At last -- a show in New York that didn't try to blast me out of my seat, shock me out of my skin or dazzle me out of my wits. So many recent productions have been gussying up inanity by pitching it at shouting-match volume, I'd begun to wonder if I'd ever have to LISTEN to a play again. After all, who can contemplate the ocean when lifeguards are holding your head under water? How nice, then, that a quiet, careful, highly intelligent and absorbing play like The Countess should not only present itself at the end of a dispiriting New York summer, but prove enough of a hit as to warrant an open run at the Samuel Beckett Theater. Though a brand new play (the author's first(!)), The Countess feels as if it might have been penned in the early years of this century, so steady is its build-up, so delicate (though far from bloodless) is its language. Based on an actual scandal concerning the wife of 19th century art critic John Ruskin, The Countess is, at its core, a love triangle. Ruskin's Scottish wife, Effie (short for Euphemia), has been moody and prone to angry outbursts.
Though Ruskin's comfortable living in London with his puritanical parents, he does concede to joining Effie on a three-month holiday in her beloved Scotland. Gloomy weather notwithstanding, the change does her well, and she gets on famously with Ruskin's pre-Raphaelite protegee, Everett Millais. But not only does Everett sense the cracks in John and Effie's marriage, he can't help but take sides when he realizes what a controlling, unreasonable fellow John has become. (The irony is that John, as a critic, passionately subscribes to a pre-Renaissance form of painting, one that hearkens back to pure and natural forms of realism. As a man, however, his cracked idealism cripples his ability to be a husband.) Ultimately, the play isn't so much about the better man winning the girl but about just how screwed up the poorer man has become.
The Ruskin story is new to me, so I don't know whether the true details of the Ruskins' scandalous split were ever revealed. Accuracy or no, author Murphy does need to be more specific about Ruskin's neurosis, and perhaps a bit clearer when using the framing device of Effie's request to visit with Queen Victoria. Clarity is especially important here, because the rest of the play builds so attentively - and beautifully - to the Ruskins' marital shipwreck. If The Countess sometimes feels physically static on the Samuel Beckett proscenium, credit director Ludovica Villar-Hauser with establishing a gentle tone and gradually letting emotions build and false fronts crumble. (One false note: act one ends with a makeshift curtain plunging dramatically downward, an action more befitting a penny dreadful than a rich drama.) Charming, from her Scottish burr to her enigmatic smile, Jennifer Woodward avoids making Effie a typical oppressed-victim type.
The other performers, well-cast to type, also hold up their end, with James Riordan perhaps too affected as John, Jy Murphy an attractively soulful Millais, and, in a welcome turn, Kristin Griffith doing her best Helen Carey impersonation as Effie's outspoken and liberated friend, Lady Eastlake. Compared to the peasant-level productions trundling through New York in recent months, The Countess feels like royalty.
