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Thursday, November 4, 2004
At the Alliance: ‘The Fourth Wall’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “The Fourth Wall.� Through Nov. 21.
The strangest things have been happening to poor Peggy. There was the man who approached her in the grocery story with a “concealed weapon� and a cryptic note. Then the alarming phone call from, well, “it was either a man with a high voice or a woman who smokes at least a pack a day.�
Oddly enough, all the messages insist that Peggy change the design of her suburban New York living room, whose furniture she’s rearranged to face a blank wall. Hence the title and all-purpose metaphor of the A.R. Gurney comedy “The Fourth Wall,â€? which the Alliance Theatre has staged as a statement on the just-finished presidential election.
Peggy, you see, dreams of going to Washington to tell President Bush that he must “learn how to get along with people who are different,� that he must “work patiently with other nations to create a new world free of crazy terrorists and so-called patriots!�
Make the connection? (We didn’t think so.)
Pssssst! The terrorist threats on Peggy’s very own homeland security are coming from Bush’s minions! That woman with the strange voice was no less than First Mama Barbara Bush!
Such is the nonsensical logic of Gurney’s newly revised play, which opened Wednesday night to a group of understandably confused Alliance patrons.
As staged here, “The Fourth Wall� is a wretchedly self-indulgent theatrical in-joke about a quartet of characters who mix political commentary and personal connections through the guise of drama. Trapped inside a play of their own invention, they must break down that invisible wall to seek social change, love and what ultimately feels like a trip through the looking glass. Whoosh!
Perplexed by his wife's interior design, Roger (Craig Wroe) summons old friend Julia (Linda Kimbrough) to help decipher it. Observing that the magnificently proportioned living room (design by Michael S. Philippi) feels just like a stage set, they transform themselves into stock characters who burst into song at the drop of a canape. Soon, theater professor Floyd (Jeffrey Kuhn) is summoned to analyze the scene, and the riffs on the thespian arts begin to spew — Wilde and Shaw with a dash of Cole Porter and a dollop of Jane Martin.
“The Fourth Wall� is supposed to be a delightful and disposable cocktail, but Gurney tries too hard to lace it with political punch, and director Susan V. Booth and her cast are so busy playing up the overripe egos and outsize gestures of their characters that they fail to find the thin emotional ripples inside this cloying confection.
Courtenay Collins makes an almost believable Peggy, the empty-nester who’s trying to find some meaning in her “self-congratulatory, over-decorated world.� Peggy’s the Jesse Jackson of white suburban housewives; when she breaks through that wall, she wants a rainbow coalition: Asians, Latinos, Muslims, gays and lesbians.
“What, for example, if there were a decent number of African-Americans out there?�she says.
If Kimbrough and Wroe’s performances are overwrought, Kuhn's is muzzle worthy. Like the community-theater director in “Waiting for Guffman,� Floyd is a caricature of the drama queen — a melange of scarves, neck ties, tweed jackets and whirling physicality. That might be funny, but Kuhn’s characterization is so shrill that it frays the nerves.
You could forgive the partisan agenda of “The Fourth Wall� if it made you laugh.
But the ensemble can’t seem to find a way into or out of this intentionally ridiculous and recondite satire. For a play about an invisible wall, it’s very gunked up. The actors even wear microphones, which only underscores how loud and insufferable their characters are.
Gurney’s satire reads better than it plays here. This production is not as clever as it thinks it is. It asks much of the audience and gives little in return. A lost opportunity.
THE VERDICT: Political nonsense.
8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 21. $25-$45. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, www.alliancetheatre.org.
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