(Click for original article)
THEATER REVIEW | 'THE PRIDE'
Musings on Gay Identity, Then and Now 
Hugh Dancy and Andrea Riseborough in “The Pride.”
"The Pride": Hugh Dancy, left, and Ben Whishaw at the Lucille Lortel Theater. In Alexi Kaye Campbell's
play they portray gay men, one of whom is closeted.By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: February 17, 2010There’s something to be said for a love that dare not speak its name, at least when it comes to dramatic tension. In the opening scene of “The Pride,”
Alexi Kaye Campbell’s seriously sentimental play at the
Lucille Lortel Theater, two men meet for the first time at the house one shares with his wife, and the room is stifling with the heat of the unsaid.
The men’s talk is stiff, fatuously jokey and mostly small, which isn’t surprising, given that they are middle-class Londoners and that the year is 1958. But when the wife says later, with a shiver, that she “felt something” in the room’s atmosphere, you know what she means, even if none of the characters onstage are willing to spell it out.
Such reticence does not last in “The Pride,” a diptych portrait of homosexuality then and now, which opened on Tuesday night in an MCC production featuring the young and elegant British actors
Hugh Dancy and
Ben Whishaw. Soon, one of those formerly silent men is telling the other that before he met him, he was ashamed of his desires; now he sees “that the world was wrong — that what I felt was honest and pure and good.”
There’s more: “I felt that I had a pride,” he says. “A pride for the person I was.”
Even with the deeply gifted Mr. Whishaw saying these words with passionate sincerity, they feel less like declarations of love than of ideals. “The Pride,” which received excited attention when it opened in London in 2008, is a heartfelt work, with some thought-provoking observations about cultures of repression and openness. But this play, its author’s first, often feels as awkward and self-conscious as its closeted 1950s lovers.
Though sex is frankly and, on occasion, brutally portrayed in this production, directed by
Joe Mantello, an old-fashioned artificiality saturates “The Pride,” like a floral cologne with musk accents. The play is set in both 1958 and 2008. Yet even during its latter-day scenes, I found myself thinking of gay writers of many decades ago, particularly
Terence Rattigan, whose mid-20th-century dramas (“Separate Tables,” “The Deep Blue Sea”) chronicled the loneliness of forbidden love. And I began to think that Rattigan’s work may have benefited from his not being able to describe directly his own erotic nature.
“The Pride” alternates the stories of two groups that share a set of names: Philip (Mr. Dancy), Oliver (Mr. Whishaw) and Sylvia (the appealing
Andrea Riseborough). In the 1950s scenes, Philip is married to Sylvia, a former actress turned illustrator who is working with Oliver, a children’s book author. The Oliver of the 21st century is a journalist who has recently been left by his lover, Philip, and seeks consolation with his best friend, Sylvia, an actress.
For a while, it looks as if Mr. Campbell might be trying to use Rattigan’s plays in the way the filmmaker
Todd Haynes used
Douglas Sirk’s movies in “Far From Heaven” (2002), reworking vintage sexual melodrama with a contemporary license that brings hidden homosexual subtext to the surface. But as mannered as Mr. Haynes’s movie was, it was charged throughout with the pain and confusion of its heroine, a housewife (a brilliant
Julianne Moore) married to a gay man.
Most of the people in “The Pride” are also, no doubt, in extreme pain. But they remain oddly unmoving, despite fluid direction by Mr. Mantello and polished performances from an ensemble that also includes
Adam James in a juicy assortment of roles. Though you always understand the thematic import of what the characters say, it’s harder to credit that they would say it themselves, or in the way that they do. They often seem like illustrations of debate points — human evidence, as opposed to human beings.
Mr. Dancy, who was excellent in the Broadway revival of “Journey’s End,” has two thankless roles. Both Philips are most notable for their disapproval of the Olivers, though for different reasons. And while Mr. Dancy stylishly conveys the severity of his characters, he provides few glimpses of the passion beneath the priggishness.
Mr. Whishaw (
John Keats in the recent film “Bright Star”) exudes a compelling, contained nervous energy, but he suffers from his characters’ having to explain who and what they are. Oddly — and damningly for the play’s ultimate impact — you never believe, at least viscerally, in the love between the Olivers and the Philips. And if you don’t, the play’s stakes seem slighter than they must.
The differences between the two Olivers provide the play’s most absorbing food for thought. The Oliver of the unforgiving 1950s recalls hearing, on a visit to Greece at the site of the Oracle of Delphi, a voice saying the world will become more tolerant and embracing. (You may think of the song “Somewhere” from “West Side Story.”) The Oliver of today hears a voice that propels him into repeated anonymous sexual hook-ups. It is also a voice that judges and condemns him.
These accounts offer an intriguing counterpoint between optimism in hard times and self-defeating pessimism in relatively easy ones. (Of course, it’s the easier days that offer the occasion for the play’s wittiest lines, which Mr. Whishaw delivers with élan.) Such descriptions speak evocatively of what it means to be gay in different epochs. But they seem like comments on these men, rather than like something that truly comes from within them.
It’s telling that the single most poignant scene belongs to Mr. James in the role of Peter, a lad-magazine editor, who wants the 21st-century Oliver to write a feature about gay sex. Peter is a glib joke of a man, who believes (or pretends to) in the boyish bunk his magazine preaches. But in describing an uncle who died of AIDS, Peter is suddenly assaulted by a sorrow he seemingly didn’t know existed. And we are allowed to understand this man in ways he doesn’t himself, which is one of the luxuries of good theater.
By the way, in “The Pride” it takes a woman to sort out the boys. Ms. Riseborough’s sensible, sensitive and artistic characters are the ones who set the anguished Olivers and Philips on the path to redemption. And the Sylvias’ relationships with those men feel more real than any others in the play. The suggestion is that, in this world, women are the only real grown-ups, and a boy’s best friend is an intuitive actress.
THE PRIDEBy Alexi Kaye Campbell; directed by Joe Mantello; sets by David Zinn; costumes by Mattie Ullrich; lighting by Paul Gallo; music by Justin Ellington; sound by Jill DuBoff; production manager, B D White; production stage manager, James FitzSimmons; general manager, Ted Rounsaville. Presented by the MCC Theater, Robert LuPone and Bernard Telsey, artistic directors; William Cantler, associate artistic director; Blake West, executive director. At the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, West Village; (212) 279-4200. Through March 20. Running time: 2 hours.
WITH: Hugh Dancy (Philip), Adam James (The Doctor/the Man/Peter), Andrea Riseborough (Sylvia) and Ben Whishaw (Oliver).
ALSO:Audio slide show with comments by Ben Whishaw
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/07/theater/20100207-ben-whishaw-multimedia/index.html#
