Theatre in Review: Fool for Love (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre) The Furies are unleashed in a rundown desert motel in Fool for Love, aided and abetted by the stunning performances of Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell. The seedy, barely furnished room -- a solid achievement by the designer Dane Laffrey -- is occupied by Eddie and May -- ex-lovers, maybe current lovers, maybe something more -- who are seen, as the lights go up, in a tableau of profound stillness. Enjoy it while it lasts; the 75 minutes that follow are filled with physical and emotional violence, as they struggle with a passionate attachment that often seems more like a death grip. Breaking the silence, Eddie tries to coax a response out of May. Brutally changing the subject, she tells him his fingers smell. Horses, he says, by way of explanation. She dismisses that idea, offering a different, sexually graphic reason. He strokes her hair -- in this hostile context, an almost obscenely intimate act. "You're either gonna erase me or have me erased," she says. "'Cause I'm in the way." He insists that he has come 2,048 miles to collect her. He takes her in a kiss, which ends with a knee to his groin. The situation that has driven Eddie and May to this desolate spot combines primal emotions with a tangled history going back many years. The couple has long been locked in a cycle of passion, infidelity, and abandonment, leaving them exhausted, hollowed out, and yet still unable to let go. May has been hiding out, burying herself in a waitress job. Eddie pleads with her to join him on a farm, an offer she furiously rejects. But Eddie is not alone: He has been trailed by his cast-off lover, the Countess, an enigmatic figure who passes by the motel in a black Mercedes, strafing the room with gunfire. And who is the dissipated elderly codger, known only as The Old Man, looking on from an easy chair, singing the praises of his dream woman, Barbara Mandrell, and claiming to know everything about Eddie and May's shared past? Much has been made of the symbolic content of Sam Shepard's plays -- - especially his vision of an American West defiled by development and of a mythical cowboy masculinity that imprisons those who embrace it -- but Fool for Love will not work unless it is grounded in an acute psychological reality. Under Daniel Aukin's pinpoint direction, Arianda and Rockwell so fully inhabit their characters that we can easily believe that we are spying on a pair of lovers whose long-running and highly destructive affair is in its endgame. Arianda is a wonder at making the most commonplace activity seem unique to her character, and she doesn't shy away from the script's enormous physical demands, whether they involve leaping onto the bed and assuming a deceptively nonchalant attitude, sobbing wildly in a corner of the room, or being thrown against the wall. She handles each line of dialogue like an ice pick, whether telling Eddie "You're like a disease to me" or adding "Fifteen years I've been like a yo-yo to you. I've never been split. I've never been two ways about you." Rockwell is equally adept at revealing the emotions boiling behind his studied cowpoke poses, whether Eddie is begging May to throw her lot in with him, hurling a chair across the room, or quietly taunting Martin, the gentle, slow-talking guy who shows up expecting to take May on a movie date. Tom Pelphrey is an ideal target as Martin, who, from the moment he appears, is hopelessly caught in the crossfire between Eddie and May. Gordon Joseph Weiss, his voice polished to a high twang that sends out radio signals of hostility and need, is an imposing presence as The Old Man -- like all of Shepard's patriarchs, both an intolerable bully and a pathetic, spectral presence who seems to have wandered in from some other plane of existence altogether. Arianda and Rockwell also take the precise measure of Eddie and May's complementary monologues, which lay bare the awful history they share with The Old Man -- Rockwell, speaking in a low monotone that bespeaks a world of suppressed feelings and Arianda almost clinically taking stock of the terrible revelations that bind Eddie and May in a way that no other intimacy can. Aukin's handling of the actors is superb here and also in the climactic kiss that proves to be incendiary in more ways than one. In addition to Laffrey's wide, low-ceilinged interior (and the grungy muslin show curtain that comes with it), Justin Townsend's lighting is a many-layered beauty, making use of the practical lamps on stage and the light from the parking lot outside the room to create a desolate noirish landscape. Anita Yavich's costumes, especially the form-fitting red dress and matching heels in which May is dressed for trouble, are just right for each character. Ryan Rumery's sound design combines such effects as barking dogs, arriving cars, and gunfire with a persistent low rumble that provides additional confirmation that no good can come of the Eddie-May reunion. As they finally speak out loud the truth about themselves, Eddie and May are, however painfully, cauterizing the terrible wounds that have left them trapped in a pattern of self-destruction. There's something almost Greek in the catharsis that follows, and a suggestion that, at long last, they may be free. It's surprising that, in our current revival-happy climate, it has taken more than 30 years for Fool for Love to get a first-class New York revival, but this excellent company was well worth the wait. In their hands, this looks to be Shepard's masterpiece, his work most likely to stand the test of time. -- David Barbour 
|
