Theatre in Review: On Set with Theda Bara (Transport Group/Lucille Lortel Theatre at The Brick)

I don't know, of course, but I have long suspected that David Greenspan is a practitioner of The Delsarte System of Expression, and, having seen On Set with Theda Bara, I am now convinced of it. François Delsarte, as you may or may not know, was a French singer and orator whose "Science of Applied Aesthetics" sought to unite words and bodily gestures to dramatic effect. Wrote an acolyte: "The Delsarte system is founded on the great principle of the law of correspondence; that is, every expression of the face, every gesture, every posture of the body corresponds to, or is but the outward expression of, an inner emotion or condition of the mind, be it one of beauty or one of ugliness." Forgotten today, Delsarte was influential in the careers of Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Martha Graham, among others. One of Bette Davis' biographers suggests that the actress' distinctively theatrical manner was predicated, in part, by her mother, a one-time Delsarte instructor.

This would explain Greenspan, one of the most blatantly artificial, yet accomplished, actors working in New York today. He is a startling presence to be sure, with his hawk nose, hooded eyes like protective shields, and a Joker-style curve to his mouth. Add to this a voice that wraps the most banal statement in a cocoon of irony or, when needed, has the penetrating force of a power drill. To complete the package, he moves with feline fluidity and grace, waving away an irrelevant point with a fluttering hand, raising an arm like an august Roman Senator, and executing a furious three-quarter turn like a film noir heroine caught red-handed. Like Delsarte, Greenspan has a gesture for every emotion, an emotion for every gesture. He is a stunningly immediate presence and a ghost from the declamatory theatre of another era; if, one night, he took the stage to recite "The Bells" or "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight, "I wouldn't be in the least surprised.

Working solo most of the time, Greenspan's style has been put to good use in various situations, whether exhuming the long-lost Broadway comedy The Patsy, leading us through the maze-like sentences of Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts, or scaling the heights of Eugene' O'Neill's monumental Freudian soap opera Strange Interlude. One is initially intrigued at the thought of him appearing as the title character of On Set with Theda Bara. Not the first film star -- that would be Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl -- Bara was the first vamp, appearing as soul-destroying mantraps in epics like A Fool There Was, Destruction, and The Tiger Woman. Sadly, all but a few minutes of her films have been lost, but still pictures often show her lounging, languidly, on plushly upholstered divans, luring men to their doom; indeed, her name was rumored to be an anagram for "Arab death." "I will continue doing vampires as long as people sin," she once announced, defiantly, but her career burned out just before talkies arrived. (Her one Broadway appearance, in something called The Blue Flame, apparently caused peals of unintended laughter on opening night.) She died in 1955.

Except, in Joey Merlo's play, Theda is still with us, hale and hearty at one hundred and thirtysomething, living in seclusion with Ulysses, a former silent film accompanist she picked up and never let go. Greenspan dines out on Theda's dialogue, a patois composed of silent film title cards, studio press releases, and old Photoplay interviews: "Undulating snakily, stretched sensuously out on a tiger skin rug, I beckon to the weak man before me. I pantomime: Eyes ablaze and large lit up like two planets circling the sun. My skin, translucent. Eyes cast down on the prey." An evening composed entirely of such bonbons would make for an unhealthily high-calorie diet, but the actor has other characters to play and a story to tell, which is where On Set with Theda Bara runs into trouble. In addition to the star and the grumpy Ulysses (who once had an orgasm while staring at her on the screen), Greenspan plays Iras, a genderqueer teenager obsessed with Theda, and Finale, Iras' adoptive father, a hard-bitten gay detective bent on tracking down his missing daughter.

Merlo throws all four characters together in a hard-to-explain situation as Iras, hunting down Theda, attempts to supplant Ulysses while Finale, complaining about modern phenomena as they/them pronouns and worrying about his stale marriage ("It's been six years since Richie fucked me; I guess that's how it goes"), searches for Iras, leading to gunfire, and, I think, multiple deaths. I won't swear to that because, as it goes along, On Set with Theda Bara becomes increasingly hard to follow. Merlo has little interest in exposition or plot, preferring to cut from one overwrought monologue to another. With Greenspan's commanding presence and words so lush you can practically taste them, one is carried away for a while. But, for once, the actor hasn't managed to give his characters distinct profiles and, in its later passages, the script blurs into incoherence.

Before that, Greenspan puts on quite a show, prowling the room and carrying on with an intensity that the real Theda Bara would surely envy. Jack Serio stages the proceedings rather like a séance, with much of the audience seated around a long, long table lit by low-hanging lamps. (Frank J. Oliva is the set designer). Stacey Derosier's lighting makes the most of this noirish atmosphere, bouncing eerie effects off the mirrored walls at the ends of the room. Brandon Bulls' sound design creates a background of rising dread. Avery Reed dresses Greenspan nattily, in a three-piece suit suggestive of pre-World War I Hollywood.

Merlo, I suppose, is trying to say something about the contrasting sensibilities of different LGBTQ generations: the ultra-high camp of vintage Hollywood so beloved by gays of the ancien régime, the assimilationist dreams of the post-Stonewall era, and today's young people, who want to make their own identity categories or do away with them altogether. It's an interesting point but here it gets lost amid so much florid writing. Still, even though we're getting Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard next season, I can't help thinking: Wouldn't David Greenspan make a fantastic Norma Desmond? --David Barbour