Excess Emoting

By R.C.

DUET FOR ONE by Tom Kempinski

Music may be a universal language, but theater is not. Any British play receiving a U.S. production can find not only its accent but its meaning changed. In its transatlantic crossing, Duet for One has been all but torpedoed out of the water. The unguided missiles of its destruction are a miscast director and star.

Tom Kempinski's play is a melancholy partita--two characters, six scenes--about a brilliant violinist struck down in her prime by multiple sclerosis, and the psychiatrist who tries to help her. The plot may seem a tasteless gloss on the career-ending disease of Cellist Jacqueline du Pre. But in its London version, there were no easy answers--no answers at all--for this driven young woman. As played by Frances de la Tour, she was a figure of shy, rueful dignity who achieved heroism by confronting her despair.

If De la Tour's tone was deep, soft, mournful, Anne Bancroft's is a fierce wail. She slips into the upper register of emoting--angry shrugs, haughty profiles, spat-out defiance--and stays there. The result is that Bancroft has nowhere to go when, at the end of each act, she needs to escalate into the play's most demanding scenes. Surely her approach is the one Director William Friedkin wanted; his work in films (The French Connection, The Exorcist) is notable for its harrowing power, not its subtlety. This leaves Max von Sydow, as the doctor, to prowl the set like a lion tamer confronting an unpredictable new beast. He need not worry. Bancroft's lioness isn't hungry enough to eat him. She has already devoured Kempinski's lamb of a play.

--R.C.

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