Theatre in Review: Churchill (New World Stages)

	Photo: Jason Epperson

If you don't have plans to visit Blenheim Castle or the War Rooms in London, I suppose you could drop in on Churchill. This solo outing, adapted and performed by Ronald Keaton, offers a fast, painless tour through the life of one of the 20th century's most consequential figures. Many people seem to love this sort of potted history lesson, and this one, at least, is confidently written and acted. If you're looking for actual drama, however, you've come to the wrong place.

Most of Churchill hinges on the conceit that the great man is making a speech somewhere in America. This at least eliminates the most awkward element of the dead celebrity playhouse genre, in which one keeps wondering why the famous person is talking to the wall of his or her residence. Otherwise, it is business as usual for this kind of play. We get the general outline of his life, beginning with a childhood marked by distant, if glamorous, parents: Randolph, the younger son of his generation of the famed Churchills and a powerful politician, and Jennie Jerome, his American socialite mother. He admits to having little connection with Jennie and sadly notes that he had only five conversations with his father. His greatest youthful attachment was to his nanny, who was apparently his only source of love until he married.

He takes us through his years of military training at Sandhurst and his early adventures in India and Sudan, which he converted into best-selling books that provided him with much-needed income. Rather unusually, he develops a career as a soldier/journalist, reporting on his army experiences for the popular press. (Except for one quick reference, Churchill skips over his experiences in the Boer War, perhaps because South Africa is not the most shining star in the British colonial crown.)

He returns to England, becomes a politician, deserts the Conservative party for an alliance with the Liberal David Lloyd George, and, he claims, pioneers many of the social innovations that Franklin D. Roosevelt would implement during the Great Depression. His political career craters time and again, but he always returns. ("I am not irrelevant!" he roars during one period of exile.) During World War I, he is behind the invention of the tank, which, he notes, saves many British lives. Turning more candid, he admits his role in the invasion of Turkey, which led to Gallipoli, one of the most costly (in lives, especially) and mortifying episodes in modern British military history.

Through the years, Churchill is in and out of Parliament, and, beginning in the early 1930s, urges, then hectors, his fellow legislators to take note of a certain German chancellor who is making trouble on the Continent. Denouncing his fellow MPs as "boneless wonders," savaging Lady Astor and her Cliveden Set as appeasers, his worst fears are realized when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's pact with Hitler proves to be a foolish, futile gesture, only delaying the inevitable war. Churchill makes short work of Chamberlain's claim of "peace in our time."

Soon Churchill himself is prime minister, facing defeat at Dunkirk and offering at first little more than blind determination to fight Hitler to the end. He candidly admits that the entrance of the United States into the war was the decision that turned events around. Shockingly, he says he was thrilled by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, because he knew it would mark the end of American neutrality. He offers quick sketches of his colleagues -- he reveres FDR, fights with DeGaulle, and spars with Eisenhower, who, he feels, wants to rush into invading France. "All I could see was the tides of Normandy running red with the blood of American and British soldiers," he notes. Well, I don't have to tell you how that turned out.

All of this is moderately interesting, but it is information you can get -- in more detail and with better narrative sweep -- from reading one of the Churchill biographies or perhaps seeing a documentary film. And because the text covers more than 70 years, there's no time for anything but Churchill's greatest hits: The "blood, sweat, and tears" speech, the "iron curtain" oration, and, as an example of his testy wit, his famous exchange with Lady Astor. (She: "If I were your wife, I would put poison in your tea." He: "If I were your husband, I would drink it!")

Keaton has unearthed a few fascinating details -- especially the fact that Churchill and Ethel Barrymore seriously thought about marrying, and what an alliance that would have been -- and there is a tantalizing moment when the name of Joseph Kennedy, who didn't really see what the fuss over Hitler was about, raises a delectable sneer, leaving you hoping he would go further. We learn little about his marriage and family, although I could do without the detail that he and Clementine, his beloved, referred to each other by animal names, and he often greeted her with an oink, followed by a meow from her. (Oh, the domestic lives of the great Brits.) But most of the time, Churchill remains firmly superficial.

Kurt Johns, the director, has surely helped with the pacing and emotional variety of the performance and he has also provided a solid production design. Jason Epperson's set, a paneled interior, features a large central window, which serves as the focal point for Paul Deziel's projections of the Churchill family, Blenheim Palace (where Winston was only a visitor, being the son of the second son), Parliament, maps of Europe, and scenes of battle in two world wars. Epperson's lighting is also solid, as is Eric Backus' sound design, which provides a wide arrange of effects, including applause, explosions, martial music, and the voice of Franklin Roosevelt.

Keaton is a skilled actor who knows exactly how to pace his performance -- a sly smile here, a pregnant pause there, and, once in a while, just to make sure he has our attention, a furious roar. Watching him, one never gets a sense of a man on whom the weight of history must have been a crushing burden. Except for a certain irritability combined with a touch of ruthlessness, this is Churchill the raconteur, giving an after-dinner speech about his life and times. It's not dull and it's not dishonest. It simply isn't very dramatic.--David Barbour