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Theatre in Review: The Road to Mecca (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)

Rosemary Harris and Carla Gugino. Photo: Joan Marcus

You won't be surprised to hear that Rosemary Harris, Carla Gugino, and Jim Dale are doing fine, subtle, quietly revelatory work in The Road to Mecca. With these three, how could it be otherwise? They're enough to constitute any playwright's dream cast, but there's a strange irony buried inside Gordon Edelstein's meticulous production: The more this trio digs into the subsurface of Athol Fugard's play, generally to brilliant effect, the more they inadvertently cast a harsh light on its stagy construction and bald-faced use of old-fashioned theatrical devices.

The author's heavy hand with exposition becomes evident mere minutes into the first act, when Gugino's Elsa Barlow, a practical, tough-minded schoolteacher, arrives at a tumbledown cottage in the Karoo (a semi-desert region of South Africa) to visit her dear friend, the elderly Miss Helen (Harris). Clearly, Elsa's trip is an urgent one; she has traveled 12 hours in a car to spend only one night with Miss Helen, who can turn remarkably cagey when the discussion becomes too frank. Still, they spend a good 25 minutes making chitchat, reaffirming their friendship, filing a report on Elsa's daily life and dating status, and reliving cherished memories from the past-- the sort of thing they shouldn't have to remind each other about, except there's an audience that needs to be filled in. Only after this extensive rundown does Elsa say, "Come here and sit down. It's time to talk about your last letter."

Longtime Fugard watchers will be familiar with his everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to exposition, delivered in large chunks with as little artifice as possible. And, if you don't mind sitting through these long-winded passages, you'll find yourself primed for the drama to come. In this case, the dilemma is extraordinarily delicate. Miss Helen has, for nearly 20 years, been a quiet scandal in her upright Boer community, having blossomed as an artist after her husband's death, filling her yard with her strange and inventive sculptures. (This ever-expanding wonderland - which, we are told, frightens the local children and has incited vandals - brims with the likes of owls with headlights for eyes and a mosque constructed entirely out of beer bottles.) Approaching 70, however, she struggles with arthritis and depression, and Marius (Dale), an Afrikaner churchman, has begun to gently, but relentlessly, urge her to enter a retirement home. Unable to argue her own case, Miss Helen has sent for Elsa.

This seemingly simple situation is given extraordinary layers of meaning by Fugard. Miss Helen's solitude and eccentricity have been received by her neighbors as a rebuke of their ostentatiously conventional ways, and, in the name of helping her, Marius is really taming her, bringing her into line with community standards. At the same time, he is no villain; you only have to see him gaze at her to understand the deep affection, mixed with exasperation, he feels for her. And Miss Helen is no cuddly oddball; she has survived a hard childhood and an arid marriage only to discover a surpassing strength in strangeness. Having embraced it, she has been prone to both periods of spiritual exaltation and crippling sadness. Elsa is not a conventional savior but a hard-boiled pragmatist who responds to Miss Helen's desolation with an action plan that includes a trip to the doctor and the hiring of household help. "You're treating that letter like a shopping list," Miss Helen complains, not without justification. Furthermore, when decisions must be made, Elsa insists that Miss Helen shoulder the responsibility for her fate.

This situation is illuminated by a cast of experts -- sleuths, really -- who, under Edelstein's guidance, uncover the secrets hidden in each character's heart. Notice the many ways Harris has of burying her hands in the folds of her sweater, the better to draw attention away from their ravages, or how, with a sideways glance, she deftly deflects a question she'd prefer not to answer. And when she utters - cries out, really - the word "Darkness!" it's a dispatch from the dark side of a woman's soul. Harris' delivery of the climactic passage, in which Miss Helen describes her long and arduous inner journey, reduces the audience to awed silence.

Simply by sitting at a table, carefully placing a pair of writing instruments on it, and donning a pair of glasses, Dale reveals Marius as a man for whom social conventions are a life raft in a treacherous world. In one of the play's most telling passages, he tries to help Miss Helen fill out an application, anxiously trying to pin down her husband's middle name and the exact date, nearly six decades earlier, of her confirmation. Thanks to the actor's way with a gesture, it's easy to see how Marius has frittered away decades worrying about such ephemera. For long passages, Gugino is required to sit quietly and listen, but you ignore her at your peril. She is taking in every word and, when you least expect it, is ready to erupt. She can also turn a simple line ("How do you like your tea?") into a quiet, but firm, announcement that the battle is about to be joined.

But, even as Fugard probes this beautifully conceived and acutely detailed situation, he can't stop himself from providing a running commentary that nearly spoils the effect. His gift for stating the obvious becomes borderline irritating. Looking out at her (unseen) work, Miss Helen announces, "This is the best of me; this is what I really am." "She dared to be different," announces Elsa, sounding like ad copy for film. Gesturing to the yard, she adds, "Out there expresses Helen's freedom." After Marius departs, having mourned a relationship with Miss Helen that never was, Elsa turns to Miss Helen and says, "He's in love with you." (And when did you first notice?, you want to say.) Elsa's all-too-symbolic offstage encounter with an African woman and her infant child is hashed over until every bit of symbolism is wrung from it.

These qualities have always been a part of Fugard's work, but one suspects that for a very long time they were obscured by his heroic, decades-long stand against apartheid, his clear-eyed exploration of the pathology of institutionalized prejudice. Because The Road to Mecca is about matters of the heart and soul, however, one is more aware of the playwright, armed with a pointer, drawing our attention to his themes. It's possible that, in the post-apartheid era, Fugard's work, minus some of its original urgency, may be due for a cooler appraisal than it has received so far.

In any case, there's much to enjoy from this gifted threesome and from Michael Yeargan's superb set, a ramshackle pair of rooms transformed by bold daubs of Fauvist colors and sprinkled with glitter. It's further transformed by Peter Kaczorowski's stunning lighting, which suffuses the stage with late afternoon sunlight followed by a luminous candlelit atmosphere. Susan Hilferty is an authority on Fugard's work -- she has directed several of his plays -- and her costumes fit the characters perfectly. John Gromada's sound design, which includes some melancholy incidental music, is also fine.

And there is the golden opportunity to witness one of the greatest actresses of our time, a brilliant song-and-dance man revealing his equal skill as a character actor, and a rising young actress who thrives on taking challenges. These alone are well worth the price of admission.--David Barbour


(20 January 2012)

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