To open her tenth season as artistic director of McCarter Theater, Emily Mann is directing Fool for Love by Sam Shepard, one of America's most forceful and intensely motivated writers. Whether or not it is Mann's wish to help us search out the metaphors, discover the symbolism, or consider the social implications in this vicious, yet no longer shocking, 16-year-old play, we may also choose to simply sit back and wallow in the mind-bending / body-battering material. In this very brutal play that glorifies the perseverance and perversity of human nature, strong feelings are ignited both in the play's two pivotal protagonists and in us. When the text appears weakened by its staging and by a key performance, those strong feelings are not forthcoming.
In the simplest terms, the play revolves around the tormented, incestuous relationship of Eddie and May, a half brother and sister, who have been in and out of love with each other for the past 15 years. Unable to either live with or without each other, one or the other periodically shows up to rekindle their violently expressed passion, as well as to redefine their volatile and destructive past. With the real appearance of May's new boyfriend and the metaphysical appearance of an old man with secrets, the truth and half-truths of their relationship are exposed. Part of the power of Fool for Love usually comes from the stifling claustrophobic atmosphere of the setting, a small, seedy, and almost bare motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert. This aspect of the play is sorely missed, as evoked in the great expanse of the McCarter stage by designer Robert Brill. Our attention is first drawn to the old man on a rocking chair placed on the thrust part of the stage, a long narrow stretch of white rocks, sagebrush and desert. A red neon sign alternately blinks EAT, SLEEP in the black expanse above the motel room that is big enough for an army barracks. A pair of naked light bulbs dangle loosely over a white wrought-iron bed. Taking up a little more of the vast space are a small table with two chairs.
The room is given its shape by a panoramic curved green wall hosting only one window with closed venetian blinds. Two doors serve to bookend this unsettling setting, made more unsettling by the surreal use of echoes that resonate thunderously with every slam of the door and fling of a body. More funny than frightening, the sound effects are distracting.
I have seen this play done with more confining sets that gave us the feeling that Eddie and May might at any moment be capable of pulling down the walls around them. This current setting only succeeds in neutralizing the inherent force of a dense steamy arena. Also the power of the verbal interplay between Eddie and May is diminished when we have to keep our eyes moving, as at a tennis match, from one end of the court to the other. May is an uncommonly rough and also mysteriously vague role, with much of her complexity left in the shadows. Although Laila Robins' lovely, sensitive and authoritative presence has graced many a Broadway play, and though her appearances on New Jersey stages have been generally acclaimed, she is badly miscast. Despite the tight red dress and bare feet I could not help but think this May was really The Philadelphia Story's" Tracey Lord gone-a-slumming. Robins gets to hurl a chair across the room, guzzle tequila, and otherwise assault Eddie during their frequent bouts, yet she appears more self conscious than spontaneous.
To be fair, Robins is ultimately affecting after the faux fighting subsides, and as she opens the wounds of May's fears and frustrations. There is genuine pain reflected in May's long monologue, in which we can feel her trying to get in touch with her true identity. All the realism and ritualistic machismo one could want is present in lanky and dirty James Morrison's Eddie, the smelly primitive stunt man who breaks through the barriers of fact and fiction. Always present in Morrison's performance is the feral force that keeps him bouncing off the walls.
Mark Hammer is especially fine as the Old Man who resides as the father in the mind of Eddie and May, but who also presides over the combat like a tired referee with no strength left for rules, recriminations, or regrets. The most impressive performance comes from Glenn Fleshler, who, in the minimally written role of May's naive virtually terrorized boyfriend Martin, offers a humorous and endearing portrait of a nerd who tries to rise to the occasion. For all the intense talk about being victims of the past, the sins of their father and their consuming attraction, Fool for Love has fallen prey, if not to the passing of time itself, then to Mann's inability to put all the fragmented pieces of the play together.
