Theatre in Review: The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock (Brits Off Broadway/59E59)

	Roberta Kerr and Martin Miller. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Can't we keep Alfred Hitchcock off the analyst's couch? Apparently, the temptation to put him there is irresistible. In 2012, there was the feature film Hitchcock, about the making of Psycho, which was criticized by Times reviewer Manohla Dargis, among others, for suggesting the director "was himself a little psycho and could only work from a place of madness." The same year saw the television film The Girl, about Hitchcock's relationship with the actress Tippi Hedren, which, Dargis wrote, "painted him as a pathetic sexual predator." Actually, there's real evidence for that charge, according to Hedren's thoroughly credible account. Then again, if we were to start excoriating every Hollywood director who sexually harassed an actress, we wouldn't have space for this review.

The notion of Hitchcock as a Krafft-Ebing case study was popularized by the biographer Donald Spoto, and there can be little doubt that he was a very, very strange man--morbidly obese, ravenously curious about sex, obsessed with many of his leading ladies, and possessed of a bizarre sense of humor. (He once described his favorite practical joke, which involved stepping into an elevator full of strangers, describing the bloody details of a murder he claimed to have just committed, and exiting on the next floor.) But the trouble with these portraits of the artist as a basket case is that they tend to diminish Hitchcock, leaving one to wonder how, if he was one step away from the madhouse, he was able to turn out one masterpiece after another--films that are notable for their firm directorial control.

The playwright David Rudkin tackled this subject in a 1993 radio play, which he has now reimagined for the stage. The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock is not a drama; rather it is a collage of sorts designed to portray Hitchcock as hostage to his demons, a profound neurotic and textbook Freudian case. Much of the script is written in stream-of-consciousness style, guiding us through what are meant to be the dark corners and twisting byways of Hitchcock's mind. We see him firmly ensconced in his director's chair, plotting film sequences in which fetishistically imagined women are stalked by menacing strangers. He appears as a schoolboy, being punished by grim Jesuits. His mother is seen in shadow, bedridden and warning him against the temptations of prostitutes in the street. Working with an unnamed screenwriter, he plots out the scenario of Vertigo, making it clear that the James Stewart character's fear of heights is really a metaphor for impotence and terror of women. In a sequence seemingly inspired by the film Frenzy, he has a sexually charged vision of following a woman and strangling her. "I have so much loving in me," he says. "I am so full of loving. And all I can I do is bring this death."

Rudkin's Hitchcock simmers with repressed passions, both sexual and violent, but in daily life he is neutered by his inhibitions, not to mention his overweight and unglamorous looks. (One monologue shows him dazzled by beautiful women, but repelled by "bodies of flesh. Men. Women. Naked. With each other...Action, they call it. With tongues, lips, teeth. And things. Working their way into...inserting into slimy...slots." To further make the point, the older actress Roberta Kerr is cast as both Hitchcock's mother and as Alma Reville, his wife; the former is castrating and the latter is coolly intellectual, poring over his films for errors to be corrected.

The more Rudkin draws parallels between the man and his work, the more reductive and silly The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock becomes. When a Jesuit, punishing him, tells him he can have his "correction" immediately or later in the day, and the boy opts for later, the priest fixes his gimlet eye on him and says, "You choose to hold yourself in...suspense that long?" (One is surprised not to hear a musical flourish accompanying this line.) Much is made of Hitchcock's famous disgust with eggs, which are, he is reminded, "God's earnest of regeneration." His way of telling a young screenwriter to use the nickname "Hitch" instead of "Mr. Hitchcock" is, to repeat, "Young man, I have no cock." Much is made of the fact that his heroines have first names that begin with the letters "MA" - Marion Crane in Psycho, Madeline Elster in Vertigo, and, of course, the title character in Marnie. This allows him, in his more distrait moments, to mutter, "Ma, Ma," driving home the Oedipal suggestion.

Jack McNamara's production does have its mildly amusing moments, such as when Hitchcock is seen perusing a volume of The Birds of North America; when he astounded by the sight of a beautiful woman in a restaurant with her husband, mentally redirecting the moment as soon as they leave; or when, in response to a screenwriting colleague's fear that he might upset the women in the audience, he says, "I was at a Jesuit school. Jesuits at my beginning, feminists at my end. All for our feeling guilt for this thing." But by and large, Hitchcock's wit is absent, along with any indication of the enormous assurance that allowed him to run such a tight ship when directing. No Hitchcock production ever tolerated delays, overruns, or diva antics; how likely would this be if the man in charge was a ticking bomb himself?

As Hitchcock, Martin Miller is insufficiently imposing and his cockney accent doesn't seem quite right; he doesn't capture the director's funereal tone, his way of giving equal weight to each word in a sentence. He handles the script's oversupply of near-breakdown moments well, however. Roberta Kerr is an authoritative presence as Alma, and is touching in her brief appearance as Emma, his mother. Anthony Wise is suitably menacing as that Jesuit, and Tom McHugh is convincing as a young screenwriter trying to impose some sensible form on the director's flood of ideas.

Juliet Shillingford's set is a blank canvas, which, when backlit, allows for considerable shadow play; this off-white environment is lit with considerable sensitivity and invention by Azusa Ono. Tom Lishman's sound design takes in the familiar pops and scratches one hears on a vintage soundtrack, along with a few incidental effects, and plenty of movie music, including Bernard Herrmann's stunning Vertigo theme.

The play's title is intentional, we are told in a program note; indeed, Rudkin finds eerie parallels between T. S. Eliot's poem and Hitchcock's life and films. Maybe, but to my eyes, he has imposed those parallels and they make for an awkward fit. One leaves The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock feeling that his subject is as much a mystery as he was before the play began.--David Barbour