PHOTO CREDIT – Richard Termine
Albert Camus’ The Misunderstanding is not a pretty play, and will surely not have you longing for “Home Sweet Home.” Written in 1944—when Camus was thirty-one—this play is a profoundly moral play, and replete with atrocities that will recall scenes from Medea. The current revival by the Horizon Theatre Rep at the Flea Theatre, unfolds like a dark parable. And with its harsh pessimistic outlook on life, the author joltingly reminds us that optimism was not in the air during the post-World War II era in France.

The plot is very straightforward and spare. It’s basically about an adult son Jan who returns home incognito after a twenty-year absence. His mother and middle-aged sister Martha, who run a Public Inn in a dreary town, don’t recognize Jan and cold-heartedly murder him (he’s not the first boarder they’ve killed!) for the money he carries in his wallet. When they later realize who they have murdered, the truth is too much for them to bear.

A savage play of greed and pathological love, the work is compelling for its distinct atmosphere of spiritual constriction. When we meet Martha and her Mother in the early scenes, they are continually exposing the bleak emptiness of their workaday lives at the Inn. Although the other characters, Jan and his wife Maria, possess a more optimistic view of their future, once Jan departs alone for his family’s Public Inn, an ominous atmosphere envelops all of the characters. There are a lot of tragic moments punctuating this play. And yet, strangely, one can still be exhilarated by Camus’s exacting dialogue and accurate portraits of family members ruthlessly sabotaging one another.
The acting is uneven. The best turn of the evening, however, belongs to actor Ellen Crawford, playing the emotionally-exhausted Mother (she’s best-known as the efficient nurse Lydia Wright on the NBC series “ER”). Crawford convincingly gets beneath the skin of her matronly character, whose raison d’ętre (besides killing the boarders for their petty cash) is to keep a spic-and-span boarding house. Less effective is Wendy Allegaert, as her daughter Martha. In the early scenes she went up on her lines several times, making her psychologically-distraught character unintentionally vague and listless. Rafael De Mussa, as the son Jan, was well-cast as the returning prodigal son. De Mussa’s exotic accent and his sincere demeanor gives him the real aura of a penitent son earnestly reaching out to his family. Another good performance is turned in by Erin Cherry, as Jan’s wife Maria. Maria, of course, is a relatively small role in this drama. But Cherry still imbues her part with heart-felt poignancy, especially in the final scenes. And it would be wrong to forget Stuart Rudin, playing the silent and reliable manservant. Rudin proves that good acting can be accomplished without spoken words.

Camus is one of those protean French writers who seem to be able to do everything but sing. To be sure, he is best-known for his novels (The Plague and The Stranger). But he did pen his share of essays and, obviously, dramas as well. While all of Camus’ drama is important, one still senses that it’s not his natural bent as an author. He can use classic restraint in The Misunderstanding to good effect, but his symbolism often gets heavy-handed and undramatic. No, he’s not a fish out of water as a dramatist. It’s just that you can sometimes hear the dramatic machinery at work in his play.

Some theatergoers might scratch their heads at why Camus seems to be enjoying a recent resurgence on the New York boards. The best explanation, of course, is that this production coincides with a major new biography about the writer, “Camus, A Romance” by Elizabeth Hawes. No doubt last year’s staging of Camus’s best-known play, Caligula by the Horizon Theatre Rep anticipated the book’s publication, and the current staging of The Misunderstanding hopes to rekindle interest in this important existentialist writer. Camus, who died in a car accident when he was 46--at the height of his fame—has left a lasting imprint as an existentialist writer.

Director Alex Lippard has a firm grasp on this production. He seems to realize that the real star of this production is its author, and trusts that Camus’s existential vision and exquisitely pared-down language will be sufficient to illuminate the drama. And it is. The lighting by Zack Tinkelman adds just the right balance of light and shadows to this forbidding story. And the costumes by Amanda Bujak are appropriately drab or inconspicuously handsome.

“One can’t always remain a stranger,” Jan says in Act One of The Misunderstanding. That line might be extended as an invitation to theatergoers to get to know Camus better by visiting the Flea Theater this month.

Downstairs @ the Flea Theatre, at 41 White Street.
Tickets are $18, phone (212) 226-2407 or visit www.theflea.org
October 29-November 22.