Sight Unseen
seems an odd play for Broadway revival. Barely a decade old, it’s the kind of intimate character study that usually makes its mark off-Broadway–often in an institutional theatre, whereupon it either extends its run or moves to another OB venue for a longer stay–and indeed this one debuted at the Manhattan Theatre Club in its smaller Stage II (notable because MTC are producing this Broadway revival as well). But then, the career of playwright Donald Margulies is punctuated by several such unlikely close-at-heel revisions or revivals: The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong With This Picture? and Collected Stories were all revisited (and with much less that a ten-, or even a five-year gap) in major New York City venues. I suppose only time will tell if this signals classics-to-be, but certainly Margulies is an interesting, challenging writer, who creates excellent roles, memorable scenes and interesting contexts to hold them–so all right then: why not Sight Unseen? Even though it doesn’t exactly feel "made for Broadway," Broadway is a comfortable fit for it.The play’s main character is an expressionistic painter, Jonathan Waxman (Ben Shenkman), who has made a huge splash in the art world, and whose canvas imagery, full of violent, sexual and religious iconography, has sparked a good deal of controversy as to meaning. When confronted with questions about it, he turns them around: "What does it mean to you?"
The play shows him in relation to three key people: a former lover, Patricia (Laura Linney); her husband Nick (Byron Jennings); and a journalist, Grete (Ana Reeder). But, as with his paintings, we get a sort of impressionistic view; the scenes are not presented chronologically: We see the reunion of Jonathan and Patricia long before we see their breakup which in turn we see before their meeting. The interview at the museum, which punctuates the proceedings, emerges as one that happens after everything else. The aggregate poses more questions about Jonathan’s motives and character than it ultimately answers (though one is not left liking him very much), and the play seems to be an experiment vis a vis creating a dramatic structure that works as a metaphor for impressionistic painting. When it’s shown us all it will show us about Jonathan, it seems to say: Never mind what the author meant. Now what do you think about him? And I have to say, given the lively debate that can ensue in the aftermath, I think it is, on that level, quite successful.
Margulies delivers it all with the usual crackling dialogue, and the ensemble is right on target. Shenkman bravely dives into both his character’s unpleasant neediness, facile sense of celebrity and moral ambiguity; as the interviewer, Ana Reeder is likewise strikingly enigmatic: is her profile meant to be an attack, an expose, a seduction or merely a shameless thrust toward the truth? Byron Jennings as Nick, a more easily definable chap, proves a subtle inverse of Jonathan as he plays a seemingly weak man who proves himself, in the end, quite strong; and Laura Linney is typically superb as the lover who never quite resolved what came before, and welcomes/resents the insinuation of Jonathan back into her life. (Hers is, of course, the attention-grabbing performance as it is she who originated the role of the interviewer in the play’s off-Broadway production–and where her Grete was sly, simmering and yet cooly modulated, her Patricia is a welter of uncontrolled spikes emerging from passionate emotions too-long repressed.)
Too much time has passed for me to accurately comment on the differences between the original staging by Michael Bloom and that of the revival’s director Daniel Sullivan–but nothing seems diluted or lost; nor vastly improved, however it may be rethought. In short, a solid, respectful rendering that lets the play be what it is. Which, with most of Margulies’ work, is all that’s really required.
Especially in a play where the viewer is the ultimate interpreter. In which case, staying out of the way is not only admirable…it’s required…