Why the packed, hard-step seating in the stuffy black box? Maybe it's the urge to see what students of France's well-publicized, prestigious, private drama school are up to. (What they're actually down to is overdoing an annoying misinterpretation of a play in a language they don't understand.) Maybe this production of The Dining Room draws English-speaking residents or tourists who want to see, in between Paris' many language-neutral stage shows, a real play. Maybe its appeal is to students and teachers of the English language or of American lit. But I'll bet its largely self-proclaimed success comes from offering free admission. Only Americaphobes would pay and afterward not demand money back.
Director Alan Rossett has misread as vicious, absurdist satire Gurney's revelation of the decline of New England WASP culture and importance through the foibles of generations of typical families, each shown bringing its values into a dining room. Here it might be Albee's Sandbox with sand replaced by excrement. The tone is set from the start with a prospective buyer coming on to a realtor showing the dining room of a house up for sale. At a breakfast where a father teaches his kids the government is ruining the country by giving money to out-of-work people during the Depression, emphasis is on his sexy kiss of his daughter. Imagine to what lengths an adolescent's flirtation with a maid goes. Just when the production seems to have reached an acme of exaggeration comes what the author himself described as a "moiling, shrieking mob of children" for a birthday party, quite drowning out a (for once) real secret affair among an unrelated mother and father. Everything is played for guffaws or sneers, including senility and coming out of the closet. There are caricatures rather than characters who show Gurney's amazing ability to economically individualize types.
Where he has made fun of Aunt Harriet explaining her family china to a nephew incredulous about finger bowls, for what turns out to be an anthropology class assignment, the old widow is portrayed by a poorly-wigged young man. (Always good for a laugh, right? That actor, by the way, has been trained to play - if only he can add grapefruit to his chest - the cross-dresser in the equally far fetched Natalie Needs a Nightie.)
Not that the acting is as bad as the direction or the substitution of students' work and street togs for the simple tailored clothes Gurney asked for. Acting and clothing styles alike are overwrought. Couldn't the students have played the material with a simplicity and seriousness that would allow the audience to see the irony of the situations? These students are not only not learning to act subtly but are substituting silly appearances and point-of view for the truths Gurney reveals through his people.
In addition, only one student speaks with an American accent, and that without the authentic ring of the Northeastern U.S. gentry. What is the good of learning to play in a second language they are not learning per se, if not to extend their vocal range as well as their eventual opportunities for employment at the level conservatory graduates might expect? Other than affording them chances to perform in public as well as giving satisfaction to those who dislike the U.S. or Americans, what is the point of mucking about like this with The Dining Room?
