Kane Mutiny

PTC's Orson's Shadow is pretentious, tedious and unfunny. But give it a point for guts.

by David Anthony Fox

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Published: May 16, 2007

Give the Philadelphia Theatre Company a point for guts, at least. It's nervy to close their last season in the old Plays & Players space with a comedy about a theatrical disaster. Orson's Shadow isn't a disaster, at least. It's merely pretentious, tedious and unfunny.

The subject is what might have been the collaboration of the century: Orson Welles directing Laurence Olivier in Ionesco's play, Rhinoceros. Yup, it really happened, in 1960: Critic Kenneth Tynan brought the two men together, a step in creating a new National Theatre in England. Note: If the previous sentences are bewilderingly opaque or uninteresting to you � as they will be to all but die-hard theater queens � stop right now: Orson's Shadow is not for you.

Is it for anybody else? After all, it's a great story, this saga of what-almost-could-have-been-great. (In the actual event, Olivier proved uncomfortable with trying a new theatrical style, Welles wasn't in best form, and the whole thing more or less petered out.)

But it's a complicated tale, one that needs a real artist to tell it � to give the highs and lows of two geniuses who were almost as tortured as they were gifted. And that would take a playwright of stature and insight. Not Austin Pendleton, mostly familiar as a mannered, self-regarding actor, who proves here that he's equally limited as a writer.

There's some smoothness in the way Pendleton has orchestrated the action, which is full of dishy name-dropping. Some might call it clever. But where's the cleverness in reducing three giants of the theater to caricature? Tynan was a brilliant, influential critic, but here he's a twit. Olivier and Welles most certainly had their dark sides � also their monstrous egos. But they were geniuses, and while Pendleton can portray their quirks, he can do nothing to even suggest their stellar gifts.

So Orson's Shadow is an overlong anecdote about several sad, creepy people (the decaying Vivien Leigh shows up for two uncomfortable scenes). Director James Christy provides a superficially fluent production, but shows little regard for acting values: Everybody goes for maximum archness, with scarcely a moment of genuine connection.

Let's wish PTC a triumphant fall debut in their new digs: the Suzanne Roberts Theatre on the Avenue of the Arts. And let's hope Orson's Shadow becomes a forgotten blip in the company's history, much as Rhinoceros was for Welles and Olivier.

(d_fox@citypaper.net)

Orson's Shadow

Through June 3, Philadelphia Theatre Company at Plays & Players Theater, 1714 Delancey St., 215-985-0420

 

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