How Many Distinct Characters Did Anna Deavere Smith Play in Let Me Down Easy
Theater Review | 'Let Me Down Easy'
The Body of Her Work: Hearing Questions of Life and Death
NEW HAVEN — Anna Deavere Smith covers a big patch of territory in "Let Me Down Easy," her populous new solo show at the Long Wharf Theater here. A checklist of topics covered would include the steroid scandal in sports, cancer therapies, African folk healing, the genocide in Rwanda, the tragedy of Katrina and the ailing American health-care system.
Oh, and let's not forget those secrets of the supermodels.
Ambitious and consistently engaging, Ms. Smith's first major show in more than a decade is rich in anecdotes and observations variously funny, thought-provoking or moving, as it introduces more than two dozen voices speaking of "the fragility and resilience of the human body." The cast of characters includes a Harvard philosopher and a human-rights activist, a boxer and a bull rider, as well as a modest quotient of celebrities, from Lance Armstrong to Ann Richards to Anderson Cooper.
But "Let Me Down Easy" is also frustrating in the scope of its reach, too loosely conceived to dig deeply into any single idea. When it's over, you feel as if you've attended a cocktail party full of fascinating people you didn't have enough time to talk to.
Ms. Smith's theatrical methods are well known by now. As in her acclaimed shows "Fires in the Mirror" and "Twilight: Los Angeles," the text of "Let Me Down Easy" is taken verbatim from interviews she conducted. Portraying all the subjects, she weaves together sections of these exchanges onstage, briskly donning and doffing elements of costume, smoothly switching from a Texas drawl to a melodious African lilt as she embodies each man and woman with crisp efficiency.
But the show represents a departure for Ms. Smith too. Those previous solo works used specific events — the Crown Heights, Brooklyn, riots in 1991 and the conflagration following the Rodney King verdict in 1992 — to explore issues of race and class and the fissures running through American society. "Let Me Down Easy" contemplates its subject through no such organizing prism. The lens is much wider here, and at times the focus blurs.
The show begins, rather flatly, with the random musings of a dancer on the body and its connection to the "spirit." It perks up with the entrance of Sally Jenkins, a Washington Post sports columnist who talks brashly and bluntly about the steroids scandal and wonders why it is that the African-American runner Marion Jones has been punished more harshly than the men who actually trafficked in the illicit substances she confessed to having used. The more laconic Mr. Armstrong, who admits he's never even been to the theater, is the model of the fierce competitor in pursuit of perfection, who has made of his body a finely honed instrument.
Other voices Ms. Smith employs to explore the body's capacity for extreme endurance include the boxer, the bull rider and Elizabeth Streb, the choreographer known for the intense physicality of her work. As ominous thwacking sounds are heard — she asks some dancers to demonstrate a few moves — Ms. Streb tells of the time she set herself on fire, semiaccidentally.
Image
Michael Sandel, a political philosopher at Harvard, picks up on the idea of human aspiration, deploring our cultural obsession with ideals of physical beauty. He also links the urban quest for ever more accomplished children with the eugenics movement, now derided, of the early 20th century. Talk of ideals of beauty leads to the ever-popular subject of sex, which is the focus of the second half of the first act.
The model Veronica Webb discusses cultural notions of women's proper proportions (she was a model with a backside in the "pre-J. Lo era") and how she feels like an "object of prey" under the devouring male gaze. Eve Ensler, who explored some of this territory in her own solo show, "The Good Body," adds her two cents in a hilarious riff about Tina Turner and, well, the sex organ on which she has all but founded a career. (Ms. Ensler, that is, not Ms. Turner.)
Given the expansiveness of the material that Ms. Smith seeks to cover, it is not surprising that some of the transitions between subjects are a little rough. It is a bit jarring to move from a cozy chat with a model into a consideration of genocide. Ms. Webb's reflections are followed by those of a Rwandan man on the cultural divide that helped incite the atrocities of 1994, and how sexual stereotypes played a role in the horror that unfolded.
The darker second act continues this theme. An encounter with Mr. Cooper serves, again rather awkwardly, to move the conversation from Rwanda to Katrina. (He covered both as a journalist.) From here the show moves into a larger discussion of death and dying and the flaws in the American health-care system. It features interviews with several prominent doctors as well as moving encounters with a woman whose daughter died of AIDS, the director of a South African orphanage who has comforted many dying children, and Ms. Richards and the ABC movie critic Joel Siegel, two well-known figures who battled cancer (and eventually lost).
The production, directed at a brisk clip by Stephen Wadsworth, is stylish and attractive. David Rockwell's complex set is handsome, with haunting coffin-shaped holes opening in the stage floor as disease and death dominate the discourse. Ann Hould-Ward's costumes are well observed, although some segments are so brief that Ms. Smith seems to be taking off a costume before she's finished putting it on.
Ms. Smith is so meticulous in her attention to the details of voice, language and physical bearing that give people definition — the sentences that trail off, the hiccups of syntax, the heavy or elegant tread — that the ample use of costumes, props and sets is probably superfluous. You are always aware of Ms. Smith as a commanding stage presence — she is an expert herself on the use of the body as an aesthetic precision tool — but the personas of her subjects come through with a shining clarity, as easily as light moves through glass.
An entire evening could be devoted to any number of the larger issues explored here. In choosing to cover them all Ms. Smith makes the point that our bodies are many things today — malleable cultural images, tools for achievement, playgrounds for scientific experiment — but also the purest symbol of human vulnerability. Still it takes a fair amount of extrapolation to come up with any kind of cogent summary, and it is probably significant that Ms. Smith felt it necessary to announce the show's theme in the opening moments. Appealing as it is, "Let Me Down Easy" ultimately feels less like a single cohesive show than a sampler highlight from several different ones.
LET ME DOWN EASY
Written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith; directed by Stephen Wadsworth; sets by David Rockwell, associate designer, Rob Bissinger; costumes by Ann Hould-Ward; lighting by David Lander; sound by David Budries; projection design by Jan Hartley; movement consultant, Elizabeth Roxas; dialect coach, Amy Stoller; stage manager, Diane DiVita; assistant stage manager, Amy Patricia Stern; dramaturges, Dorinne Kondo and Alisa Solomon; artistic consultant, Alice Quinn. Presented by the Long Wharf Theater, Gordon Edelstein, artistic director; Joan Channick, managing director, by special arrangement with Daryl Roth. At the Long Wharf Theater's Mainstage, 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven; (203) 787-4282. Through Feb. 3. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.
carverthishembled.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/theater/reviews/22easy.html
0 Response to "How Many Distinct Characters Did Anna Deavere Smith Play in Let Me Down Easy"
Post a Comment