“I could listen to you lie for hours,” says Henry II to his
wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, during one of their frequent tussles in “The Lion
in Winter.” In this play the characters do little else
but lie to each other, but they do it with style. This James Goldman play was
first produced on Broadway in 1966 and made into a celebrated movie; I think
its reputation has faded a bit since then, but the Out of Pocket Productions
presentation now running at MuCCC reveals a play very
much worth revival. Kudos to director Stephanie Roosa for choosing it, and staging it very ably.
As the play opens, it is Christmas 1183. Henry II (Fred Nuernberg) is 58 — elderly by medieval standards. This
particular lion is feeling rather wintry, and thinking about his possible
successor among his three sons: Richard (Adam Petzold),
Geoffrey (Brad Craddock), and John (Zak West). Also on his mind are his
mistress Alais (Ruth Bellavia),
who also happens to be betrothed to Richard, and his wife, Eleanor (Patricia
Lewis), visiting for the holiday (he has imprisoned her, due to her
inconvenient habit of leading civil wars against her husband).
Henry wants the youngest, John, to succeed him; Eleanor wants
their oldest, Richard. They are all prepared to scheme, scratch, bite, bitch,
and connive until they get what they want. Goldman brings all of them, and also
King Philip II of France (Carl Del Buono), to Chinon Castle to celebrate Christmas, and have at each
other.
Royal bad behavior, particularly of
the European variety, has long been an appealing subject for movies, plays, and
TV; it can be very entertaining to see grand people be nasty to each other.
Goldman’s pace and tone are brisk and bitterly witty; with all these quaintly
dressed folks hurling quips at each other, a few scenes in “The Lion in Winter” sound like a Noel Coward rewrite of “Richard III.”
The play itself is kind of an odd duck, very unusual for an American playwright
in the mid-1960’s, with no references or parallels to politics of the time that
I can see. But Goldman obviously enjoyed the challenge of making these
characters compellingly theatrical, and on the whole he succeeded. Whatever
else it may be, this play is a good time for actors.
I won’t spoil the various checkmates, counterplans, and
reversals, which are as engaging as anything you’d see on BBC America (and
probably presented more clearly). But I can say that in Goldman’s telling, all
the political scheming is the result of strong and frustrated love between
husband and wife, parents and sons, and brothers. They love each other, but
they have loved power and power plays just as much, and it has turned them into
political animals who nearly destroy each other. The
ending of the play is elegiac, as Henry and Eleanor change from a magnificent
royal “we” to a middle-aged couple who start tallying up their mistakes and
asking what more there is to life. (It is no surprise that James Goldman also
wrote the book for the Stephen Sondheim musical “Follies”).
Goldman likes Henry and Eleanor so
much that they tend to overshadow the rest of the play. These parts call for
local theater royalty, and get it in the perfectly cast Fred Nuernberg and Patricia Lewis. Nuernberg
has a sonorous, slightly aged speaking voice that is a pleasure to listen to,
and enough of the kingly manner to be a convincing monarch. (This part was
originally played on Broadway by the Music Man himself, Robert Preston.) He
definitely has a match in Eleanor, whose many emotions, from steely charm to
maternal concern to brooding over the age, are hit perfectly by Lewis. The rapport
between these two actors is evident from their first moment together onstage,
and their last scene is one of the best bits of acting you’ll see on a local
stage.
Adam Petzold is a Richard who can
barely keep his anger in check (as we learn in the course of the play, he has a
lot to be angry about), and Zak West makes an appealingly bratty adolescent
John (far from being the “walking pustule” described by Richard). Geoffrey is
the typical overlooked middle child; Goldman doesn’t draw him in much detail at
all, but Brad Craddock fills in the lines well to create a cold, intellectual
character. The three men create a convincingly scary energy in their scenes
together; it’s not hard to believe that the brothers can’t stand each other.
Ruth Bellavia is a lovely and
touching figure as Alais and Carl Del Buono makes an interestingly enigmatic Philip II, who is as
political an animal as the rest of them; I wished Goldman had given both these
characters a bit more to do. But to paraphrase Eleanor, “What High Middle Ages
historical comedy-drama doesn’t have its ups and downs?” When the royal family
is in full cry, “The Lion in Winter” has a satisfying
spring in its step.
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2014.
