Theatre in Review: The River (Circle in the Square Theatre)

	Hugh Jackman. Photo: Richard Termine

The producers of The River have asked that we not reveal anything about the last few minutes of The River. That's fine with me; it's the other 85 minutes I'm worried about.

Jez Butterworth's play is loaded with portents. As the lights come up, we hear a woman's voice singing "The Song of the Wandering Aengus" by W. B. Yeats. Later, someone will read aloud Ted Hughes' "After Moonless Midnight." There is a teasingly ambiguous plot structure, along with artfully written monologues describing formative experiences, and pauses so pregnant that Harold Pinter might sigh in envy. The characters occupy a cabin in the woods packed with secrets from the past. Intimations are everywhere, a sense that some terrible news is being held back. To be fair, the final scene -- the one we're not going to mention -- does go a long way toward explaining what we have seen -- and then again it doesn't. Let's just say that, when the penny finally drops, the result is strangely unsatisfying.

Hugh Jackman is the unnamed man who has come to a cabin on his uncle's property for a fishing expedition; he has come there many times before. He is accompanied by an unnamed woman played by Cush Jumbo. They are clearly new to each other and are still adjusting to each other's personalities and interests. For example, she wants him to pause and admire an apparently glorious sunset; he is rushing to get ready for a nighttime trip to the river, because "the sea trout are running." His reluctance to join her in her epiphany makes her briefly furious. There are other little misunderstandings: Jackman wants Jumbo to join him at the river, but she says she has no experience (or interest) in catching fish. (His attempt at teaching her, earlier in the day, has apparently been a disaster.) When he mentions that she has moved a table, she feels chastened -- Is she presuming ownership too soon? -- and quickly tries to move it back, earning a splinter in her finger. With some effort, he gets her to read the Hughes poem mentioned above which, admittedly beautifully, encapsulates the experience of fishing as a way of becoming one with nature.

It's a promising opening, each friendly little power struggle revealing the process of two people gradually coming together and learning, little by little, to trust each other. Jackman's warmth and easy charm and Jumbo's edgy line readings and ability to swiftly jump from one emotional stance to another are all put to good use. It's easy to root for this pair to reach a more permanent accommodation.

The gear switching begins in the next scene, when Jackman enters in a panic and, bedeviled by poor cell phone coverage, tries to report to the police Jumbo's disappearance. As he is explaining that she vanished into the darkness at the river, she enters, to his evident relief. Only the woman we see isn't Cush Jumbo. It's Laura Donnelly. She is shorter that Jumbo, is white rather than black, and speaks in an Irish, rather than English, accent. Otherwise, Jackman treats her as if she is indistinguishable from her predecessor.

What follows is another funny encounter, expanding on the same getting-to-know-you theme. Donnelly produces an enormous fish, which she has caught with the aid of a stranger she met along the river. Jackman is incensed by this, made especially furious by the fact that the man had her use gummi bears as lures. (To his mind, this is cheating, and, in any case, the stranger is a poacher on the uncle's property.) Donnelly steps into the bathroom and Jumbo returns, telling a story about a walk she took earlier in the day, and the woman she saw; she also makes a terrible confession: Thanks to her father, she is an experienced fisher. You might think that having been lied to in a bald-faced manner, Jackman might be a little nonplussed. Instead, he tells a story about seeing her, earlier in the day, stripping nude and diving into a cold pool of water. "I said out loud to myself, 'Watch out, lad. You're in trouble. You have to be as fearless and as honest as the thing you just saw happen. Because that's who you're dealing with. Now look out.'"

This, I think, is the moment where The River runs past the point of no return into an ambiguity that becomes less and less enticing as the show progresses. Jackman's speech is nicely written -- all of the dialogue in The River is graceful -- but it doesn't really address Jumbo's lies. And it soon becomes apparent that Jackman isn't being fully honest with either Jumbo or Donnelly as they come and go in alternating scenes. It appears that he has told each that he loves her -- ambiguously described as "words which completely surprised and scared me" -- and each woman struggles to come up with an appropriate response that, nevertheless, leaves her with a little wiggle room. (Neither seems so eager to commit, on the spot, as does Jackman.) Also, he seems to have told each woman that she is the first to accompany him to the cabin, but if that is true, then why is there a scarlet dress in the closet? What about the portrait of a woman under the bed, with her eyes scratched out?

An answer of sorts is provided in the final minutes, but, even if it makes a certain emotional sense, it never really deals with the issue of Jumbo and Donnelly's characters. (I will give you one clue: The show's Playbill is not strictly honest about the play's contents.) Are they two different women? Not likely, since their scenes, when put together, more or less follow the same sequence of events. Are they the same woman? Possibly, but then what is the point of dividing their scenes between two actresses -- especially as Jumbo and Donnelly, gifted as they are, don't make significantly different impressions? Are they figments of Jackman's imagination? It's a thought, but it seems no more likely than any other scenario.

Ultimately, the parallel structure of The River -- one scene with Jumbo followed by one scene with Donnelly -- becomes repetitious, lessening one's interest even as the questions it raises seemingly become more urgent. The characters, forced into this binary pattern by their creator, never achieve the specificity that would make us care about them. Butterworth's puzzle requires that he hold back so much information about them that they remain disturbingly flat, and his nicely turned dialogue nevertheless lacks the ability to create the clouds of suggestion that might keep us engaged. Even a star as naturally charismatic as Jackman is hard-pressed to make anything of a character that is conceived to be little more than a mystery man. Jumbo makes a strong impression initially, but both she and Donnelly suffer from being wrapped in an enigma. Ian Rickson's direction is solid enough, especially in the comic tiffs of the early scenes, and he does all that can be done to maintain a sense of underlying tension, but long before the ending, one suspects that The River isn't headed anywhere in particular.

I suspect that the original Royal Court production of The River was not seen in an in-the-round configuration, but the set designer Ultz effectively creates a space that feels both confined and far from civilization; his costumes are also fine. Charles Balfour's lighting helps create a warmly interior feeling, but it sometimes errs a little too much on the side of dimness, which doesn't help the play during some of its slower passages. The sound design, by Ian Dickinson for Autograph, is his second striking contribution this season, the other being The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Here, blending effects such as birdsong and the sound of rushing water with Stephen Warbeck's melancholic incidental music (sometimes delivered at such a low level as to be almost subliminal), he does as much as any of his collaborators to add to the play's atmosphere of mystery. If the Broadway League had deigned to give an award to sound designers this season, Dickinson would be a strong early contender -- but that's another story.

Funnily enough, The River has been called a ghost story by some, and I suppose in a way it is. But in a way that's what is wrong with it. The people in it are so insubstantial that they might as well be ectoplasm.--David Barbour