Playwright: Yasmina Reza
At: Apple Tree Theatre, Highland Park
Phone: ( 847 ) 432-4335; $27-$38
Runs through: March 2
French playwright Yasmina Reza's international hit, Art, was a three-character comic essay on friendship and art appreciation that was a triumph of style ( witty ) over substance. Her next play, The Unexpected Man, is a two-character work now in its regional premiere in Christopher Hampton's English translation. Running an hour and 15 minutes, it's more short story than play, and perhaps suitably so as the subject is a writer and writing.
A middle-aged man and womanstrangerssilently share a train compartment. He is a celebrated novelist, unfulfilled despite success, self-absorbed, beset by self-doubt, and hobbled by the common writer's distress that his work never comes close to achieving the profundity to which it aspires. Making mental notes about future stories, the writer is a counterpart of Trigorin in Chekhov's The Seagull.
The woman recognizes him instantly. She's not only a fan, but one whose private emotions are stirred by the achievements of the very same body of work he feels is so inadequate. She also appears to be the nurturing friend of many, including the characters from Art, whom she mentions.
All this lengthy character expositionit's the bulk of the playis revealed through alternating interior monologues. Until the closing moments, the two hardly speak to each other. It makes The Unexpected Man extremely stylized, even affected. The challenge for director Ross Lehman is to make the people interesting and the play a viable stage vehicle, since the script requires little physical action.
Lehman's solutiona fairly good oneis merely to suggest the train car in Brian Sidney Bembridge's spare, clean, linear scenic design; at heart a long, narrow polished wood platform, with two chairs facing each other in the middle. Without restricting train walls, Lehman is free to move his actors about the space, letting their bodies leave the seats as their minds wander with words. If the moves seem forced or arbitrary at timesand they doit nonetheless is deft and effective work most of the time.
Actors William Brown and Peggy Roeder both are master performers at ease with verbally challenging material. Both have expressive character faces, and both understand subtlety and modulation. They are at home with The Unexpected Man, and it with them.
But the play doesn't have the comic punch of Art, and the characters aren't well-balanced. One learns much more about him than about her, yet she is far more centered, self-aware and perceptive about human nature than he. The intelligence is high, and Reza's understanding of the public and private personas of a successful writer rings true. Still, I'm not convinced that makes a really interesting train ride. The Unexpected Man seems slightly parochial and certainly too arch.