Helen Mirren’s Phèdre: Not appearing at a Southland theater near you
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While I’ve never been a fan of filmed stage performances (theater isn’t really theater when served under a pane of glass or as a million points of light), it strikes me as odd that no Los Angeles theater has signed up yet for the June 25 worldwide broadcast of the National Theatre of London’s production of ‘Phèdre,’ directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Helen Mirren, Dominic Cooper and Margaret Tyzack.
Chicago denizens can catch a screening of the performance at Steppenwolf Theatre; Minneapolis residents can head to the Guthrie; and New Yorkers can opt for the Brooklyn Academy of Music or Lincoln Center Film Society’s Walter Reade Theatre, among other locations. Why is Los Angeles, a city with such a sizable theatergoing public, being left in the lurch?
Paging Center Theatre Group’s Michael Ritchie, REDCAT’s Mark Murphy and UCLA Live’s David Sefton: Will one of you please step into the breach before the moment passes us by? (And while we have Sefton on the line: Is there any chance of luring the actual production, which is being presented, in its exclusive North American appearance, by Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company in September, to Royce Hall? Unlikely, I know, but a critic can dream....)
Mirren might be a dame who won an Oscar for playing the queen, but she’s also an adopted L.A. homegirl, not to mention one of the great English-speaking stage actresses of our time. The opportunity to see her in Racine’s 1677 tragedy, about an old king’s trophy-wife who falls madly in love with her hunky yet chaste royal step-son (ah, curse that trouble-making Venus), is a rare opportunity indeed.
Racine, the Neoclassical dramatist with a harsh worldview and a delicate versifying touch, doesn’t travel easily outside of his native France. His rhyme scheme can sound Dr. Seuss-y when adapted to our tongue. The late Ted Hughes, infamous as Syliva Plath’s deserting husband but rightfully regarded as one of the 20th century finest English-language poets, lent his translation a tensile strength and bleak amatory freshness.
More important still is the Mirren factor: So often the role of Phèdre is played by gorgons in expensive gowns who are long past their prime. That’s no way to experience this character, whose passion may be illegitimate but shouldn’t come off as entirely implausible. Mirren’s vintage sexiness will no doubt restore the play’s buried eroticism.
This NT broadcast is the first in a series that includes Shakespeare’s ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ with Clare Higgins and, in 2010, Alan Bennett’s new play ‘The Habit of Art’ with Michael Gambon, Alex Jennings and Frances de la Tour.
Hey, guys, if a prissy theatrical purist is willing to give this high-def thing a chance, why not you?
--Charles McNulty
