Theatre in Review: Apologia (Roundabout Theatre Company)

	Hugh Dancy, Talene Monahon, Stockard Channing. Photo: Joan Marcus

The first act of Apologia positively bristles with hostility -- moments of carefully withheld affection, a bevy of abrasive opinions, a mortifying personal revelation wielded like a knife, and, finally, a brutal son-mother takedown that scuttles a dinner party, sending the guests scurrying into the darkness. But it isn't until Act II, and a hushed, almost tender, middle-of-the-night encounter, that true psychological blood is shed. After a clattering hour of jabs and wisecracks, it is chilling to see how methodically -- cold-bloodedly, you might say -- a deeply unhappy young man can go about torturing the soul of a so-called loved one.

Our hostess for the evening is Kristin, a formidable art critic, cultural celebrity, and political activist, whose memoir is currently on the bestseller list. (It is one of playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell's more fanciful notions that someone like Kristin -- who is like Robert Hughes crossed with, say, Germaine Greer -- could rate a dedicated display in Barnes and Noble in 2009, when the play is set. I guess they've run out of easy-reading screeds by the likes of Jeanine Pirro or Ann Coulter.) It is Kristin's birthday and, typically, she is throwing the party, in her rambling cottage in the English countryside. (Kristin is a proud American expatriate who has no use for the native land she fled as a young woman.) The guest list includes her son, Peter, whom she treats like something of a failed first draft. An investment banker -- "Still raping the Third World?" she wonders, by way of greeting him -- Peter has shown up with Trudi, his new girlfriend, an American whose professed Christianity is instantly dismissed as "outmoded patriarchal propaganda." A gift, chosen by Trudi -- an African mask -- is a total flop: Kristin considers its use as a domestic decorative item "profoundly disrespectful...both of it and the artist who created it." She quickly adds, "But thank you. It's very kind," speaking in a tone that suggests she would gladly repatriate the item if she could.

Simon, Kristin's younger son, is scheduled to attend, but he fails to show; instead, he is represented by his partner, Claire. Since Simon has burned through three jobs in as many months -- he is working on a novel that, one feels sure, will never see the light of day -- Claire keeps them both afloat, starring in a television soap opera -- or, as she likes to call it, "a serialized drama that follows the trajectories of various people's lives." This sort of euphemistic language sets Kristin's teeth on edge. Even worse -- like putting a match to kindling, really -- are Claire's repeated references to the 1960s as "hilarious," adding, "Everything about it. The clothes, the hair, the raging idealism. It's sweet." (Rubbing it in, she adds that most of Kristin's generation played at revolution "until you could afford a Bang and Olufsen stereo system and a house in the suburbs.") Kristin -- who, for more than forty years, has been ready to march in protest against everything from nuclear arms to the plight of the Kurds -- proceeds, deliberately, to take Claire apart, praising her performance in a pub-theatre revival of A Doll's House as a way of further trashing her TV work and exposing embarrassing facts about the younger woman's private life to everyone at table. During this ritualized bloodletting, we learn the reason for Simon's absence: In the hundreds of pages of Kristin's memoir, neither of her sons is ever mentioned. Suddenly, Peter, who has spent the evening on the fringes, cupping a tumbler of whiskey and looking on with a tentative smile, speaks up, ostensibly defending his brother's anger but in fact eviscerating his mother with such untamed fury that, for the first time, Kristin -- who presides over every social situation like a hanging judge -- looks, quite simply, poleaxed.

Stockard Channing plays Kristin, and if, in the play's early passages, her appearance suggests a certain disarray -- her hair looks as if a tornado had ravaged the place, damaging only her coiffure -- she gives the character the kind of terrifying assurance, tied to a disarming candor, that leaves acquaintances and loved ones alike thoroughly cowed. She handles with remarkable conviction a lengthy speech in which Kristin explains the gist of her book about Giotto, revealing to us her intellectual gifts and the depth of her vision, and she is more than capable of defending herself against charges of maternal abandonment and neglect. As she notes, she gave up her boys when she separated from their father, who, apparently, put her in an impossible position, forcing her to choose between the children and independence. (The script is rather vague on this point.) Afterward, she became an occasional and haphazard presence in her sons' lives.

The disastrous first-act meal scene is slickly written; the dialogue is loaded with amusing and pointed barbs and the conversation builds skillfully to the moment when words are spoken that cannot be taken back. But there's something a little calculated and mechanical about it, a sense that a series of opposing temperaments have been pitted too obviously against each other. One watches the verbal mayhem from rather too cool a distance. Things change dramatically when Simon at last shows up. In contrast to Peter, who has the easy professional social manner of a successful businessman, Simon is a walking case of depression, incapable of making eye contact and given to speaking in a flat, emotionless drawl; at the moment, he is a bit of a physical wreck, too, having fallen on broken glass, bits of which are now embedded in his arm.

Compared to the others, who felt the effects of Kristin's scalding tongue and scorched-earth approach to relationships, Simon elicits from her nothing but solicitude, expressed by her careful handling of his wounds. But there is still that book to reckon with. Claire has previously said that when Simon finished it, he announced, "Why did she have children?" He deepens this question with a story from his youth: Having been sent, at the age of seven, by his father to visit Kristin, who was living in Florence, Simon arrived at the train station, where there was no one to collect him. (Later, Kristin will blame the boy's father for this miscommunication, but we only have her word for that.) As the hours went by and night began to fall, the boy was taken up by a strangely friendly man who plied him a bottle of Coke and offered to take him back to his place for the night; with no other option available -- and sensing something was wrong -- the boy agreed.

Of course, Kristin sees where this is going, and, in anguish, begs Simon to reassure her that nothing terrible happened. But that isn't Simon's way: He proceeds to recount the story with almost unconscionable deliberateness, repeatedly delaying the conclusion, aware that he is tormenting his mother. The look on Channing's face throughout this sequence -- the stillness marked by the subtlest indications of horror -- is nothing less than extraordinary; adding to the effect is her silently expressed understanding that the basket case sitting next to her is, at least in part, her handiwork. I should add that both Peter and Simon are played by Hugh Dancy; if this is a bit of a gimmick, the actor nevertheless creates stunningly different personalities, and his handling of this scene -- which is both a confession of shame and a kind of assault -- is exemplary.

Nothing that follows in Apologia is on this level, although there are a couple of satisfying confrontations in which Kristin is further made to face her most unattractive traits. Campbell's method is to reveal the characters' histories on the fly, during the normal course of conversation, a strategy that can seem admirably natural but often leaves one wanting to know more. The character of the boys' father is left sketchy, as are the details of his life with Kristin and their parting. For that matter, Kristin's political leanings are depicted in such black-and-white terms that they lack much reality; simply put, she seems to hate capitalism as much as she adores attending marches.

But the cast, under Daniel Aukin's brisk, often acute direction, offers solid support. Megalyn Echikunwoke amusingly captures Claire's airheaded qualities -- she is a walking encyclopedia of clichés -- while allowing us to believe that she has one or two verbal knockout punches tucked away in her outrageously expensive designer dress. Talene Monahon doesn't shy away from Trudi's many grating qualities -- especially her penchant for stating the obvious when silence would be the better part of valor -- and she more than holds her own in her confrontations with Kristin. The director John Tillinger makes a rare and welcome stage appearance as Kristin's oldest friend, an avuncular gay man who tries to keep the conversation civil.

Also, Dane Laffrey's cottage interior is as attractively austere as Kristin herself. The set has a complete ceiling, so the lighting designer, Bradley King, provides some alluring daylight looks that pour in from the stage left window; the night scenes are so artfully done that they appear to be lit only by the practical lamps onstage. Anita Yavich's costumes, especially Claire's insanely extravagant ensemble, are on target, and Ryan Rumery's sound design nicely supports his nervous, melancholy original music.

"Your idealism has turned into hardness, Kristin," one of the characters states fairly late in the play. "It has a thick, thick shell...a carapace." This is an accurate assessment of the daunting composure Kristin brings to even the most trivial encounter; with it, she goes through life firmly in possession of the upper hand. Thanks to Channing's ability to pierce a character's heart, by the finale her self-possession has assumed the dimensions of a tragic mask. Apologia sometimes seems assembled -- admittedly cleverly -- out of a kit of devices, but Kristin, especially in Channing's hands, is the real thing. -- David Barbour