Tag Archives: Hamish Linklater

RED BULL THEATER: VOLPONE, or THE FOX

Who: Red Bull Theater company
What: Livestreamed benefit reading of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or The Fox
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live
When: Monday, June 14, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30 (available on demand through June 18 at 7:00)
Why: In December 2012, Red Bull Theater presented a stellar version of Ben Jonson’s classic 1606 English Renaissance satire, Volpone, or The Fox, at the Lucille Lortel Theater, which I called “a deliriously entertaining streamlined version . . . a frenetic farce fraught with fanciful flourishes.” Red Bull is bringing the play back for a live benefit reading on June 14 at 7:30, starring Grammy, Emmy, and Tony winner André De Shields as the title character and Hamish Linklater as Mosca, with Peter Francis James, Roberta Maxwell, Kristine Nielsen, Mary Testa, Jordan Boatman, Sofia Cheyenne, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Clifton Duncan, Amy Jo Jackson, and Sam Morales. The reading, which will be available on demand through June 18 at 7:00, is directed by Jesse Berger, who explains, “Human greed and con artists appear to be timeless parts of human nature – damnable in life, but hilarious onstage! We had so much fun with this delicious satire in our 2012 production, and I am excited to share the material again in this new way with a wholly new stellar cast of great comic actors. Plus there’ll be fun new nips, tucks, and comic wrinkles by the brilliant Jeffrey Hatcher and some design surprises and delights from our terrific creative team. Oh – this and all of Red Bull’s online events are performed live. Nothing is prerecorded – And just like with live theater: Anything can happen. With this hilarious cast, I think that’s truer than ever.” The visual design is by John Arnone, with costumes by Rodrigo Muñoz (based on original designs by Clint Ramos), original music and sound by Scott Killian, and props by Faye Armon-Troncoso.

On June 17 at 7:30, Berger, members of the company, and scholar Jean E. Howard will participate in a live Bull Session discussion. “The play opens with the main character, Volpone, making a rapturous speech to his gold. Nearly every other character is also in thrall to this ‘dumb god,’ and to attain more and more wealth these Venetians are ready to prostitute their wives, disinherit their sons and defile their honor. The action of Volpone exposes and satirizes the actions of its avaricious characters, but it does so with dazzling ingenuity. The play is dominated by a magnificent con artist, Volpone, and his tricky servant Mosca. Together they dupe the well-off doctors, lawyers, and merchants of Venice into giving rich gifts to Volpone, who pretends to be near death, in the hope that one of them can become his heir,” Howard notes. “Volpone, more perhaps than any other Jonsonian comedy, takes risks in its concluding scenes, stretching comedy to its limit as the tricksters dangerously overreach themselves and slam up against the harsh strictures of Venetian law.”

SEJANUS, HIS FALL

Who: Shirine Babb, Grantham Coleman, Keith David, Manoel Felciano, Denis O’Hare, Matthew Rauch, Laila Robins, Liv Rooth, Stephen Spinella, Emily Swallow, Raphael Nash Thompson, Tamara Tunie, James Udom, Nathan Winkelstein
What: Livestreamed benefit reading of Ben Jonson’s Sejanus, His Fall
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live
When: Monday, May 17, free with RSVP (suggested donation $25), 7:30 (available on demand through May 21 at 7:00); live discussion May 20 at 7:30
Why: “To the no less Noble by VIRTUE than BLOOD, Esme Lord Aubigny. My Lord — If ever any Ruine were so great as to survive, I think this be one I send you, The Fall of SEJANUS. It is a Poem, that (if I well remember) in your Lordships sight suffered no less Violence from our People here, than the Subject of it did from the Rage of the People of Rome; but with a different Fate, as (I hope) Merit: For this hath out-liv’d their Malice, and begot it self a greater Favour than he lost, the Love of Good Men. Amongst whom, if I make Your Lordship the first it thanks, it is not without a just Confession of the Bond Your Benefits have, and ever shall hold upon me. Your Lordships most faithful Honourer, Ben Jonson.” So wrote English Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson in the dedication for his 1603 tragedy, Sejanus, His Fall, about Lucius Aelius Seianus, a confidant of Tiberius Caesar Augustus. On May 17 at 7:00, Red Bull Theater will present a live reading of the play, newly adapted and directed by associate artistic director Nathan Winkelstein and featuring Shirine Babb, Grantham Coleman, Keith David, Manoel Felciano, Denis O’Hare, Matthew Rauch, Laila Robins, Liv Rooth, Stephen Spinella, Emily Swallow, Raphael Nash Thompson, Tamara Tunie, and James Udom.

“Ben Jonson’s Sejanus is perhaps best known for being Jonson’s least known play,” Winkelstein said in a statement. “It was a colossal failure in its time and has received, to my knowledge, only two professional productions in the last one hundred years in England, and no such full productions in America — ever. At its core, Jonson’s play is a takedown of corrupt governance in sublime language surpassed only by Shakespeare – who, incidentally, is believed to have appeared in the original production. That resonance remains today. Why then is it so rarely taken up by theatermakers? Well, in my opinion, it’s intensely overwritten. My challenge has been to bring this resonance to the fore while eliminating the, apologies to Jonson, fluff. And over the course of the past four years, I’ve worked to craft a playing script that has constant forward momentum. I look forward to working with the crackerjack team to bring this adaptation to life.”

Admission is free with a suggested donation of $25; the stream will be available through May 21 at 7:00. In addition, Red Bull is hosting a live Bull Session on May 20 at 7:30 with Winkelstein, scholar Henry S. Turner, and members of the company. “The plays of Ben Jonson are naturally central to all our work at Red Bull, and — as we had to delay our in-person production of The Alchemist — this spring we’re excited to be presenting two plays by Ben Jonson live online — one of his greatest comedies and one of his most infamous tragedies — Volpone and Sejanus,” Red Bull founder and artistic director Jesse Berger said. “Both plays have wonderful characters, terrific language, and exciting plots with surprising twists and turns — in short, the best of the best of Jacobean theater — all in Jonson’s inimitable, sharp-witted style.” Volpone, or the Fox will be premiere June 14, starring André De Shields, Jordan Boatman, Sofia Cheyenne, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Clifton Duncan, Amy Jo Jackson, Peter Francis James, Hamish Linklater, Roberta Maxwell, Sam Morales, Kristin Nielsen, and Mary Testa.

THE PAIN OF MY BELLIGERENCE

Cat (Halley Feiffer) and Guy (Hamish Linklater) are on a first date not-necessarily-from-hell in The Pain of My Belligerence (photo by Joan Marcus)

Playwrights Horizons
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 12, $49-$89
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In such plays as I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, playwright, screenwriter, and actress Halley Feiffer has shown that she doesn’t like to make things easy for the audience. In her latest provocation, The Pain of My Belligerence, which opened tonight at Playwrights Horizons, she’ll make you squirm and cringe over and over again, but you won’t be able to take your eyes off the train wreck of a relationship at the center of this bitter black comedy. Feiffer, the daughter of Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer, portrays the squirrely Brooklyn-based, almost-thirty-year-old journalist Cat, who is on a first date with Guy (Hamish Linklater), a smarmy forty-year-old architect and restaurateur who was featured in a magazine article she wrote about his wildly successful business partner. They are in a small, private, cozy booth at one of his fancy eateries, and he is just about as hideous as a man can be, making insensitive sexist and racist jokes, repeatedly touching her inappropriately, and getting ridiculously mad at her when she tries to say something. But every time she thinks about leaving, he puts on his oily, smug charm and she relents — and even gets titillated by his gross come-ons.

“Are you bored?” he asks. “A little,” she says, adding, “Joking.” He responds, “You bitch,” and she laughs. A moment later she begins, “How do you —” He cuts her off, saying, “Shut up.” She argues, “I wasn’t interrupting!” He says, “I know, just wanted to see how it’d feel to tell you to shut up.” She asks, “How did it feel?” He replies, “Amazing,” and she laughs again. She calls him “terrible” and “horrible,” while he describes himself as “evil, a serial killer, a monster, the devil, a sociopath,” but instead of getting up from the table, she sidles over closer to him, even moving in for a possible kiss. Everyone in the theater — from the actors and the characters themselves to the audience — knows this potentially destructive relationship can only be trouble, as Guy is a textbook example of toxic masculinity and the white patriarchy — but Cat appears to be reveling in her brutal subjugation. All it takes is a few words from him (“I’m being a jerk. I’m really sorry. I just. I get nervous. Around women who I want to like me. I overcompensate.”) and she seems happy to drive right through what should be big red stoplights. Their poisonous codependency continues into the second act before leading to a brilliant turn of events in the third.

Cat (Halley Feiffer) and Guy (Hamish Linklater) have some cross words for each other in world premiere at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pain of My Belligerence takes place on election day in 2012, 2016, and 2020, with Mark Wendland’s entrancing set design expanding in each act as director Trip Cullman and Feiffer, in their sixth collaboration, put things in perspective, with Cat becoming ever more compressed each step of the way. No political figures are named in the eighty-minute play, but we inherently understand what occurred in the first two presidential elections while being fearful of what might happen next, casting a pall even over a graphic sex scene. Feiffer gives a bold, brave performance, baring all, while Linklater (Seminar, Cymbeline) earns the audience’s wrath as a master manipulator, but Vanessa Kai (KPOP, Somebody’s Daughter) steals the show in the third act as a beguiling surprise character, her every movement exquisitely choreographed by Cullman (Lobby Hero, Significant Other) as the play reexamines victimization, misogyny, harassment, and hypocrisy during the #MeToo era. Although the play is not autobiographical, it is loosely based on deeply personal and intimate elements of Feiffer’s life, including dealing with a debilitating illness and searching for answers in unstable relationships with men. She doesn’t exactly tie it all up in a cute little bow at the end, instead continuing our discomfort until the lights go out — and the unique experience of the play follows us out into the street, sticking with us like an aching bruise that just won’t go away.

THE WHIRLIGIG

Derrick (Jonny Orsini) and his brother, Patrick (Noah Bean), argue over baseball, beer, and more in The Whirligig (photo by Monique Carboni)

The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 18, $75-$120
www.thenewgroup.org

When the audience enters the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center, the curtain is up, exhibiting a young woman lying on a hospital bed. She is hooked up to an IV drip and revolving slowly around the stage, surrounded by thick horizontal tree branches on either side, bursting with green leaves. She is twenty-three-year-old Julie Evans Tyler (Grace Van Patten), who is dying in the Berkshires. She is joined by her divorced parents, Kristina (Dolly Wells) and Michael Tyler (Norbert Leo Butz), who are trying their best to face the reality of the situation but are not succeeding very well. “Do you think it’s your fault?” Julie asks her mother. Actor and writer Hamish Linklater’s The Whirligig, a New Group world premiere that opened last night at the Griffin, is an emotionally powerful drama about love and addiction, friendship and responsibility, and what encompasses “fault,” as the truth about how Julie arrived at death’s door is gradually revealed. The tale is told by her tightly enmeshed group of friends and neighbors — and just how tightly bound they are to one another is gradually revealed as well. “I know specifically when it turned, when things got really bad for her — and it wasn’t the mom, it wasn’t the dad — I know the exact day it happened,” Derrick (Jonny Orsini), the brother of Julie’s doctor, Patrick (Noah Bean), tells Julie’s former best friend, Trish (Zosia Mamet), who has yet to visit the hospital or talk at all to Kristina and Michael. Trish is married to Greg (Alex Hurt), a former acting student of Michael’s and a bartender in Great Barrington who regularly serves Mr. Cormeny (Jon DeVries), a bloviating former high school teacher who waxes not-quite-poetic about the Russians but occasionally does pick up on human emotions. “I just hope Mr. Tyler’s OK,” Patrick says after Michael falls off the wagon and Greg helps him outside. “Him? Oh no. That poor gentleman is in a whirligig of grief,” Mr. Cormeny says as he heads behind the bar. “There is a silver lining, howsomever: I’m de facto barkeep. Tipple?” the septuagenarian offers.

A bar is one of several rotating sets by Derek McLane in Hamish Linklater’s world premiere for the New Group (photo by Monique Carboni)

Linklater’s narrative weaves seamlessly between the present day, where, among other things, Trish and Derrick spy on Julie from a high branch in a tree, and fifteen years earlier, as carefree teenagers Julie and Trish talk about sex and drugs, Michael battles the bottle, and Kristina tries not to lose her grip. It’s quite fitting that Michael and Kristina met at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Virginia and that their favorite poem is “Annabel Lee.” As Julie deteriorates, her friends, relatives, and acquaintances, each connected, whether they know it or not, like the branches of a tree, argue over how and why it has all come to this. The torrent of revelations could overwhelm the story but instead helps everything fall into place, although there are no simple answers to the main questions. Linklater, who was born in Great Barrington to a mother named Kristin (a theater professor and cofounder of Shakespeare & Co.) and a father whose last name was Cormeny, is better known as an actor, appearing in such films as The Big Short and 42, such television series as The New Adventures of Old Christine and The Crazy Ones, and such Shakespeare in the Park productions as Cymbeline and Much Ado About Nothing. He has previously written The Vandal for the Steep Theatre in Chicago and The Cheats for the Flea in Lower Manhattan, and he has made a significant jump now with his third play.

Julie (Grace Van Patten) and Trish (Zosia Mamet) share a sweet moment before it all came crashing down in The Whirligig (photo by Monique Carboni)

“And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,” Feste tells Malvolio in the fifth act of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The title of Linklater’s play could refer to a pinwheel, time, or even a medieval torture involving a revolving cage used to discipline “trifling misdemeanors,” particularly committed by women. The Whirligig investigates punishment and revenge, as well as forgiveness and making amends, told with a clever circularity, with well-developed characters and a tightly written script that, despite some bumps and bruises — the scene in which Kristina celebrates her thirty-fifth birthday in the bar with Michael could use some rethinking — bring it all together, complete with unexpected twists and turns. Director Scott Elliott (Evening at the Talk House, Mercury Fur) successfully circumnavigates through the rotating set and two time periods, which occasionally appear to merge, as past and present clash. The cast is excellent, with standout performances by DeVries (Sweet and Sad, The Wayside Motor Inn), Orsini (The Nance, Incident at Vichy), Wells (Blunt Talk, Doll & Em) and Mamet (Girls, Really Really). So whose fault is it that Julie is in the situation she’s in? “Everyone knows everyone tonight, and I don’t recognize a soul,” Mr. Cormeny says at one point. The Whirligig is populated with people who have some serious soul searching to do of their own, and it’s about a lot more than just who is to blame.

CERTAIN WOMEN: THE HEADLESS WOMAN / THE FUTURE

A wealthy woman (María Onetto) looks the other way after she might have run over someone in THE HEADLESS WOMAN

THE HEADLESS WOMAN (LA MUJER SIN CABEZA) (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Saturday, January 21, 2:00 & 9:00
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.miumiu.com

Since 2011, Prada’s Miu Miu brand of women’s clothing and accessories, named for founder Miuccia Prada, has been sponsoring “Women’s Tales,” fashion-themed short films by such female directors as Ava DuVernay (Selma), Agnès Varda (Vagabond), Zoe R. Cassavetes (Day Out of Days), Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders), and Crystal Moselle (The Wolfpack). The Metrograph series “Certain Women” pairs six of the commissioned works with a feature film made by the director (indicated in parenthesis above). The brief series concludes this week with Lucrecia Martel and Miranda July. Inspired by nightmares she has in which she commits murder, Martel’s The Headless Woman details a woman’s emotional and psychological reaction after having possibly killed someone. María Onetto gives a mesmerizingly cool, distant performance as Veronica, a middle-aged, upper-class wife and mother whose biggest worry appears to be the turtles that have infested the new pool built behind a veterinary office. But one afternoon, while out driving carelessly in her Mercedes along a twisting, barren road, she hits something. Not sure if it was a child, an adult, or an animal, she decides to continue on, telling no one what she has done. But when a poor, local boy goes missing, she begins to suspect that she might have killed him. An intriguing mix of Luis Buñuel’s class-consciousness and Edgar Allan Poe’s flair for suspense, The Headless Woman is an unusual kind of murder mystery. In Veronica, Argentine writer-director Martel (La Cienaga, The Holy Girl) has created a compelling protagonist/villain, played with expert calm and faraway eyes by Onetto. The Headless Woman is screening at Metrograph on January 21 at 2:00 and 9:00, preceded by Martel’s 2011 seven-minute Miu Miu short, the highly stylized, dialogue-free Muta.

Hamish Linklater and Miranday July contemplate their future

Hamish Linklater and Miranda July contemplate their future in THE FUTURE

THE FUTURE (Miranda July, 2011)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Sunday, January 22, 2:00
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.thefuturethefuture.com

Multimedia performance artist and indie darling Miranda July scored a major breakthrough with her 2005 cinematic debut, the utterly charming romantic comedy Me and You and Everyone We Know. While her follow-up, The Future, lacks many of the endearing qualities that made her first film such a success, it is still a quirky, beguiling drama that offers a bittersweet breath of fresh air. July stars as Sophie, a children’s dance teacher living with Jason (Hamish Linklater), a work-at-home IT dude. The slackers spend their time sitting on the couch, both on their laptops, having offbeat conversations and pretending they can stop time. But when they are told that the sick cat they want to adopt won’t be well enough to leave the veterinary hospital for another month, they decide that this will be their last thirty days of freedom, thinking that the arrival of the feline will confer upon them the responsibilities of adulthood they have been so good at avoiding up to now. Given this last bastion of hope, they quit their jobs to pursue their dreams: Jason starts going door-to-door selling trees, while Sophie sets out to perform a dance a day and post them on YouTube. No, this oddball, somewhat freakish couple doesn’t exactly dream big. And, of course, their idea of freedom doesn’t turn out to be exactly what they had hoped.

Miranda July’s Miu Miu short, SOMEBODY, will screen with THE FUTURE at Metrograph on January 22

The Future veers off in way too many directions, some good, some bad, but it is held together by July’s bright eyes and lanky, comedic body even as she explores the horrors of mainstream suburban living. As with much of her performance art, she challenges the audience to stay with her as she defies standard narrative conventions and turns to the surreal, including a talking moon. The film is nearly stolen by Joe Putterlik, an elderly man whom Jason meets through a Pennysaver ad for a three-dollar used hair dryer; Putterlik, who also is the voice of the moon, was actually discovered by July through a Pennysaver ad, and much of his dialogue is improvised and set in his own apartment as he talks about his real life. Sadly, he died immediately after shooting was concluded. The film is narrated by the ill cat, Paw Paw (voiced by July in a creepy monotone), who dreams of her own freedom, wanting desperately to get out of her cage and be taken in by people who will love her. And after all, isn’t that what we all want? The Future is screening at Metrograph on January 22 at 2:00, preceded by July’s 2014 ten-minute Miu Miu short, Somebody, about a messaging app in which strangers participate in people’s personal situations.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: CYMBELINE

Posthumus (Hamish Linklater) and Iachimo (Raúl Esparza) make a dangerous bet as Philario (Patrick Page) looks on (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Through August 23, free, 8:30
shakespeareinthepark.org

Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare’s later, lesser-known plays, is not easy to bring to the stage. It’s a sort of greatest-hits mash-up of previous Bard themes and plot devices, lacking in memorable lines and named after a relatively minor character. So Tony-winning Shakespeare in the Park veteran Daniel Sullivan has added a large dose of whimsy to what turns out to be a rather charming and modern romantic comedy. In fact, whereas the first folio identifies it as “The Tragedy of Cymbeline,” a framed backdrop that is visible throughout nearly all of the Public Theater presentation calls it “The Story of Cymbeline,” as tragedy becomes farce. With war threatening between Britain and Rome in ancient times, King Cymbeline (Patrick Page) has banished Posthumus Leonatus (Hamish Linklater), a commoner who is married to, and very much in love with, his daughter, Imogen (Lily Rabe), so she can instead wed the queen’s not-too-swift progeny, Cloten (Linklater). Meanwhile, in a 1950s-era Vegas-y Rome, Posthumus boasts about his wife’s virtue, leading the Italian playboy Iachimo (Raúl Esparza), after performing a glitzy Sinatra-like number, to lay a wager that he can bed Imogen and despoil her honor. The bet is overseen by Philario (Page), a sharp-dressed gangster who is Posthumus’s host. As the queen conspires to poison Imogen, both Iacomo and Cloten attempt to woo the princess, who soon sets out for Wales disguised as a boy to set things straight with her one true love. But on the way she gets lost in the woods and is taken in by an oddball anarchist family consisting of a bent-over father (Kate Burton) and his two would-be sons (David Furr and Jacob Ming-Trent). It all leads to a dizzying finale with more than two dozen revelations coming fast and furious.

The cloddish Cloten (Hamish Linklater) makes his case to marry Imogen (Lily Rabe) (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Sullivan (Proof, Twelfth Night) has a ball revealing the artifice behind the production while also taking the story to some surprising extremes. Riccardo Hernandez’s set features a pair of large gold frames and boxes and props from other Shakespeare productions (Hamlet, King Lear), reminding everyone of the machinations behind it all. There are several rows of audience members on either side of the stage who do indeed get involved in the action, while some of the actors sit at the back of the stage between their scenes. Rabe and Linklater, who are partners in real life and have previously appeared together in Seminar on Broadway and in The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte, are at their best in Cymbeline, she as the strong-willed and sexy Imogen, he going back and forth between the noble-to-a-fault Posthumus and the dumb-and-dumber Cloten (complete with Jim Carrey–like wig), pausing in his line readings for maximum double-entendre effect. Page (Casa Valentina, Cyrano de Bergerac) is gallant as the king and Philario, balancing power with a conscience; Burton is nicely wicked as the queen and almost unrecognizable as Belarius; four-time Tony nominee Esparza (Company, Taboo) is appropriately smarmy as Iachimo, who spans two eras; Teagle F. Bougere (A Raisin in the Sun, Macbeth) is solid as Roman ambassador Lucius and court doctor Cornelius, particularly in the grand finale; Steven Skybell (Pal Joey, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is engaging as Pisanio, Posthumus’s loyal servant who dedicates himself to Imogen; and Furr (As You Like It, The Importance of Being Earnest) and Ming-Trent (Hands on a Hardbody, Shrek the Musical) bring a sweet nature to their portrayals of the mountain brothers as well as the play’s narrators. Yes, it’s lesser Shakespeare, and at nearly three hours it runs too long (even with the excision of the Jupiter dream sequence), but Sullivan’s fanciful production is a whole lot more fun than Cymbeline usually is. (Don’t forget that in addition to waiting on line at the Delacorte to get free tickets, you can also enter the daily virtual ticketing lottery online here.)

POSTERITY

Artist Gustav Vigeland (Hamish Linklater) discusses his lofty goals with patron Sophus Larpent (Henry Stram) in POSTERITY (photo © Doug Hamilton)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 5, $20-$65
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

“I’m to entrust you to create a face that will outlive my own?” playwright Henrik Ibsen (John Noble) asks sculptor Gustav Vigeland (Hamish Linklater) in writer-director Doug Wright’s new play, Posterity. “Let you decide if I’m to be remembered as a genius or a madman, or both at once?” In Posterity, making its world premiere at the Atlantic Theater, Wright, who won a Tony for I Am My Own Wife and an Obie for Quills, examines legacy, fame, and artistic integrity as the young, ambitious Vigeland attempts to convince the old and frail Ibsen to sit for what will probably be his last portrait, a bust. At first Vigeland doesn’t want to do the commission, considering himself above mere standard portraiture — “I’m an artist,” he says. “An artist is a sculptor with an ego.” — but his prim and proper patron, Sophus Larpent (Henry Stram), tells him that if he doesn’t do it, his grand plan for a massive public fountain will never reach fruition. When Ibsen arrives, with cane and top hat, colorful medals on his fancy jacket, Vigeland’s young assistant and protégé, Anfinn Beck (Mickey Theis), and housekeeper, Greta Bergstrom (Dale Soules), flatter Norway’s most famous writer, but when Vigeland enters the studio, fireworks erupt as the two stubborn artists get involved in a battle of wits, arguing over the meaning of success, the importance of criticism, and the power of fame. Storming out, Ibsen collapses, leading to a second act that is repetitive and melodramatic, losing all of the momentum built up in the first act.

A mutton-chopped Henrik Ibsen (John Noble) considers sitting for an honorary bust in Doug Wright’s POSTERITY (photo © Doug Hamilton)

In 1901, Vigeland, who designed the Nobel Peace Prize medal, did indeed attempt to get Ibsen to sit for him. However, very little is known about the details of what happened inside Vigeland’s studio and Ibsen’s home, so most of Posterity is a creation of Wright’s, as are the characters of Beck and Mrs. Bergstrom, who were inspired by one of Vigeland’s sculptures. Shakespeare in the Park veteran Linklater (The Comedy of Errors, The School for Lies) is bold and audacious as Vigeland, his speech sharp and well defined, his movement stalwart and proud. Noble (Fringe, Sleepy Hollow) is an excellent foil, infusing Ibsen with a dark suspicion of others, more concerned about his legacy than he initially lets on. Derek McLane’s studio set features rows and rows of sculptures covered in white sheets, evoking Ibsen’s Ghosts. In the first act, Vigeland and Ibsen’s back-and-forth bantering about art teeters on the edge of pretentiousness but holds its ground, but in the second act it all falls apart like clay that’s too wet, as Wright adds several annoying plot twists and oversentimentality seeps in. No one really knows what happened when Vigeland and Ibsen met, what they said to each other; Wright has taken that situation and created a discourse on fame, ego, and longevity, but unfortunately Posterity is not one for the ages.