

Edgar knowingly pivots on Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon and James Graham’s Best of Enemies, both of which he mentions in interview.  But there’s a witty nod to Terry Johnson’s quartet Insignificance, with one character in common, and perhaps most of all Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen.

It even feels a bit Copenhagen at first. Opening in 1963, Miller (or Art) and Kazan (Gadj) meet at Miller’s insistence in a park: in a kind of stand-off, Art asks his old friend, not seen for 10 years, whether he likes his new play After the Fall. Gadj knows what it’s about. We’re spun back to 1952 and mostly stay there, apart from a moment when three characters sashay between the HUAC testimony and the years leading up to 1963.

Edgar’s drama moves in solid time with Castlelow present, and slithers in imaginaries whenever Blackborow emerges, literally using Monroe as a figure leading fantasy, rather than just fantasy figure. It takes a mercurial shift from Blackborow’s main persona to inquisitor, supporter, another character she emerges as, and registers of parody or hard reflection.

Castlelow’s Day (Molly Day Kazan) is constrained and moves in verticals and occasionally cruciform horizontals with a gesture. Day is wholly loyal, indeed drives Kazan’s self-justifications. At first there’s badinage about capitalism, where all seem curiously on the same Left page. Which given the moment is surprising. Castlelow though drives the question and Edgar give her some of the subtlest, as well as (drawing on Timebends) some of the more desperate lines, like the Electrician’s Union being run by Communists.

Yet privileged New Englander Day is someone whom Miller recalls as having a preternatural ability to spot when a dramatist veers from their theme for a moment, her last act was to write an acclaimed poem on JFK’s death. Castlelow captures Day’s steel-rimmed mind.

There’s a delicious touch too, when Art comes across the new game they’re playing, of which he’s never heard, Scrabble. He immediately infuriates with a double word-score.

Aloni is supple and querulous as the probing Miller, more effective than any HUAC bully at getting under Gadj’s skin, or Day’s for that matter. Both nervous with an appalled sense of how HUAC is destroying people turning (as Miller put it himself) loving couples into stony enemies, Aloni conducts Art’s sad electricity: the human cost, personal integrity, a tyranny as corrosive as neighbours denouncing each other. There’s an occasional accentual dip (Aundrea Fudge, the go-to voice and accent coach here, differentiates between Brooklyn and New England) but Art himself is moving, slowly, from east to west.

Evans playing a man of 43 and 53, captures Gadj’s self-justification and bluster mixed with sincerity; and fear of losing Art. And indeed art. Whilst Timebends relates a few stark exchanges with Day after that fateful admission of Art’s that he’s on his way to Salem – everyone instantly knows what that means – Edgar extends the implications and arguments. Evans who conveys the mild faux outrage of Gadj, opens out into appalled glances, a stillness that’s palpable because it verges on a shudder of self-recognition. Not even Day can save him from that. There is though, a postlude far less-well known than it might be. And that’s what 1963 is about. It suggests a reset.

Simon Kenny’s set evokes details of the Kazan’s interior, with tiny details since as a script title After the Fall. He’s left the starring role to Charles Balfour’s lighting. An uplighter on occasion blasts stars through the stage floor. There’s large projections of time and date on the balconies on occasion, and an arc-light effect of interrogation-cum-footlights. Valgeir Sigurosson’s dark music, modulated by Bella Kear never overpowers.

“I didn’t leave the left, it left me.” Kazan’s argument neatly parodies those on the right and left excluded from whatever Left is dominant. It’s a truism more celebrated in the UK than the US. Since Miller too found more acclaim in the UK latterly, it might seem appropriate.  Scars ran deep though. When in 1999, nearing 90, Kazan was honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Academy, half cheered, half remained stony in their seats: protesters for and against crowded outside. Miller endorsed the award, though didn’t attend.

Though Edgar orchestrates a brief meeting into much of the 90 minutes playing time, with all possible expositions scorched like diagonals in a dry-run for a courtroom drama, it’s a necessary compulsion. And, after an absence from theatre for a while with two plays premiering within a month of each other (The New Real premieres at the RSC next month) a must-see.

Writer David Edgar, Director James Dacre, Set and Costume Designer Simon Kenny Lighting Designer Charles Balfour, Composer Valgeir Sigurosson, Sound Designer Bella Kear, Casting Director Matilda James CDG, Voice and Dialect Coach Aundrea Fudge, Creative Consultant Raphael Martin, Costume Supervisor Lara Rushton, Assistant Director Fiona Munro,  Casting Assistant Ella Donaldson, Historical Consultant Christopher Bigsby, Wigs Supplier and Stylist Elizabeth Marini, Wigs Support Faye Booth

Production & Technical Director Phil Sell, Production Technician Priya Virdee, CSM Jade Gooch, DSMs Lizzi Adams, Honor Klein, ASM Nancy O’Melia, Production Electrician Chris Galler, Lead Scenic Artist Anita Gander, Scenic Artist Sophie Firth

Published September 24, 2024September 25, 2024 by Simon Jenner