Seascape

Spoiler alert: a mini-synopsis follows:

A vacationing older couple bicker, mostly genially, about how to live the rest of their lives when two giant lizards appear on the beach (virtuosically rendered in highly realistic costumes). The young lizard couple -- who have never before seen humans -- speak English and engage the human in a discussion of life, death and meaning. The concluding line, "All right, let's begin," indicates that the lizards are ready to be formally tutored by the humans.

I rarely respond to other critics' takes on plays, but in Ben Brantley's New York Times review he writes, Seascape does not leave you scratching your head in confusion and consternation the way much of Albee does." On the contrary, I have never scratched my head so much after a Broadway production as at the end of this Seascape, my first encounter with the work. When the curtain fell, I happened to be glancing at my program. I had no idea why the play had ended.

Yes, Charlie and Nancy, the human couple, had recently clutched, sexually, after having admitted the spark was out of their old romance; yes, Charlie, who loved as a child to commune with the creatures of the deep, had (as Nancy had begged him to) found a way to commune with those creatures again. But hardly ever have I felt less closure than at the end of this performance.

Are we, the audience, to be understood metaphorically as the lizards, who, as Charlie complains about them, "speak English but don't understand half the words," and thus need tutoring by our betters (read: Albee), making the whole play a bit of a taunt? I just don't know.

The theme of inchoate fear of the future in the elderly seems an echo of Albee's somewhat earlier A Delicate Balance, although reading that Barry Nelson and Deborah Kerr played Seascape's human couple 30 years ago when both were in their 50s (the Playbill's cover art depicts a couple about that age) makes the piece feels off-kilter with 70ish characters. The text is sympathetic with Nancy's prodding of Charlie to get off his ass, but at the age of the actors onstage, Charlie's desire for comfort and rest appears a perfectly reasonable response.

That said, the actors are, on the whole, marvelous. Frances Sternhagen and George Grizzard, as the humans, are masters at the top of their game. Frederick Weller and Elizabeth Marvel pull off the combination of physical and verbal dexterity required to act Albee on all fours, although Marvel occasionally veers into Disney territory when her voice goes high and childlike.

Catherine Zuber's lizard costumes are stunningly beautiful. Peter Kaczorowski's lighting is extremely subtle and effective in slowly darkening the stage and mood both. Only Michael Yeargan's set is a disappointment, with steps too obviously molded into the supposed dune, and clunky corners and mirror seams visible upstage right from my seat house right in the fourth row of the mezzanine.

I suspect there may be greatness I do not discern in Albee's text; the short evening never flags for an instant, even if I was utterly befuddled when leaving the theater. If there is fault here, and there is certainly some, I believe it belongs to Mark Lamos, whose direction does not steer the story convincingly enough to its conclusion.