Oslo at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
(L-R: Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays as unconventional diplomats in Oslo.)
For those of us who have gazed despairingly from the
sidelines at seemingly endless cock-ups by politicians of levels high and low
and thought to ourselves, “Well, I could
do better than that!” there is some dramatic vilification, in the midst of a
season rife with discord both political and Middle Eastern, in the form of J.T.
Rogers’ breakneck new play Oslo, at
the Mitzi E. Newhouse. Those peace
accords emblazoned with the name of that Norwegian city, evidently, were not
limited to a brief and hugely unconvincing handshake between Yasser Arafat and
Yitzhak Rabin on the White House Lawn in September 1993, nor were they
executed, even remotely, by the jolly Arkansan who oversaw the photo opportunity
with the proprietary glee of a P.T. Barnum.
Actually, a complex Scandinavian
endeavor, rife with borderline-illegal cooperation between the public and
private sectors, was responsible. Mr.
Rogers, to correct the record, has condensed the nine months of fascinating and
strikingly original diplomacy that made at least a semblance of peace in the
Middle East for seven glorious years into a three-hour, three-act wonder that
never seems overburdened or too cute for its own good. It’s part comedy of errors, part history
lesson, and so far is that atmospheric combination from disjointed that the
only places where it falters come when it ventures too far into one or the
other.
To begin with – Oslo, directed by the LCT’s patron
saint, Bartlett Sher, is near-impossible to summarize. If I may quote liberally from the foot-long
insert I received with my Playbill – Terje Rod-Larsen (the phenomenal Jefferson
Mays) is a think-tank president married to Mona Juul (Jennifer Ehle, also
excellent), a Norwegian Foreign Ministry official. Out of what seems, partly, to be a genuine
feeling for the people of the region, and partly out of the desire to impose
order onto a chaotic world and then take credit for having invented order that
is so distinctly Scandinavian, the two initiate a series of clandestine
meetings between PLO Finance Minister Ahmed Qurie (Anthony Azizi, deeply felt)
and a delegation of Israeli professors from the University of Haifa, that
eventually lead to extended talks between the PLO and Israeli Foreign Ministry
Director-General Uri Savir (Michael Aronov).
Throughout, those at the top in the Norwegian, Israeli, and Palestinian
governments are relegated to strictly need-to-know status. Rod-Larsen, after all, is trying to impose a
policy of personality, of gradualism, onto Middle Eastern diplomacy. Naturally, the Americans can’t be involved.
The little winks and fourth-wall
breaks that come throughout nod to how impossible to follow the whole thing is,
but really Rogers’ portrayal is so masterfully done I was never once
confused. The strongest scenes in the
piece come in the negotiation sessions between Qurie and Savir, one a
strong-willed populist, the other a bespoke-suit-wearing playboy – they have
incredible literary personality besides keeping you on the edge of your
seat. You get the sense of a real window
into a history-making process.
But the real stars of the
proceedings are Rod-Larsen and Juul, played perfectly by Mays and Ehle as
teammates in the grandest sense. In
their own, dilettante way, they are trying to do something they know is right –
even if their own glory may be an added attraction. Ehle, sporting a flawless accent and a
presence somehow simultaneously steely and maternal, fulfills the promise of
the character – beloved by all on both sides because of her ability and
willingness to bring people together. Mays
is perfect as the intellectual who thinks – knows – he can do better than the
bureaucrats, with all of the well-meaning arrogance that entails. The actors are just as much of a team – and just
as successful, in a different way – as their real-world counterparts.
I couldn’t help but be reminded of
the surprisingly short-lived Shuffle
Along at the conclusion of this thoroughly exemplary play, as we are
treated to a laundry list of diplomatic failures and disappointments that
followed the accord’s signing in the early ‘90s. At the end of that musical, the stars and
creators of the show-within-the-show make peace with the fact that they will
fade into irrelevancy, because their cause and art was righteous. Climbing the stairs into the audience at the
end of Oslo, Rod-Larsen looks up,
into the light, and reaches out. “Look
there,” he says, “on the horizon. A
beginning.” They tried. And perhaps in this imperfect world, captured
in the diamond-perfect gaze of Rogers’ play, that is the best any of us can do.
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