December 11-17, 2003

theater

Embarrassments

by David Anthony Fox

When a director begins a show with the word "embarrassments" emblazoned on a banner above the stage, and later presents us with the image of a shamed, heckled playwright … well, that director must be pretty gutsy or confident (or both).

Gutsy we know Blanka Zizka to be. And she had reason to be confident, since Bed and Sofa, the last collaboration by the talented team of Polly Pen and Laurence Klavan, was a big hit for the Wilma.

As it turns out, Embarrassments is not an embarrassment, and certainly doesn't deserve to be booed. But it is disappointing, a show that despite a surfeit of cleverness (and a lot of smug literary gamesmanship) is ultimately twee and insubstantial.

Put it another way: The creators of the delightful Bed and Sofa have herein manufactured a musical tchotchke.

Part of the problem is the distance between the flimsy show and its pretensions. The year is 1895, and American writer Henry James is an established literary figure whose novels are no longer quite fashionable. James has turned to playwriting, and anxiously awaits the opening (in London, where he then resided) of his new work, Guy Domville.

Embarrassments has it that James, as a balm for his nerves, is already working on a short story called "Nona Vincent," based on his playwriting experiences. (In reality, "Nona" was written before Guy, but never mind.) In "Nona," a fictive playwright named Alan Wayworth is supported by (and presumably in love with) an attractive patron named Mrs. Alsager. Wayworth bases the principal character in his play on Alsager then promptly becomes embroiled in a complicated relationship with the actress playing her.

And we're off on a steeplechase of parallels: between the real playwright (James) and his doppelganger (Wayworth) and between Mrs. Alsager and her actress-double, Violet Grey.

Embarrassments strives for Stoppardian erudition, but there's no depth beyond the show's amusing structure. The narrative is simultaneously shallow and convoluted, and the characters as seen here are one-affect stereotypes: sepulchral James, ladylike Mrs. Alsager and so on. Though Pen and co. clearly intend to honor James, it does no service to the great writer -- a master of nuance -- to turn the dramatis personae into so many cardboard cutouts. There's also a subplot in which James envies the success of An Ideal Husband and its author, Oscar Wilde, which goes nowhere and serves only to belittle Wilde.

All this might have been rescued by a grand score, but Embarrassments makes a meretricious musical. A few ensemble pieces have real charm, especially "Me," a funny canon for four disgruntled actors. More often, though, Pen's characteristic fragmentary style has degenerated to the point it often sounds as if the performers are making up their puny snatches of melody as they go along. (On opening night, some of the actors, insecure as to pitch, may have been doing just that.)

Under the circumstances, it's not surprising that the performances are competent but flavorless, nor that Zizka's usual visual panache deserts her.

It's the paucity of musical invention that ultimately is the most dispiriting thing about Embarrassments. Pen has joined a band of current musical theater composers who seem, well, embarrassed at the prospect of composing a full-fledged score. Instead, they self-servingly imagine that scattered shards of melody are more sophisticated and dramatically viable. Nothing could be further from the truth, as composers from Kern to Sondheim prove.

Want to do something truly revolutionary in today's musical theater?

Try writing a song.

Embarrassments

Through Jan. 4, The Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce sts., 215-546-7824.

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