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Past Reviews Off Broadway Reviews |
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For whatever other problems may exist in the script and in Mark Brokaw's production, at least that makes sense. In his iconic Uncertainty Principle, Heisenberg posited that there is no way to absolutely determine both the position and the velocity of an object at the same time. In other words, you can never be sure of precisely where something else is, or where it's going. Could there be a more apt metaphor for a relationship, particularly one that's built on the rocky foundation of pure chance? Not for the relationship that develops between Georgie (Parker) and Alex (Arndt), at any rate. They meet at a London train station and strike up... well, not a conversation exactly, but whatever it is that passes for an exchange between two strangers who want to say as much as they can without saying anything. Alex, 75, tries to avoid contact, to keep himself closed off. On the other hand, the American Georgie, who's in her early 40s, is intent on connecting, to the point that she introduces herself by kissing him on the back of the neck. She's a spur-of-the-moment-type gal, this one, who swears every other word ("I have a complete inability to control my own language," she says) and tells intensely personal stories that paint her as a victim of tragedy and loneliness who needs someone's—anyone's—help. But are those stories true? It depends on what and when she's asked. Georgie has a remarkable act for making everything sound real, or maybe just equally real, so separating the fact from the fiction is not easy. Is her husband dead, or merely out of her life? Was she married at all? Does she have a 19-year-old son who refuses to see her or acknowledge her existence, and if so, is he now living in America? If he is, what does that mean for her if she's determined to try to find him? For that matter, what does it mean for Alex? He's the polar opposite, you see. He invests each of the comparatively few words he utters with absolute conviction, meaning that when he waxes nostalgic about the girl who got away many decades earlier, laments the death of the sister who died and changed the course of his life, or haltingly admits his affections for Georgie as they develop across a series of increasingly improbable "chance" meetings, they must be taken more seriously. Opposites do indeed attract—there's real chemistry between Alex and Georgie, though the former does everything he can to tamp it down—but when uncontrollable feelings must turn into actions, which one of them has the upper hand? Stephens, who's had a few plays produced Off-Broadway (including Harper Regan and Punk Rock) but is best known for the current Broadway hit The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, keeps that question compelling enough across most of the 90-minute running time. Though things don't ever get exciting in the traditional sense, there's an undeniable pull from the tangle of lies and truths that emerges from between Georgie and Alex, as well as wondering how (or if) it will all play out. And when things get genuinely tender, as they do at the emotional midpoint (set, as you may expect, in a bedroom), Stephens anchors things well before showing how even intimacy is no barrier against what these two are or are not willing and able to say to each other. So convincingly defined are the characters in this way that the flaws that orbit them stand out more than they might otherwise. Though Georgie is written with great verve, there's a hollowness about her that leapfrogs over playful and skirts the irritating; it's seldom evident why, other than intrigue, lust, or perhaps merely circumstance, Alex puts up with her in the first place, when most of her behavior approximates some form of psychological torture. Nor does she quite sound like the culture-clashing American she's supposed to be ("I can read you like a flipping book," she says at one point), and with her breathless, over-antic performance, Parker really is trying far too hard, and inefficiently, to compensate. (She also appeared to be having difficulty with her lines at the performance I attended.) And the ending, if not necessarily unsatisfying, is abrupt, bringing an end to the characters' story before a natural, comfortable stopping point has been reached. Given the play's scientific underpinnings, this isn't entirely beside the point; it is, after all, Georgie's argument that life should be lived in the now, as there's no way to predict when it will end. Arndt beautifully shows the process at which Alex arrives at this understanding, letting us see as he slowly morphs from an undeniably old man into one brimming with life, all because his new friend has forced him beyond his comfort zone. Yet Arndt keeps the pain palpable throughout, too, keeping at the forefront the sobering realization that maybe this man has a right to be wary: He's already lost so much, why risk opening his heart for something else that can't work in the long run because the situation has no long-run potential? We need just as rich a portrayal from Parker, and we don't get it—her Georgie is mischievous but not much more, when we need to better understand why her nonstop phase-shifting is actually more than just a tactic to get what she can't admit she wants (or even why it isn't more than a tactic). Brokaw's lean direction doesn't amplify or clarify matters; from the casual sparring-match pacing and face-off staging to the design (most notably Mark Wendland's sterile, black-operating-theater set, with the audience positioned stadium-style on two sides of the action, and Donald Holder's cool lighting), it largely just restates the underlying notion that this is a realm in which anything can happen. Nice as it is to be set constantly on your toes by such a message, Stephens could go much further in showing us what it means and why, not just whetting our appetites and then pulling away the feast. Heisenberg may celebrate the myriad ways in which we can never really know for certain everything we think should about the people closest to us, but the play would be better off if it gave us something more concrete to believe in.
Heisenberg
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