Adam Driver, Frank Langella, Michael Siberry and Zach Grenier
in a scene from Sir Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy
(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)
From the moment that Frank Langella’s international financier Gregor Antonescu enters the shabby Greenwich Village apartment on the stage of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Sir Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy, he owns the stage. As he moves around the living room staking out his territory in one last go-for-broke deal, he glides with reptilian grace. His deviousness and elusiveness are cloaked under a veneer of charm that is undeniable. He is the ultimate con-man whose absolute villainy is sheathed in a velvet glove. This is the sort of performance of which legends are made and on which awards are showered.
Man and Boy, not seen in New York since the original 1963 production which starred Charles Boyer as Gregor Antonescu, is part of the centenary of Rattigan’s birth. In addition to this Roundabout entry in the Rattigan celebrations directed by Maria Aitken who staged the 2005 London production with David Suchet, on October 25 BBC Video will release a boxed set called The Terence Rattigan Collection with nine television productions of the playwright’s work, including several never seen in the United States before. Terence Davies’ new film of The Deep Blue Sea with Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz and British stage star Simon Russell Beale opens in November. In addition, successful London productions of his plays After the Dance and Flare Path have been in discussion for possible New York transfers.
Man and Boy is one of the five Rattigan plays written after the advent of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger which made Rattigan’s form of drawing room drama (Separate Tables, The Browning Version, etc.) passé and out-dated. It is also one of four plays in which Rattigan used a real, bigger-than-life character at the end of his career as his main protagonist as with Alexander the Great in Adventure Story, Lord Nelson in Bequest to the Nation, and Lawrence of Arabia in Ross. Along with The Winslow Boy and Cause Celebre, it is one of several of his plays based on a very public scandal.
Man and Boy is based on the spectacular rise and fall of the Swedish “Match King,” Ivar Krueger who lived from 1880 – 1932. His financial empire, basically a house of cards, was done in by the Great Depression. Not exactly an example of a Ponzi scheme, Krueger’s business practices included using one loan to pay for another. The parallel to the Bernard Madoff scandal may be the impetus for the current production. The play’s plotting is weak but offers a great actor a titanic role as Gregor Antonescu, a man for whom evil simply does not exist.
The play is set in 1934 in the Greenwich Village basement apartment of Antonescu’s estranged 23-year-old son Vassily who, after attempting to shoot his father at his 18th birthday party, had moved from England to America and changed his name to “Basil Anthony.” Even Basil’s girl friend Carol, an actress, does not know that he is related to the man in the headlines referred to as “the Romanian-born radio and oil king” and the “so-called savior and mystery man of Europe.” Basil earns his living playing the piano in a Greenwich Village club.
Gregor, now on the run from reporters and very possibly the police, decides to look up his estranged son whom he hasn’t seen in five years in order to use his apartment as a hideout for one last scheme that might save his empire: convincing Mark Herries, head of American Electric, to go through with a deal that had earlier that day had been turned down. He also develops an idea to use Basil in a blackmail plot that will get him what he wants. In the course of the play, Gregor charms his guest, demolishes Herries’ accountant, meets with his current wife (the Countess Antonescu, sporting a title he has purchased), and attempts a rapprochement with his son.
Langella’s suave, cunning performance looks effortless and he commands the stage with simply a raised eyebrow or a pointed finger. As a result, he makes all of his fellow actors look like they are acting – and working very hard to keep up with him. As Gregor’s son Vassily, Adam Driver, previously seen in the Roundabout’s production of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, seems very strange casting. In his scenes opposite Langella, he displays nothing but petulance. He is also described as attractive to both men and women but fails to exude the necessary sexual allure. Michael Siberry is appropriately sinister as Sven Johnson, Gregor’s Swedish right-hand man, while Zach Grenier as the head of American Electric plays only one note of Mark Herries’ personality.
Francesca Faridany, previously seen in the Roundabout’s production of The 39 Steps, has the job of breathing life into Gregor’s ignored wife Florence. She is excellent at portraying her as a superficial woman who is only interested in her husband’s money and social position, but she fails to show us anything behind it. As Basil’s girl friend Carol, Virginia Kull is satisfactory as a woman caught up in a situation beyond her control. Aitken’s direction is elegant and polished but it is to be wished that she had obtained more depth from the majority of the characterizations.
Derek McLane’s atmospheric basement setting captures the seediness of the Greenwich Village apartment without overpowering the action. The costumes by Martin Pakledinaz are generally appropriate for 1934, with some occasionally mystifying choices such as the elegantly dressed countess’ orange cloak and Vassily’s casual sport shirt. Kevin Adams’ lighting changes subtly as the plot progresses from 6 to 8:30 p.m. The jazzy original music by John Gromada introduces the period of the thirties before the play begins. Stephen Gabis is the dialect coach who helped on the Swedish, Romanian, British, and American accents.
Sir Terence Rattigan’s 1963 Man and Boy was obviously written as his response to the lower class environments of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer, the most successful of the angry young man plays which swept Rattigan’s type of theater on to the dust heap for the rest of his lifetime. Offering one magnificent role in the conscienceless Gregor Antonescu, Man and Boy gives Frank Langella one of the best roles of his distinguished stage career. Although the play is not top-drawer Rattigan, the Roundabout production will be long remembered for Langella’s magnificent star turn in the leading role.
Man and Boy (through November 27)
Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, 212-719-1300 or http://www.roundabouttheatre.org