As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be able to attend two performances of the Washington Stage Guild’s production of G.K. Chesterton’s play Magic. This post is unfortunately too late to inspire anyone to go see the play; but I suspect most Chesterton fans will still be curious to know how it came out.
First, the virtues of the production. It is quite faithful to the book in terms of both text and direction. Whether or not any members of the production were Catholic, Christian, or even theist, they accepted the play in the way that Chesterton would have wanted, as a good “argument,” and presented it accordingly. As a “good argument” for belief, it is a wonderful antidote to the sort of muddle-headed criticism of tradition that is commonly found on the stage today.
The cast included a number of experienced and talented actors, who clearly loved what they were doing and were adept at straddling the gap between the play’s comic and dramatic portions. Veteran D.C. actor David Bryan Jackson was the best, portraying the materialist doctor with more than a touch of Michael Caine but with the impeccable accent of a BBC broadcaster. Less impeccable, but still very funny, was the accent of the actor playing Irish-American skeptic Morris Carleon–though his reverting back from his Southwestern drawl into his Irish brogue as he started to go insane was a very good touch. The actor playing Rev. Smith was also spotty in places–I think a good deal of that must be just the difference between having five or ten years of acting under one’s belt versus having twenty or thirty.The Duke (Vincent Clark) and Hastings (Lynn Steinmetz) were perfectly (as Jane Austen would put it, “unexceptionably”) cast.
This brings me to the Conjurer and Patricia. The Conjurer (Nick Depinto) carried his part off fairly well. It caught me off guard the first few times I heard him speak–he had added just a slight cockney twang to his accent (more evident at moments when the character was more off his guard or vulnerable), which suited the part, though it hadn’t been at all what I had imagined hearing when I read the play. He did an excellent job of conveying the seriousness of his situation and his conviction as to the reality of “magic”. His best scene though was the earlier part of Act II, where he spars verbally (and almost physically) with the unbelieving, insulting Morris. He managed to tread just the right rope between being too cool and too eager to fight, while Morris was delightfully out of control.
Madeline Ruskin as Patricia was good, but not quite as good. She’s a fine actress, but at some point the directorial decision was made to play her more as a character out of Finnegan’s Rainbow than as a serious though sensitive and humorous woman. When in the play she admits to the Conjurer that she “always knew he was a man,” one believes her. After seeing her cavort on stage in a rather too Grecian gown, smiling like Malvolio in stockings–well, one’s not so sure.
All in all, however, kudos to the Washington Stage Guild for doing Chesterton (after celebrating Shaw for years!), and bravo for an execution that was on the whole both faithful and imaginative. May there be many more such!
For anyone interested, here’s another perspective on the play. The author also gives a little background on the similarities between Chesterton’s background and the Conjurer’s–no news to anyone who’s read Chesterton’s biography, but definitely worth bringing to mind.
Wish I could be there . . . someone else’ll have to blog and tell us about it!
And Theater of the Word and the American Chesterton Society will be producing “Magic” on stage for this year’s annual Chesterton Society Conference, in St. Louis.