Greene's The Potting Shed Served Well by TACT
The Potting Shed
American Theatre Web
January 24, 2003
Seeing plays, well-known or otherwise, in the setting of a rehearsed reading can be a blessing and a curse. One the one hand, a reading will give audiences the opportunity to hear a work performed that otherwise might not receive a full staging. At the same time, readings subject a script to almost hyper-intense scrutiny and often weaknesses that might go unnoticed in a full production seem to burn with intensity.
For the positive aspects of readings, one is thankful to have The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) among the non-profits in New York City. Without this company, it most likely would be impossible to hear works such as Graham Greene?s The Potting Shed performed by a company of well-regarded theatrical professionals. At the same time, in the concert performance of Greene?s work, it becomes evident why this work might not be worthy of full-revival.
Greene?s play, from 1957, centers on a secret held by the Callifer family for nearly 30 years. When the play opens, the patriarch of the family is dying and James, the man?s estranged son, shows up unexpectedly. The reason for the estrangement lies in some sinister event which occurred when he was just 14. It?s a day that he doesn?t remember and one that those who do remember are unwilling to describe to him. Greene?s play follows James as he attempts unravel the mystery.
Before the performance of The Potting Shed on Monday evening (there are two additional performances this coming Sunday and Monday), director Scott Alan Evans read from the reviews of the original Broadway production of the play. One reviewer of the period used the words "restless", "defiant", and "edgy" to describe Greene?s play. Unfortunately, Greene?s attempts to meld Catholicism, psychoanalysis and the supernatural, all of which come up in James? search for the truth about his teenage experience, seem all too clich?d for a modern audience, particularly when performed on a bare stage by actors holding scripts.
What one does hear in performance is Greene?s rich language and the many opportunities for actors to delve into fairly complex roles. There?s James? mother, for instance, who fails to see that in protecting her husband and his beliefs, she dismisses her maternal duty for her child. This duality is beautifully explored in the TACT reading by Darrie Lawrence. Similarly, Kyle Fabel, as James, and Jenn Thompson as James? ex-wife, delve with delicacy into that couple?s continuing relationship. Simon Jones, as James? uncle, a priest who figured prominently in James? boyhood experience, delivers a marvelously complex rendering of his character?s faith, or lack thereof, and Laurinda Barrett provides an equally captivating cameo as the priest?s housekeeper.
Evan?s direction of The Potting Shed keeps stage business to a minimum, although his choice to have the actors mime such interaction as the shaking of hands or kissing rather than touch, provokes some titters initially. (One suspects the choice is to avoid the accidental dropping of scripts, but surely the company could accomplish both tasks simultatenously.) David MacDonald?s music which precedes and follows each scene provides an eerie underscoring for the proceedings that adds to the richness of in-concert reading. Given the strengths, which far outweigh the weaknesses of The Potting Shed, one eagerly anticipates the company?s next offering, the rarely staged Eurydice by Jean Anouilh.