Two weeks ago, I reviewed
director Jeffery Horowitz’s production of Ibsen’s 1879 A Doll’s House at the Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn. Last
week, I saw the same company and creative team bring to life August
Strindberg’s 1887 The Father.
Maggie Lacey and John Douglas Thompson in The Father |
The two plays share many themes
and, in some ways, parallel casts of characters so the decision to stage the
contemporary (and rival) playwrights’ pieces in such a complementary way is an
understandable one.
Here it is the father of the
house, the Captain (John Douglas Thompson), whose behaviour is increasingly
erratic, mirroring that of Nora in the earlier play. He’s driven mad by the
uncertainty of paternity and manipulated by his wife Laura (Maggie Lacey) who
sets up an unrelenting campaign against him to win control of their daughter
Bertha, baulking at the unfairness of nineteenth-century marriage laws.
John Douglas Thompson in The Father |
As with A Doll’s House, the ending is twisted in this production. Bertha’s
cry of ‘mother’ is an accusatory one, shifting our focus again to how the
remaining parent (here the mother) can remedy the loss of the other (a more
modern consideration than those Strindberg and Ibsen were tackling).
Initially the inferior position
of women is much more obvious than in A
Doll’s House. A philandering soldier, Nordstrom (Christian J. Mallen),
refuses to admit his responsibility for a servant girl’s pregnancy in a scene
that firmly establishes the sexual double standard. But in this production it
was hard to sympathise with the lack of options attendant on Laura’s plight.
Thompson’s Captain is a little too weak too quickly and his madness seems
over-egged. We’re left doubting how necessary it is that she push him over the
edge.
Laurie Kennedy in The Father |
Laurie Kennedy does a great job as Margaret, the Captain’s aged childhood nurse, and generally
this feels like much more of an ensemble piece than its sister production.
After watching both plays, the
overall message of these productions, for me, though remains confused. Apart
from feeling sorry for the children what do we take from plays that apply
twenty-first century issues to a nineteenth-century setting? Are the genders
still at war or are we meant to conclude that being a father is the much less
enviable position?
The Father is on at TFANA in
Brooklyn until June 12. You can purchase tickets here.
Are there any other NYC
productions you’d like to see the Secret Victorianist review? Let me know—here,
on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
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