A Spanish Play Falls Flat

"A Spanish Play"

By Yasmina Reza at the Classic Stage Company

136 East 13^th Street

Box Office 212 352-3207

Yasmina Reza’s play brilliant play “Art,” appeared on Broadway in 1994, was, on the surface a wry, witty commentary on different attitudes towards contemporary artistic avant garde. However it soon became apparent that the deeper, more meaningful subject of the play was the fragility of human friendship. There was much excitement about this French playwright’s début. It seemed a fresh new talent had made its appearance. Sadly her next work “Life X 3,” 2000, about the lives of rather mundane people was flat, a comedown from the champagne sparkle of her first play. It had a few amusing moments, but it was not much more than trivial.

Now with “A Spanish Lesson,” originally written in 2004, Reza’s talent seems to have evaporated. She has fallen into the pit of imitating the absurd playwrights of the past, most particularly Pirandello and his ever-alluring “Six Characters in Search of an Author.” She has also thrown in a little Brecht and Goddard for good measure. The result is two hours of sheer monotony. It is clear to me that the author is in dire need of fresh exciting new material. Maybe she needs to get out and take a job in Wal Mart or Starbucks. It is a wonder how such commanding talents as the internationally acclaimed director John Turturro, the ultra witty David Ives, who made his name in the brilliant “All in the Timing,” and above all the four time Tony winner Zoe Caldwall get involved with this mess.

What we get in “the Spanish Play ”is a play with in a play. The inside play is a kitchen sink fiasco made up of a long suffering mother Pilar (Zoe Caldwell) her two self-centered, neurotic, ungrateful actress daughters Aurelia (Linda Emond) and Nuria (Katherine Borowitz,) who continually swat at each other, their mother, their mothers much younger fiancé Fernan (Larry Pine) and Mariano, the husband (Denis O’Hare) of Nuria. The mother, the daughters and the husband claw at each other every chance they get. The fiancé tries to keep the piece. Occasionally, but rarely, there are moments of tenderness between the elderly Pilar and her completely devoted Feran as well as between the two fiercely competing sister actresses, one famous, the other unknown. But loving tender relationships are hardly the core of this story.

This is a house of miserable Bickersons where the anger, just palpitating under the surface of each characters collection of neurosis and discontents, is ready to erupt like a firecracker at any moment even to the point of inducing an act of physical violence. In this play dysfunctional family just shrieks out at the audience every chance it gets.

But the tiresome display of ill will constantly enacted by the various characters, which creates no real story line is, by far, the best of this miserable drama. Even the boring discussion of building management between Ferman and Mariano which seemed to go on interminably was more palatable then when the actors stepped out of character to natter on and on about the excruciatingly difficult life they experienced as actors. And this occurred all too frequently in this two-hour play, which heaven help me, had no intermission.

I especially hated the performance of Denis O’Hare, who when he broke the fourth wall and brought his troubles directly to the audience, took on the part of a mad man, gurgling, blathering, stomping about the stage, throwing his arms about helter-skelter like a manipulated puppet, which made him appear to be a man inflicted with a severe muscular disorder. Most of the other performers were not much better. We had to watch Nuria act out a scene from the little play she was doing in an obscure theater. She did it over and over and each time she showed little improvement. And to make it all worse all this activity frequently was projected on a large screen via video at the same time it was occurring so it was like seeing the play in tandem and not knowing where to look from one minute to the next. Of course this was supposed to be savvy, but it only added to the dissonance and confusion. What were these people thinking?

Pity me! I was in the center of the aisle, so I had to endure the whole thing form beginning to end.

However, I have made a promise to myself. If I find myself trapped viewing a play, be it musical or drama that makes me want to tear out my fingernails, I am leaving, even if I have to simulate a heart attack. I too can become part of the play.