![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Live theater is, by its very nature, a medium of illusion and belief. In an era where CGI in film comes close to removing the necessity for viewer cooperation, it can be good to be reminded that an audience’s imagination can be a far more powerful “effect”. The stage version of The Elephant Man has always placed an equal burden on the lead actor and the audience to cooperate in creating John Merrick out of nothing but a few twists of the human body and Bradley Cooper certainly does his share in the equation. During the initial “transformation” scene, when Dr. Treves is reading the description of Merrick’s deformities as the actor portraying Merrick gradually contorts his body into their representation, we are shown projected photos of the real John Merrick--a feature that I considered possibly superfluous, although I may be making a false assumption that most people at the should would already be familiar with the images.
The staging, like the portrayal of Merrick’s body, is on the minimalist side, focusing on a few key pieces of furniture and an active use of sliding curtains to conceal and reveal, and to move the focal depth on the stage. Only the costuming is fully detailed to the period rather than sketched and suggested.
The play itself also deals in illusion and viewer projection, as the various characters who come into Merrick’s life project onto him their own needs and desires, not so much treating him like a blank slate, but as a mirror where the read in him the person they want him to have been: a devout and saintly martyr, a practical hard-headed businessman, a philosopher, and so forth. If I had a criticism of the script, it would be the heavy-handedness of this scene, redeemed in performance by staging it as what it is: a series of formalized recitations. In the end, one wonders how much of the real Merrick we have been presented and how much is the creation, not only of the performers on stage, but of the series of researchers, biographers, and interpreters who cannot help but have infused his story with their own purposes.
But I should stick to the performance itself, which was enthralling. The play is currently in previews and will open on December 7. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in New York.
* * *
And, of course, I also had the fun of shadowing Lauri around for her pre-performance checks and watching the cast do their warm-ups and getting introduced to all the staff. No meeting actors this time because there were Much More Important People who wanted to do that. And a truly freakily-sized crowd waiting outside the stage door, presumably for Mr. Cooper. I confess I checked out his IMDB listing and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him in anything on the screen. (Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t count as “seeing” since he only did voice-over.)
The staging, like the portrayal of Merrick’s body, is on the minimalist side, focusing on a few key pieces of furniture and an active use of sliding curtains to conceal and reveal, and to move the focal depth on the stage. Only the costuming is fully detailed to the period rather than sketched and suggested.
The play itself also deals in illusion and viewer projection, as the various characters who come into Merrick’s life project onto him their own needs and desires, not so much treating him like a blank slate, but as a mirror where the read in him the person they want him to have been: a devout and saintly martyr, a practical hard-headed businessman, a philosopher, and so forth. If I had a criticism of the script, it would be the heavy-handedness of this scene, redeemed in performance by staging it as what it is: a series of formalized recitations. In the end, one wonders how much of the real Merrick we have been presented and how much is the creation, not only of the performers on stage, but of the series of researchers, biographers, and interpreters who cannot help but have infused his story with their own purposes.
But I should stick to the performance itself, which was enthralling. The play is currently in previews and will open on December 7. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in New York.
* * *
And, of course, I also had the fun of shadowing Lauri around for her pre-performance checks and watching the cast do their warm-ups and getting introduced to all the staff. No meeting actors this time because there were Much More Important People who wanted to do that. And a truly freakily-sized crowd waiting outside the stage door, presumably for Mr. Cooper. I confess I checked out his IMDB listing and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him in anything on the screen. (Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t count as “seeing” since he only did voice-over.)
