'Six Characters,' one crowd, and too much play

Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, directed by Natalia Lopez-Castro, TC '02, and Megan Robb, TC '02, and produced by Suset Laboy, SY '02, would have made a great philosophy paper. Exploding with long, intelligent rants about the line between reality and illusion, the meaning of drama, and the very nature of human existence, Pi-randello's play often seems like a laundry list of profound philosophical arguments that endlessly attempt to describe the strange quasi-reality that is theater. Unfortunately, in the process of examining theater, the play, as presented by Lopez-Castro, Robb, and Laboy, seems to forget that it is theater. Six Characters would be a fascinating list to read, but is a tedious list to watch.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Offstage is onstage, and when onstage the actors are off.

Instantly establishing its central theme of the blurring of theater with "real life," the play begins in the lobby outside its actual theater (Ezra Stiles dining hall) as Crystal Bratton, MC '02, an actress playing an actress, rehearses her lines for her play within the play. "Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and seen a stranger?" she repeats over and over again, with obvious hints of the reality-illusion struggle that is to come. The house then opens in both senses, and the audience is thrown into a rehearsal scene that is strikingly familiar to anyone who has ever worked in theater: the producer/director, played with frustrating dryness by Claire Wladis, TD '00, orders actors around; the stage manager, April Leslie, PC '03, scurries back and forth with preparations; the lights dim and brighten, and the play exudes the air of a work in progress. This air, however—so effective in the opening scene—does not fade as the focus of the play shifts inward. It instead lends a feeling of sloppiness to the entire production as actors continually stumble over their supposedly real, heartfelt lines as if they were, well, rehearsed—and poorly rehearsed at that.

The script's intense concentration on endless expositional monologue certainly could not have helped the actors' apparent lack of ease. As Pirandello introduces a group of ghostly white intruders into the anxious theater scene, he seems to lose sight of the useful role that interactive dialogue can play in keeping a drama moving. The intruders—soon revealed to have the unlikely identity of being characters who literally stepped out of an unfinished play (thus introducing a play within the play within the play)—quickly shift the focus away from the relationship between actors and audience to the even more complex connection between characters and the actors that must play them. In an attempt to get all the necessary background information (and philosophical considerations) concerning these metaphysical characters out of the way in the most efficient manner possible, the script suddenly reverts into a series of intensely long, drawn-out explanatory monologues. They are delivered in large part by Anthony Weiss, ES '02, the father of the character family, and Robb, his step-daughter and sometimes lover. While Weiss' speeches are generally as sleep-inducing as a high school history teacher's, Robb often shines with bitter and maniacal rage, managing to inject some life into an otherwise dull first act performance.

Theater

Six Characters in Search of an Author Written by Luigi Pirandello Directed by Natalia Lopez-Castro and Megan Robb Fri., Apr. 14, and Sat., Apr. 15, 9 p.m. Ezra Stiles dining hall

More life is pumped into the second act, as the actors and characters face off in their attempts to stage the characters' own seemingly "real" lives as a work of fictional theater. Here, Pirandello finally seems to rediscover the intensity that can only come from dynamic interaction between performers. Robb, screeching and laughing at every attempt that her designated actress (Molly Lindsay, DC '03) makes to portray her, potently illuminates the difficulties inherent in creating an imitation of an already illusory life. This theme reaches its climax rather powerfully when Robb's step-brother, played by Josh Drimmer, DC '03, attempts to physically leave both the illusion and the reality, only to be pulled back to the theater by an unknown, but very real force. "He must stay here—he's chained to us forever," Robb explains. It is this kind of powerful action for which the audience continually longs as it struggles through the solitary tirades, accompanied only by the actors' endless back and forth pacing across the stage.

Six Characters is a brilliant investigation of the hazy distinctions that determine life versus non-life, dream versus waking. Yet in the end, the play is almost too brilliant for its own good, reveling too much and too freely in its intellectualism. It becomes difficult for any but the most innovative actors to translate the play's brilliant, actionless thought into brilliant performance. With a cast that continually stumbles and often recites its lines as if reading from a textbook, Six Characters quickly regresses into a tiring two-hour lecture that, while intriguing, is far from brilliant in delivery.

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