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| Christopher Denham and Al Pacino. Photo: Jeremy Daniel |
By Lauren Yarger
It’s all about money and what it can buy. Only China Doll, the latest from Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright David
Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed the
Plow), hasn’t made that theme even remotely interesting.
Paying a lot of
money to have a star headline the show hasn’t worked either. Academy-Award
winner Al Pacino is on the boards, but even he can’t make two hours of
listening to someone talk on a phone interesting. In fact, reports are that he
has a lot of trouble remembering all the mind-numbing dialogue (film actors
tend to deal with shorter segments of a script as they are being filmed and don’t
have to memorize the entire script at once). The opening was pushed back,
apparently to give him some more time and to make some improvements to the
script. It didn’t work.
Actual phones
were abandoned for a Bluetooth prop, which apparently doubles as a speaker by which
he is fed lines. There also are two laptops on display in the apartment set
designed by Derek McLane (at first I thought the oddly appointed set was a VIP lounge
in the airport since it doesn’t look like a Manhattan apartment of someone who
can afford a $60 million plane.) Since Pacino seems to be looking at the
monitors when fishing for lines, they probably are TelePrompTer devices. The
day I attended, captioning was provided for the hearing impaired and a quick
check of the screen confirmed that Pacino’s lines didn’t always match the
script.
Changing that
script wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, however. . .
Pacino plays
very wealthy Mickey Ross, who has just bought a new toy: a multi-million-dollar
jet. He is used to buying whatever he wants – including politicians, it seems.
He hits a snag when the plane, manufactured in Switzerland, is impounded in
Toronto with his young British fiancé aboard. Somehow the Swiss tail numbers
were changed to a US registration and when it was forced to touch down here for
a technical issue, everything changed making Ross liable for $5 million in
taxes.
The rest of the
play is a repeat of those facts – ad nauseum – as Mickey speaks on the phone with
the plane’s manufacturer, his lawyer and his upset fiancé, who has been
subjected to a strip search by immigration officials.
Helping him
place the calls is his assistant, Carson (Christopher Denham), who manages to look interested as he stands on stage
watching Pacino talk. Director Pam MacKinnon (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf), offers little help, but then there isn’t a
lot an actor can do while waiting to deliver lines like, “Yes, sir,” after 15
minutes of monologue by the other actor. (It strikes me that Denham’s
understudy might have the best paying gig for the fewest lines ever.)
Denham (“Master
Harold”… and the Boys, Argo, “Manhattan”) impresses in that he manages
to make us remember that he is on stage at all and is able to bring some plausibility
when his character suddenly offers a twist to the plot requiring the services of Fight Director Thomas Schall. Well, to what little
plot there is.
We
get a sense that the tax situation might be payback for some of Mickey’s
corrupt political dealings, and there might be a message there about not always
being able to control things with money, but we’re not really sure. In fact, as
we were leaving the theater, audience members who stuck it out were questioning
each other about the purpose of the play.
“Do
you think there was some symbolism there we just didn’t get?” one woman asked
her companion.
No,
ma’am, there wasn’t, as the playwright forgot to put it in there.
In
all honesty, however, I did not notice a mass exodus at intermission, as had
been reported as a regular occurrence. I guess if your motivation to buy a $150
ticket is to see your favorite film star on stage, you want your money’s worth.
If you want to see a sharply written play for two men written by a Pulitzer-Prize
winner, however, go down the street and see Hughie
by Eugene O’Neill opening next month.
China Doll runs at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W 45th St., NYC, through Jan. 31.Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 pm; Thursday - Saturday at 8 pm; Saturday at 2 pm; Sunday at 3 pm; Additional performance Jan. 17 at 7 pm. Tickets are $72 - $149.50: chinadollbroadway.com; 800- 432-7250.
Christians might also like to know:
--God's name taken in vain
-- Language (though only a few, instead of a steady raid of F-bombs we usually associate with Mamet's plays.)
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