Two Lives, Intoxicated by Theater

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/theater/solo-shows-at-the-stratford-shakespeare-festival.html

Version 0 of 1.

STRATFORD, Ontario — Much of the glory and a lot of the money in show business find their way to actors — or at least stars. But two refreshing solo shows at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival this season reorient our perceptions of where much of the magic really comes from, at least in the theater.

As it happens, one of the productions is written by and showcases the newly Oscar-laureled veteran actor Christopher Plummer, one of those luminous beings long at home in the spotlight. But “A Word or Two,” directed by Des McAnuff, is by no means a self-glorifying star turn.

I expected the show to be a sort of potted version of Mr. Plummer’s rollicking autobiography, “In Spite of Myself.” And, yes, Mr. Plummer does oblige with the occasional personal anecdote about his roistering among boldface names. But Richard Burton plays a supporting role in a story about wild nights at the White Horse Tavern in the West Village. The star is Dylan Thomas, regaling Burton, Mr. Plummer and the rest of the bar with stories and snatches of verse.

Far from being a glittery recitation of career and personal triumphs and trials, “A Word or Two” is a warm and highly literate tribute to the writers whose work has inspired, sustained and delighted Mr. Plummer as he has forged his career as an international star both on the stage and in the movies. It’s a passionate love letter to language, to poetry above all, and while Mr. Plummer tells the occasional story of overindulgence in another of his favorite pastimes — namely drinking — we come away with the firm sense that he has far more often been intoxicated by the beauty of verse. Audiences are likely to find themselves exiting the Avon Theater here in the same woozy-happy state.

The show does move along a general chronological curve in line with traditional autobiography. Mr. Plummer begins with Lewis Carroll and A. A. Milne, whose writings provided a comfortable refuge in his lonely boyhood in Canada’s chilly north. An only child whose father abandoned the family, and who suffered from “crippling shyness,” Mr. Plummer cites his beginnings as inauspicious: a birth date of Friday the 13th in the grim year 1929.

But he grew up in the bosom of his mother’s literature-loving family, at a time when reading aloud was still considered a staple form of entertainment. As he traces his growth from youth to maturity, and his emergence from bookish introvert to eager performer, Mr. Plummer combines an easy erudition with a sense of affable humility as he recites selections from his favorite poets, loosely assembled as a journey from childhood to old age.

Wallpapered in poetry quotations as it is, this isn’t a Greatest Hits of English Verse show: despite the span-of-life theme, we don’t hear Shakespeare’s “seven ages of man” monologue, and in fact Shakespeare makes only a cameo appearance. Established giants like W. H. Auden, Robert Frost and Philip Larkin are included, but Mr. Plummer quotes liberally from writers like the poets Robert Service and Stephen Leacock (both better known in Canada).

Ambling across a handsome set by Robert Brill, aptly dominated by a giant, spiraling sculpture made entirely of books, Mr. Plummer recites poetry with the ease of a man who has been hearing it singing in his head virtually every day of his life. His velvety baritone has lost little, if any, of its beauty or authority. To hear Mr. Plummer reciting verse is to be reminded that the greatest classical actors are those most deeply attuned to the disparate rhythms and textures of language — whether it is the comedy of Leacock or the ecstatic heights of the “Song of Solomon” from the Bible.

The selections are woven together with modest, often funny personal reflections. Mr. Plummer proves himself an aphorist worthy of inclusion alongside Oscar Wilde and Oscar Levant when he says that middle age is “when you stop combing your hair and start arranging it.”

But for the most part Mr. Plummer’s aim in “A Word or Two” is to lead the audience to share his intimacy with the writing that has clearly enriched his life and even fueled his art. In contrast to most solo shows featuring name stars, the message of “A Word or Two” is not “Look at me!” but “Listen to this!”

The deeply personal nature of theater artists’ relation to their work is further illuminated in “Hirsch,” a quirky, engaging biographical study of the life of the Hungarian-born director John Hirsch, a significant figure in the Canadian theater until his death from AIDS in 1989.

Created and conceived by Alon Nashman and Paul Thompson, the show refracts Hirsch’s life through the prism of the stage productions for which he was most famous — and which held particular personal significance for him — from “The Tempest” to “The Cherry Orchard” and “The Dybbuk.”

Hirsch, portrayed with a fervent-eyed intensity by Mr. Nashman, was the only member of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. Mr. Nashman depicts Hirsch recalling a harrowing story in which soldiers forced members of his synagogue to whitewash the stars from the ceiling, then dragged the rabbi into the street and slit his throat. Adrift in the tumult of postwar Europe, the teenage Hirsch eventually was adopted by a Canadian family in Winnipeg, where his career in the theater eventually took off.

“Hirsch,” directed by Mr. Thompson, moves between re-enactments of passages in Hirsch’s life and rehearsal room reflections from him on classic theater texts. Hirsch’s personal history of dispossession inspires an insightful reading of a similar sense of a world on the verge of collapse in “The Cherry Orchard.”

But Mr. Nashman and Mr. Thompson avoid hagiography by acknowledging Hirsch’s irascible nature and intransigence when fighting against conventional ideas of theater. Hirsch is shown denouncing the board of the Stratford Festival itself, which he ran for five years in the 1980s, as obstructionist and unappreciative, as he storms off to pursue an independent career.

Since much of that career took place in Canada — with the exception of a few stints in New York, including a 1970 Lincoln Center production of Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman’s “Beggar on Horseback,” for which John Lahr was a composer — John Hirsch is a name little known to most American theatergoers. (It was certainly new to me.)

But an interest in the workings of theater — and the often unbridled passions of the men and women who work backstage to bring it to life — is all that is really required to enjoy Mr. Nashman and Mr. Thompson’s tribute to an artist whose work they revere, and a man whose demons they depict with clear eyes but sympathetic hearts.