Natural Affection
Natural Affection
Lighting and Sound America
David Barbour
Sept 27 2013
We're lucky to have the likes of The Actors Company Theatre, The Mint Theater, and Keen Company, all of which have made it their mission to curate our theatrical past. I'm especially grateful for TACT's current production, Natural Affection, by William Inge, a difficult, not-really-successful work that is nevertheless not to be missed by anyone who is interested in this great American playwright.
The promotional materials for Natural Affection suggest that it was a victim of the 1963 newspaper strike, a plausible theory at first glance, given that it featured a starry cast (the legendary Kim Stanley plus Harry Guardino and Tom Bosley) and a hot director (Tony Richardson). Having seen Natural Affection, this argument no longer persuades: The wonder is that anyone thought it had the slightest chance of commercial success, for this is a work of almost unrelieved gloom from a writer who understood depression from the inside out.
Unlike most of Inge's plays, which explored the unappeased longings behind the lace curtains of small Kansas towns, Natural Affection is set in a gray, wintery Chicago of cheaply built high-rise apartment buildings filled with strivers fruitlessly hustling to get ahead.
There's no use pretending that Natural Affection is a great play or even a very good one. The plotting is haphazard -- do reform schools really send their wards home without informing the parents? Sue's decision to give up Donnie isn't fully explored, and Inge waits too long to address the complex mother-son dynamic that may include incestuous feelings. Of course, this being an Inge play, sexuality, usually frustrated, must be at the root of every character's motivations, resulting in a rather untidy pileup of dysfunctions. With this many tense, unhappy people thrown together, disaster must follow, but when it does -- with a shocking act of violence -- it doesn't really feel earned.
And yet, for all of that, Natural Affection is a fascinating work with several powerful passages, all of which are fully realized in Jenn Thompson's acute and lovingly detailed production. Kathryn Erbe nails Sue's conflicting emotions as she struggles to hold this ad hoc family together; she also makes a fine thing of a speech recalling the bond she felt when nursing the infant Donnie. Alec Beard persuasively captures Bernie's strutting, sexually confident manner, as well as the emptiness behind it. Chris Bert makes a striking debut as Donnie, his eyes fixed on these putative adults, in search of their acceptance. As Claire, Victoria Mack effectively swans around the stage in peignoirs and other too-consciously chic outfits, lasciviously eyeballing any man in her orbit.
Best of all is John Pankow's Vince, whose fun-loving manner gets sloppier and more embarrassing with each double vodka; in the play's most harrowing passage, he torpedoes a Christmas Eve revel, savagely speaking truths no one else wants to hear before passing out altogether. Later, clutching Bernie's hand a little too long and a little too intensely, he sadly muses on a life that has bottomed out, leaving him with no expectation of pleasure. "There haven't been any good pictures since Norma Shearer," he says, piling detail on detail in a grim depiction of an existence cheapened by standardized goods and standardized emotions. It's a remarkably bleak vision, and yet Pankow makes something almost lyrical of it. His performance is reason enough to see Natural Affection.
This is also one of the most intelligently designed productions I've seen all season. John McDermott's set, depicting the living room and bedroom of Sue's apartment, as well as the outside hallway, is a marvel of period detail, from the carved wood hi-fi to the patterned sofa and bedroom set with an Asian screen on the wall. Mary Louise Geiger's lighting, taking a cue from the many practical lamps on the set, creates a series of pleasing interior looks; a slow early-morning fade-up on Sue and Bernie in bed also casts a powerfully melancholic mood. David Toser's costumes are remarkably detailed period creations and canny character statements alike. Toby Algya's sound design makes good use of Miles Davis and other period jazz artists.
Not to be dismissed, Natural Affection is, even in its most lurid moments, the work of a talented playwright struggling to express how stifling conformity and dissatisfaction is eating away at his middle-class characters. It's no surprise that audiences in 1963 weren't interested, and many today will find Natural Affection to be similarly off-putting, if only because the author's despairing view ultimately becomes so airless. But this fine production is often powerful on its own terms, and it adds enormously to our understanding of Inge's star-crossed career. Once again, TACT has done us a favor.