Grace at the Cort
Theatre
In
promotional images for Grace, Paul
Rudd, Michael Shannon, Kate Arrington and Ed Asner stare serenely out into
space, faces and dispositions flawless, with no visible problems or bones to
pick. This image could not be further
from the hour-and-a-quarter of mayhem and excitement that the four create on
the Cort Theatre’s stage (and will through January 6th).
For one, in
the images Ed Asner is clean-shaven, but in the play flaunts his Kris Kringle
beard as a German exterminator named Karl, who, being German, naturally has horrible and completely relevant stories to tell about the Nazis. He sprays pesticides all over the
stage and uses catchphrases unsparingly.
His German accent is understandably rather lacking, and he looks (just
as understandably) ridiculous in Bermuda shorts. Nonetheless, as always, Asner’s performance
is brilliant and entertaining. No one, I
presume, is surprised.
The
absolutely fantastic Michael Shannon (who saves the first half of the play) is
prominently featured on the playbill smiling out at nothing with his smooth,
even face gently lit. On stage, he plays
Sam Gavin, a NASA scientist who escaped a car crash that killed his fiancé and
ripped off half of his face. He wears a
face mask reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter’s that, when removed, reveals an
underwhelming and minor series of welts across his energetic mug. Still, he seems rather depressed with his
looks and his life, and Shannon conveys this with an air of genius. In his first scene, he argues with an Apple
tech support representative on the phone as if delivering an angry monologue by
Shakespeare.
Paul Rudd
nearly hides Kate Arrington’s face on the Grace
posters, which is an excellent metaphor for their characters’ tumultuous
relationship. Rudd plays Steve, an
earnest evangelist and entrepreneur struggling to open a chain of gospel-themed
hotels in sunny Florida. As it becomes
increasingly clear that he’s being duped by his investors and losing control of
his wife, Sara (played by Arrington), Steve begins to lose his mind and his
faith. Sara, meanwhile, is drifting away
toward Sam. Rudd, a better stage actor
than one might expect, portrays what Karl calls a “Jesus freak” convincingly
and with an aura of darkness. Arrington
plays Sara as an unanchored wannabe Anna Karenina with no place to settle and
nowhere to find home. They are magical
to watch.
Grace is one of the few pieces of
theater I’ve seen in which the actors save the script and not the other way
round. The book is mediocre, the story
meandering, and plot points sparse. Some
ideas are even stolen, like portions of the narrative—including (spoiler alert)
gunfire—playing forwards and then in reverse (exactly as in Christopher Nolan’s
masterful thriller Memento). Rudd, Shannon, Arrington, and Asner make it
work. Each is a star in his or her own
right, and their actions all eventually factor in to the show’s sudden,
dramatic finale. It’s different from
some other small ensemble shows in which actors work together like
clockwork. Here it’s more like four
separate but perfectly synchronized clocks—and like clocks, the tension they
create with the dexterity of seasoned professionals ticks on and on and on, up
to an eventual explosion.
There are
many elements of Grace that make it
worth seeing. The staging (by Beowulf
Boritt) is unique and fits perfectly to the show’s setting—two identical and
neighboring condos that occasionally bleed together over space. The direction (by Dexter Bullard) is adept
and fast-paced, with touches of the mystical and the bizarre. But the reason to see this show (and, let’s
be honest, the only real reason most go to the theater) is the acting. Few performances this season have impressed
me more.
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