When I interviewed Charles Newell about his planned June 30 exit from the Court Theatre after 30 years as artistic director, he spent so much of our conversation last September downplaying his departure and eschewing such words as “retirement,” I started to wonder A), why I was bothering with this interview and B), why he was leaving at all.
I have no particular insight into B). But the answer to A) was, and is, that Newell is a superb director whose consistently compelling and occasionally triumphant productions ran the gamut from Sophocles to Arthur Miller to James Joyce. I won’t quickly forget his revelatory 2013 staging of David Auburn’s “Proof,” nor his 2016 premiere of “Man in the Ring,” nor his 2002 “Hamlet,” nor his 2007 “Arcadia,” nor his 2008 “Caroline, or Change.” I believe I’ve reviewed every last one of his Court productions and, frankly, it has been my honor to intersect with one of the American theater’s most restless spirits and keenest minds.
Like a lot of directors of his generation, of late he has often worked with others. I understand why. But he was at his best when working alone. Such is his lot.
For his valedictorian show, Newell, hilariously, has chosen Tom Stoppard’s comedy “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” a piece that pokes fun at the two Shakespearean functionaries in “Hamlet” and imagines them as a bewildered but existentially curious pair bemused not just by the play that appears to be happening around them, but by life itself. The two, spectacularly played at Court Theatre by Nate Burger and Erik Hellman, are so forgettable as to be interchangeable; neither Claudius nor Gertrude can keep them straight for a second. They are walking pimples on the butt of the theater and of life.
Heading into Court Sunday night, I thought to myself how this play (which was originally a sketch at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) had the benefit of surprise in 1966, before all kinds of writers starting riffing on great classics, and, although over the years that followed, the neo-absurdist work actually made R&G rather more famous than even Shakespeare could have anticipated, it now would surely feel tired and predictable. It’s an old play, rich in riposte and verbosity, it being Stoppard and all, but surely a curious choice, it seemed to me, to trust with the end of a 30-year run. Compare it, for example, to Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” upon whose more weighty bows Robert Falls chose to lay down his career last year as Goodman Theatre’s artistic director.
Chekhov had a fine sense of the absurd, as Falls deftly exploited. But “R&G” which turned out to be the perfect choice for Newell, really is the uber-play when it comes to the dramatization of people who don’t matter at all. Rosencrantz makes his exit with the line “I don’t care. I’ve had enough. To tell you the truth, I’m relieved.” Guildenstern (or is it Rosencrantz?) exits with the positively Beckettian and equally delicious:
“Our names shouted in a certain dawn … a message … a summons … there must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said no. But somehow we missed it. Rosen—? Guil—? Well, we’ll know better next time. Now you see me, now you—.”
In this production, Lorenzo Rush Jr., who is essaying the role of the Player alongside the quizzical Rob Lindley as Polonius, Charance Higgins as Ophelia, Blake Hamilton Currie as Hamlet, Amir Abdullah as Claudius and Elizabeth Ledo as a gently creepy Gertrude, draws a black, traveling curtain over Hellman’s blotto character, making him appear to vanish into thin air.
John Culbert’s deceptively witty set features a bright-red, back-wall backdrop with the stenciled letters “Theatre” and, in rather more faded type, “Court.” It took me about 15 minutes to realize Court was even written there in the dark. Perhaps the blood red was a reference to all Newell’s Greek tragedies, back in the day.
I nearly fell off my seat laughing at both of those exits: Newell has split himself into two, I thought, and what a spectacular bifurcation of self-combustion. Here was a director with a perfectly healthy ego brilliantly self-protecting against any charge of conclusionary vanity. It was as if Newell was saying his Court legacy was for others to decide, but also simultaneously deciding it himself. Touché, as Stoppard, his muse, often wrote.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” is, of course a play within a play. When the actors therein perform Hamlet’s “The Murder of Gonzalo,” it’s actually a play within a play within a play. When you figure in the outer “bye, bye Charlie” frame, omnipresent here, you really get a play within a play within a play within a play. No mean feat, that.
Along the way are meditations on the limitations of a career in theater. Words, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sadly note, are all they have to go on.
One of them, can’t remember which, reflects the existential condition of an aging theater critic as a much a director: “What a fine persecution to be kept intrigued without ever being enlightened.”
Story of my life, gentleman. Story of my life. (And maybe that of a few actors besides.)
“All we get is incidents,” they kvetch. “Is it too much to hope for a little sustained action?” (Usually.)
And if all that were not enough, the Newell era at Court ends after 90 minutes (this is the cut down “R&G” version, ha!) with Burger and Hellman picking up guitars and leading a singalong with the Bob Dylan song “Like a Rolling Stone.”
“Once upon a time you dressed so fine,” it starts. “Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?”
You sure did, Charlie.
Your last, strikingly grounded cast, smiling and emoting for 90 minutes with equal measures of sincerity, bemusement and a sense of the moment, gave you a great retirement present.
“How does it feel to be on your own?” Not sure you’ll every really find out. And you can be grateful for that. At one lovely moment here, the house lights go up: “How very intriguing,” say the cast and, by osmosis, a certain exiting director.
Four stars, thanks for the memories, and all can be glad you always thought that.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” plays through April 21 at Court Theatre 5535 S. Ellis Ave.; tickets $56-$88 at 773-753-4472 and www.courttheatre.org
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.