The Difficult Hour
Not only was naturalistic theater gray and lifeless in Lagerkvist’s estimation, it was fundamentally hypocritical: actors did a most unnatural thing in ignoring an audience gathered to watch them all evening. Directors expended equal energy trying to make the stage disappear, efforts that reduced Lagerkvist to derisive laughter. “One sits in one of these magnificent, gilded, pleasantly ingenuous playhouses where one really feels the genuine mood and festive anticipation of the theater, and then suddenly the curtain rises, revealing a narrow, brownish, dirty interior on which the director has worked and slaved…to make as exact and natural as possible with rugs on the floor, tables, chairs, fauteuil, chaise lounge, and with people who move slowly and thoughtfully across the stage, carefully and minutely unmasking each other. There is something foolish in this.”
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All but eliminating Lagerkvist’s design elements, Adams places the entire burden of his production on the actors and their words, words, words. And strangely enough, he often pushes his cast into psychological naturalism–a problematic choice given the characters’ unnatural shifts in thought and emotion. At times the results are disastrous, as in the second one-act: the actors are so stilted and self-conscious that the play’s parade of bizarre figures quickly degenerates into nonsense. At other times the results are mixed, as in the first episode. Scott Hamilton Westerman approaches the role of the crash victim with just the right spontaneity and light touch, navigating Lagerkvist’s circuitous logic convincingly. By comparison Anthony Wills Jr. as the hunchback is so psychologically rooted that he can’t keep pace with those twists and turns. Then again, he’s been given the thankless role of respondent to the crash victim’s extended monologue.
