T.S. Eliot's 'Cocktail Party' is worth attending
The Cocktail Party
Associated Press
Jennifer Farrar
March 18, 2010
NEW YORK - If you've ever known a psychiatrist who thinks he or she is godlike, then T.S. Eliot's 60-year-old play, "The Cocktail Party," would be an absolute tonic for them.
In the smart, amusing off-Broadway revival by TACT/The Actors Company Theatre, the acerbic comedy features a seemingly all-knowing, puppet master of a doctor, who is sought out by several characters distressed over their empty lives and feelings of isolation.
The play, at off-Broadway's Samuel Beckett Theatre, opens and ends with cocktail parties, two years apart. In between, a marriage will be torn apart and perhaps repaired, two affairs will end, several people will become disillusioned, heartbroken or both, and at least one person will go off on a mysterious spiritual quest.
Scott Alan Evans has given the bustling action and talented cast a thoughtful staging and direction. Eliot filled the play with jangling interruptions, doorbells and telephones constantly going off, and characters regularly bursting unexpectedly onstage. Evans smoothly handles the necessary turmoil.
That there might be a purpose to the confusion is gradually revealed. What begins as a light satire of a drawing room comedy develops into a darker examination of human relationships, self-deceptions and fears, with supernatural overtones.
Eliot wrote the dialogue in subtle verse, which pleasingly informs even the most inane party chat. While the characters' manners of speaking are somewhat stilted, it sounds appropriate to their upper middle-class status in 1949 London. The period gowns, tuxedoes and daywear by David Toser reflect the privileged status of these partygoers.
The first cocktail party is thrown by Edward and Lavinia Chamberlayne, a couple in their 40s who have been married for five years - except Lavinia isn't there, and Edward is making lame excuses to the guests about her absence. Jack Koenig has fun making the humorless Edward seem likable, or at least pitiable, as he frets about who he is and what he wants out of life.
Simon Jones is excellent as Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly. First seen as a mysterious guest at the Chamberlaynes' cocktail party, he's never identified as a psychiatrist, although he certainly speaks like one.
The other guests include Lauren English, in a lovely performance as young, saintly Celia Coplestone, who despairingly turns to the mysterious doctor for advice on how to live a more fulfilling life after her lover breaks up with her.
Cynthia Harris is delightful as the apparently befuddled and meddlesome Julia Shuttlethwaite. Mark Alhadeff is suitably suave as Alexander Gibbs, an adviser to youthfully selfish Peter Quilpe, nicely portrayed as wet behind the ears by Jeremy Beck.
Erika Rolfsrud gives a bittersweet edge to her brisk portrayal of Lavinia. Appearing later in the play, she and Edward are soon angrily pointing out one another's perceived flaws and expressing disappointment with their relationship.
Harcourt-Reilly briskly forces his "patients" to confront their flaws and face the reality of limitations to their happiness. His prescriptions, as intoned by Jones with much portent, often sound like spiritual advice, and he makes ominous references to a "sanatorium" that's reserved for only very special patients.
Eliot often said in interviews that he intended audiences to take their own meaning from the play. This TACT production is a real treat, first to hear and see, and then to ponder afterward.