From L to R: Sean McNall (Sleary) and Robin Leslie Brown (Ensemble)
Photos by Gregory Costanzo
In its twenty-sixth season as a resident company, the Pearl Theater Company, temporarily in their haven at the City Center on their eventual way to new headquarters in the burgeoning “Broadway South” theater district in the West Thirties, have brought back one of their largest endeavors, Hard Times, and staged it with sweep and scope, just the thing for these hard times. In its previous staging, they tackled the wide range of Dickens’ characters with a group of four players; in this new enlarged treatment by Stephen Jeffreys, they’ve added two more actors to play all twenty to thirty characters. That it works is something of a satisfying acting bonanza; that it works so well is closer to miraculous. Artistic director J.R. Sullivan makes ingenious use of set designer Jo Winiarski’s equally ingenious set to fly his characters through almost as many shifts of props and furniture creating different settings as there are characters, always aware that he is presenting one of Dickens’s less popular books because it was decidedly dour. Of course, that means imaginative costumes by Devon Painter that whip on and off expeditiously, sometimes right before our eyes and the pace of story telling never slackens. Dour or no, three hours and a half go by with less fundament pain than one might expect.
Dickens sets his tale in Coketown, an all too real imaginary factory town whose inhabitants are raised from childhood to become workers and to know their place, their role in the world as “hands” in Josiah Bounderby’s factory. (Bradford Cover plays Bounderby with alarming gusto in addition to Harthouse, Bitzer and others). Bounderby, a self made man, maintains an upper class lady as his housekeeper presumably to take off his rough edges. Mrs. Sparsit, a shrewd humbug, flatters him endlessly and schemes to keep her position when Bounderby decides to marry Louisa Gradgrind, daughter of the schoolmaster. Mr. Gradgrind has drilled his students on facts, facts, facts, to “plant nothing else in your mind and root out everything else.” He has raised his own children, Louisa and Tom, on the same diet. The results are disastrous, as he comes to find. In true Dickensian knottings, twisted into these stories are half a dozen other plots ranging from a pathetic but cheery circus, to a foundling, a disowned mother, a robbery, lies, fraud, heartbreak, chicaneries and true hearts, true goodness along with the evil. Overlying all is Dickens’ partisan stance with the workers against their exploiters, so that something is always seething. Such soap opera like complications, kept crystal clear by director Sullivan and his remarkable cast, has, of necessity, clunkish episodes of Dickensian explication early on which is a little numbing but if one is steadfast all will go sailing along. Dickens is, if nothing else, a master entertainer.
I cannot say enough about this splendid company. T.J. Edwards is a confounded, good hearted fool as schoolteacher Gradgrind, a lovely and touching factory worker, Blackpool, an expert waiter, and several other personages as tasked. Jolly Abraham makes Sissy endearing and ancient Mrs. Pegler almost credible, plus other necessary personages in the company fold. Bradford Cover, in addition to crudely villainous Bounderby, is a satisfyingly slimy Harthouse. Sean McNall is a dreadfully pleasant Sleary, the circus master, scoundrel par excellence as the fallen brother Tom Gradgrind, and, of course, more characters to boot. Rachel Botchan not only fulfills the complexities of Lousia Gradgrind in her terrible marriage but also plays Mrs. Blackpool, Emma Gordon, workers’ chairwoman and whoever else is needed. Robin Leslie Brown has a field day as Mrs. Sparsit as well as enacting much beset Rachel, Mrs. Gradgrind and others. Bravo to them all.
Hard Times at New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street. Tickets: Tue,Thu,Fri,Sat 7:30 pm, Mats Wed, Sat, Sun 2:30 pm 212-598-9802, pearltheatre.org, nycitycenter.org.