Playwright: Adapted by R.L. Lane from Herman Melville's short story. At: Mary-Arrchie Theatre at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan . Phone: 773-871-0442; $18-$22. Runs through: April 11. Photo courtesy of Mary-Arrchie Theatre
You think Moby Dick is challenging? Herman Melville's novella Bartleby the Scrivener makes the symbol-stuffed tale of the whale seem as facile as a nursery rhyme. In Bartleby, Melville creates a character who seems as motive-free as a stone, a man whose extraordinary supreme passive-aggressiveness has no limit and, seemingly, no origin. "I prefer not to," is Bartleby's mantra. His story is that of a man who opts out of everything life requires except for involuntary bodily functions such as breathing.
Mary-Arrchie's static staging of the story won't shed any light on the mystery. Adapted by R. L. Lane, the piece offers the audience nothing in the way of insight into the title character's cryptic mindset. Through a series of short scenes, we get the bare-bones outline of a story rather than a full, engaging narrative. We see what happens, but with no context or nuance, the events that transpire don't have any significance. As for the title character ( a zombie-like Kevin V. Smith ) , he's so inscrutable he's a bore—a man who affects a perfectly bland poker face despite the fact that he isn't involved in any sort of high-stakes ( or even low-stakes ) game of chance, metaphorical or otherwise.
Hamstrung by an ineffective adaptation, there's not a lot director Richard Cotovsky can do to inject life into the proceedings. The cast consists of Bartleby, his attorney boss and his fellow scriveners—men who copy documents at a Wall Street firm. As veteran copyist Turkey, Leonard Kraft breaks up the otherwise monotonous proceedings with droll and dire ruminations on parallels between the present-day and ancient Greece ( "Remember Carthage," he intones at one point, with a marvelously gloomy solemnity ) . But with the exception of Kraft and—to a lesser degree—Daniel Behrendt as a young Wall Street turk, the actors wear their characters like ill-fitting costumes rather than second skins. When they emote, feelings seem put on from without rather than organically rising from within. And when Bartleby finally cracks—momentarily—the sudden sound and fury is as baffling and insignificant as his behavior as the quintessential no-man.
As Bartleby's boss Standard, Todd Lahrman is also a blank slate of a character. Why doesn't he fire Bartleby immediately after it becomes clear that the scrivener has no intention of doing the work he was hired for? Why does he waffle for days, paying Bartleby for staring at the walls? Muttering something about "humanity" in a final scene hardly suffices as an explanation—or even the raw beginnings of one.
Watching the production is akin to watching something you don't understand or care much about mutate in a Petri dish—weirdly interesting for about 30 seconds but, in the end, pointless.
