Theatre and National Identity by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134102419
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

7

Stealing the Scene

Simon McBurney’s All My Sons in New York

Marvin Carlson

Almost every country with a significant dramatic tradition feels, first by cultural context and over time by performance tradition, a sense of having a special insight into the proper approach to translating their native dramatists. Certainly the French feel this proprietary interest in Racine and Molière, the Germans in Goethe and Schiller, the Norwegians in Ibsen, the Russians in Chekhov and the British, despite championing Shakespeare as a universal artist, in works of that dramatist done in the traditional British acting style, with of course the proper English (although obviously not Shakespearian) accents. Despite coming late to this dramatic fraternity, the United States is proving as jealous in championing its unique national insight into its native dramatists as any of these longer-established European traditions. A striking example was the critical reception of English director Simon McBurney’s unconventional, and some might say un-American interpretation of All My Sons (1947), a major work by one of the most iconic dramatists of the American stage, Arthur Miller.

Although many leading critics in America spoke harshly of the production, and of McBurney’s direction in particular, I will focus on the reaction of Ben Brantley of the New York Times, not only because his reaction was characteristic of the American critical establishment, but because no American theatre critic today holds more power than Brantley. This is due to his position as the leading theatre reviewer of the New York Times, which over the past few decades has gone from the first among almost equal New York newspapers to by far the pre-eminent voice, especially in the critical area of theatrical reviewing. Given that the New York critics in general, and Brantley is no exception, are often criticized for the high esteem in which they traditionally hold all things British—British actors, British productions, British plays and British directors—Brantley’s harsh review of the 2008 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, directed by one of the most respected and rewarded figures of the contemporary British stage, caused a considerable stir.

Brantley begins his review of what he calls this ‘baleful new Broadway revival’ with a complaint that director McBurney has egoistically elevated himself above his admittedly distinguished group of actors, headed by John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest. Says Brantley: ‘Though his face is never seen in the production that opened Thursday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, the British director Simon McBurney might as well be downstage center at all times, stealing each and every scene from his human props’.1 One might be tempted by this pronouncement to assume that Brantley shares the prejudice common among American theatre critics, and for that matter many persons in the American professional theatre, against the focus on the vision of the director and on the concept production that is so much favored in the theatre of continental Europe. This would not be entirely incorrect, but it would I think misrepresent the actual reception and cultural dynamics at work here, which are operating on related but quite different grounds.

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