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Inherit the Sin
or
At Last! A Satisfying Evening in the Theatre
Theatre Review
by Harvey Perr
The Voysey Inheritance
opened December 6, 2006
at the Atlantic Theater Company
closes January 7, 2007
Father must know best. What else can one say about a father who
provides breeding and a lavish life style for himself and his family? So what
if his wife is slightly, shall we say, distrait? There is not that much she
needs to be concerned with. Or that his children are a bit boorish about the idea of
anyone spoiling their good time with talk about business?
After all, it’s not the business they care about, but merely what
they can get out of the business. And there is that house they live in that seems to
have been decorated by someone who ransacked every museum in Europe, every inch of
wall space occupied by a work of art creating a style that might be called
exquisitely tasteful vulgarity. And father himself is an absolute pillar of
respectability. So does it mean anything that this has all been achieved because
father, and his father before him, have been embezzling from their firm, even taking
money from their close coterie of client-friends, and finally putting that firm into
a state of bankruptcy? One can only shrug off such behavior with as much aplomb as
father does because he feels that everyone in his station is probably doing exactly
the same.
Sound familiar? Like something that happened right here? Where we
live? In the very recent past? Of course it does. That it happens to take place in
Chistlehurst, England, in 1905, in the drawing room of the Voysey house, just
gives a topical piquancy to this revival of Harley Granville Barker’s “The Voysey
Inheritance.” I shamefacedly admit that I have never read this play, even though
Barker is something of a legend in theatre lore for his productions of Shakespeare,
so I do not know exactly how David Mamet has “adapted” it – except perhaps to
imagine that he has removed any creakiness or Edwardian fussiness that might have
clung to the original play – but I am definitely thankful to Mr. Mamet for
acquainting me with the play and for providing the Atlantic Theater Company the
opportunity to mount one of its very best productions and give a New York audience
one of this season’s most satisfying evenings in the theatre.
The crux of the play lies in how Voysey’s son, who has inherited
the firm and the mess his father had made of it, addresses the problem with moral
authority, even as he encounters resistance from his family and from his father’s
cronies. Detail piles upon detail, complex issues of loyalty and responsibility
creep out of every corner, and, in what amounts to the niftiest kind of literary
stagecraft that one has come across in a long time, the pieces finally come together
with a precision and a clarity and a deftness that is pure pleasure to
behold.
It is particularly gratifying that the cast is as good as it is.
The brilliant Fritz Weaver in the role of the elder Voysey exudes a natural dignity
as if it were his second skin and makes such a vivid impression that, even though
the character dies between the first and second scene, his presence is felt
throughout the rest of the play. In the play, his son inherits the father’s
malfunctioning investment firm; on the stage, Michael Stuhlbarg, in the part of the
son, inherits Mr. Weaver’s brilliance. Stuhlbarg’s concentration and focus are like
laser beams, radiating intensely his every economical movement and setting afire
every actor who plays against him. Particularly responsive are Samantha Soule as the
warmly knowing woman who loves him; Peter Maloney as a pompously buffoonish crony
who wants his entire investment returned whether or not the money is there; and,
best of all, C.J. Wilson as his oldest brother, one of those starchy characters who
seem to be part of the furniture of any English drawing room, and who imbues every
line with a sputtering superciliousness that reminds one of Nigel Bruce or Sir C.
Aubrey Smith in their heyday.
David Warren’s direction is elegantly fluid. Gregory Gale’s
costumes are sumptuously textured. Derek McLane’s set design is a magnificently
accurate depiction of overstuffed Edwardian grandeur and, in its way, sets the witty
tone of the evening. Here then are a host of theatre artists working at their
highest level of professionalism and creativity in their attempt to bring a classic
play to delectably wicked life. That the evening also resonates with contemporary
relevance only adds to the joy and satisfaction of the occasion.
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