GOOD REVIEW FOR THE SHOW I'M IN

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Cripple Creek scores again with 'Enemy'

Now, to close out its second season, comes Arthur Miller's 1950 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's 1882 "An Enemy of the People," which anticipated the environmental concerns of today and the ruthlessness of self-serving, greedy profiteers willing to demonize anyone with the courage to speak out against them. In other words, to speak the truth.

And

The biggest crook of them all is Stockmann's own brother, Peter, the mayor, who finds the concept of truth a quaint anachronism, peculiar to his sibling. All too quickly, Stockmann becomes an outcast, his livelihood, home and family threatened, with no honorable recourse but to stick to his guns and endure the pressure of "the solid majority."

That phrase is very close to Richard Nixon's "silent majority," applied in a 1969 speech to the president's conservative constituents in defense of the Vietnam War. It gives added resonance here, especially since Ron Reeder's portrayal of the mayor is chilly, unfeeling and decidedly Nixonian.

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So, the overall review is quite glowing, with compliments for virtually everyone involved in getting the production up and running. Clearly, the Picayune guy liked the show. However, this little bit about my own work in An Enemy of the People gave me some pause. That is, no actor who is serious about acting ever wants a performance to be described as "chilly" and "unfeeling"--the "Nixonian" adjective, on the other hand, is quite cool, for me of course, because I've always been fascinated by the man who occupied the White House when I first learned the concept of "President of the United States" as a little boy; "Nixonian" is fucking great, in fact.

But I digress.

When I first read the review, I was truly perplexed. Did the reviewer not notice my multiple temper tantrums? Did he not notice the glee and pleasure I was experiencing during the political debate where I trounce my tree-hugging brother? Did he not notice the tears I was choking on when I finally end my relationship with Doctor Stockman during the third act? "Unfeeling," indeed. I know that when I am on stage and acting I have to give the benefit of the doubt to viewers: an actor cannot jump outside himself to see his own performance. But I also know that I am feeling real emotion in these scenes; I know that the audience can see it. It is impossible that one can walk away from this show thinking that my portrayal is "unfeeling."

Or isn't it?

I asked the director and cast members what they thought was going on here. The consensus was along the lines of "rather than 'unfeeling,' what he meant was 'utterly unsympathetic to his brother's plight and the potential victims he champions.'" Okay, that makes sense. I guess. But why didn't he just say that? Why paint my performance as "chilly"?

For that matter, why, in the same sentence, does the reviewer compare my performance to President Nixon, one of the more emotional Presidents this nation has seen in fifty years?

Last Friday, a friend of mine, Emilie, who was in the last Cripple Creek show I did was telling me how much she liked what I was doing in this one. A pal she had with her chimed in, "Oh, you were great! I just hated you; you were so evil," which was distressing because, in keeping with what I consider the ideological balance inherent in Ibsen's script, I'm trying to make my character likable, forced by circumstances to make hard choices, but honorable, doing what he believes to be the right thing. Emilie disagreed with her buddy; she told me that she didn't see the Mayor as evil at all. Okay, at least somebody gets it.

But that got me thinking. I've posted here at least a couple of times about how cognitive scientists are asserting now that reason and passion are quite literally two sides of the same coin, especially when it comes to politics. This is an extraordinarily political play, pitting two brothers, an archetypal liberal and an archetypal conservative, against each other in a deeply passionate, familial, and ideological struggle. It's really hard for me to not believe that these issues staged as drama aren't affecting a certain number of audience members who see their politics as an important part of personal identity, in such a way that extra-humanizes the characters with whom they identify politically, while extra-dehumanizing the characters with whom they don't.

That is, my right-wing character, who is in fact quite emotional, might very well come off as "unfeeling" to a bleeding-hearted liberal, which is what I assume the Picayune critic and Emilie's friend to be, or even as straight-up evil. By the same token, my liberal nemesis, who according to the text might actually be wrong, gets the hero treatment.

This is all speculation, of course, but it would be no surprise to find out that people read into plays, films, and novels what they expect to see, drawing on their own deeply felt beliefs, subconsciously, in order to categorize characters possessing a level of moral ambiguity, in terms of plot or narrative, as heroes or villains.

Really, actors shouldn't read reviews.

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