The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Nick Payne's IF THERE IS I HAVEN’T FOUND IT YET with Jake Gyllenhaal
Aloysius J. Gleek:
http://giaonthemove.com/2012/09/17/the-model-critic-reviews-if-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet/
The Model Critic Reviews:
IF THERE IS
I HAVEN’T FOUND IT YET
Carlos Stafford, The Model Critic
Posted on September 17, 2012
“If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet” is a seemingly simple four character dramedy set in Britain, but could be anywhere. The comedy part is like the comedy you’d encounter, in say, “The Sea Gull” by Chekov–individuals orbiting in their own sphere of isolation, befuddled in how to connect to those about them.
In this case, a family, simple and neat. George (Brian F. O’ Byrne) and Fiona (Michelle Gomez) are husband and wife, both teachers; they have a fifteen year old daughter, Anna (Anne Funke), and are visited by George’s brother, Terry (Jake Gyllenhaal, making his Off-Broadway debut.)
The bare bones of the plot consists of young Anna, fat and bullied, being suspended from school for fighting. She has transferred to her mother’s school in hopes things will improve. Terry, a bohemian traveler, arrives unannounced and sees the neglect that Anna’s parents have for her, and through him all the problems of their marriage, and their empty relationship with their daughter are magnified.
George, played by O’ Byrne, (Coast of Utopia, Doubt ) is a dry, detached, emotionally stunted academic who cannot connect with his feelings, full of knowledge, but lacking in wisdom. Always pondering other worlds, he stutters and stammers, and lacks grace. He is writing a ponderous, depressing scientific tome on mankind’s carbon footprint on the planet, while at the same time oblivious to his own insensitivities. He clearly, myopically, doesn’t see the forest for the trees. He reminds us of the mid-eighteenth century argument against Rationalism, where people like Rousseau felt humankind could not rely solely on science to solve our problems; that only through heart, intuition, and feelings, mainly, could we become complete, i.e., enter the Romantic Poets. George, unfortunately, is one hundred-eighty degrees to the edge of this logic.
Fiona, his wife, is bored and detached in another way, and does little to understand her daughter or connect with George. She has given up, bleak and resigned, and has accepted the gulf between them quietly. Her role is underwritten, but she is referred to as the C-word twice by others.
Terry enters one day–skull cap, beard, hoodie, and rucksack. Dusty and tired from the road, he has returned to see his true love, Rachel, and win her over once more. But Rachel is now engaged to another and Terry is now left in his own personal agony, alongside Anna. Worldly, wise, and coarse, he tries in his own gruff way to mentor Anna, and give her sound, sweet advice. She listens to her uncle, but has an unfortunate lapse in youthful judgement, and bounds into a naive sexual encounter with an older boy. From here, things unwind further for her, almost fatally.
Michael Longhurst, the director, doesn’t dwell long on the scenes– it is not a long days journey. The play moves fast, ninety minutes, no intermission. Everything begins with the family in distress and spirals downward quickly till the end. The scenes are short, with the end of each encounter having characters hurling pieces of the set as a punctuation to the building chaos. The stage soon becomes a mess. When the play begins, there is a gentle scrim of water lightly falling at stage front that later, eventually develops into a veritable flood. Water then, becomes the fifth character, a silent narrator.
All the elements, a bad marriage, an alienated daughter, errant uncle, unfeeling parents–pretty ordinary stuff today. Nick Payne, the playwright, doesn’t care to analyze the malaise–he only presents his characters clearly, without sentimentally lingering. The characters are intelligent, well-educated, and have ethics, but are confused and dead inside. Neither George nor Fiona ever hug, kiss, joke, or laugh together, while Terry has no will, is defeated.
Jake Gyllenhaal does wonderfully as Terry. He has fun with his cockney accent and has charisma in his spunky acting. He loves his character and conveys Terry’s inner life with lots of feeling and range. As a movie star he makes the leap to stage with an ease that was fun to watch–the Laura Pels is a perfect showcase for this intimate play and character.
At the end, the stage is left a mess of water and flotsam–like the Titanic, mentioned earlier in the play.
A small group of people have been set adrift, separated, rescue impossible. Later, as George lectures at the University, he unintentionally digresses and ponders, “It’s not what must be done, but how to convince people to do it.” He is speaking about his ecological concerns, but he dimly understands the fingers are all pointing to himself.
Now Playing at
THE HAROLD AND MIRIAM STEINBERG CENTER FOR THEATRE
Until November 25, 2012
The Laura Pels Theatre
111 West 46th Street, New York, NY, 10036
Ticket Services: (212) 719-1300
Aloysius J. Gleek:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/theater-review-i-found-roundabout-article-1.1163725?localLinksEnabled=false
Theater review:
If There Is
I Haven’t Found It Yet
at the Roundabout
Everything's Jake for Gyllenhaal as
he makes his New York theater debut
by Joe Dziemianowicz
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, September 20, 2012, 11:09 PM
Anna Funke helps her uncle (Jake Gyllenhaal) get something cooking in the kitchen.
“If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet” is a small ensemble play getting a big profile boost from Jake Gyllenhaal.
Happily, the “Brokeback Mountain” Oscar nominee shows off sturdy stage chops in his New York theater debut.
He’s touching, funny and completely convincing as Uncle Terry, a scruffy man-boy chronically adrift, profane, bad with boundaries, but with a good heart. In short, Terry is far from perfect but likable.
The same goes for this 90-minute one-act by British playwright Nick Payne, an up-and-comer who puts his own spin on the popular topic of family dysfunction and durability.
Despite a tendency to spell out themes and dip into cliches, Payne is blessed with an ear for dialogue that sounds everyday and lived-in.
The story, set in England, centers on chubby 15-year-old Anna (Annie Funke), an outcast bullied by classmates and ignored by her folks.
Fiona (Michelle Gomez), her mom, is a teacher preoccupied with her job and student productions. The latest, to bolster the notion that everything is a battle, is a musical version of “War of the Worlds.”
Anna’s dad, George (Brian F. O’Byrne), is an author and environmentalist blind to troubles at home. He’s obsessed with global warming and carbon footprints of practically everything — a banana, an international flight, having a child, a pair of shoes. “Everything,” he says, “counts a little more than we think.”
Terry, George’s long-estranged brother arrives and (as outsiders typically do in plays) shakes everything up. At the same time, he and fellow loner Anna clumsily bond.
It’s a straightforward story. Which may be why U.K.-based director Michael Longhurst felt compelled to pump things up in his staging. Instead of a realistic home, Beowulf Boritt ’s set is an abstract space with furniture jammed at center stage. Actors drag out sticks of furniture as needed.
And there’s water — and lots of it — that flows to underscore parallels between Anna’s plight and the planet’s. Chairs and tables become flotsam and jetsam as they’re tossed into a moat-like tank lining the stage.
It’s splashy and gimmicky. But it doesn’t swamp Gyllenhaal and company. Scottish actress Gomez clearly conveys Fiona’s frustrations, while the ever-reliable O’Byrne (a Tony winner for “Frozen”) captures George’s passion and awakening regret. Sensitive and uninhibited, Funke makes a poignant Anna, who goes to a very dark — if not altogether surprising — place.
Payne leaves the family with a glimmer of hope. It’s no fluke that George is shown near the end of the play holding an ecologist’s No. 1 enemy — a plastic bag. So maybe he is changing.
ifyoucantfixit:
Jack was on Jimmy Fallon last night, and Letterman the night before. He is hitting the hustings quite hard. I am sure it is
because he has the play and A new movie released for this weekend.
I don't believe I have ever seen him when he was so thoroughly accepting of the famous movie star accolades. He is getting
grown up, and comfortable in his celebrity it seemed.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
http://nymag.com/listings/theater/if-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet/
Critics' Pick
If There Is
I Haven’t Found It Yet
By Scott Brown
9/21/12 at 2:30 PM
Jake Gyllenhaal (left) in If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet.
Recently Opened
Jake Gyllenhaal, it turns out, is a stage actor of innate instinct: Whether he’s delivering a laugh line, getting lost in playwright Nick Payne's trademark ellipses, or tossing furniture into the Plexiglas sluice director Michael Longhurst has attached to the lip of the stage, Gyllenhaal displays the intuitive understanding of theater-space — its exact dimensions and tolerances — that eludes so many film actors. He’s in perfect communication with hundreds of people while maintaining perfect intimacy with his scene partners. Not bad for a newbie.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s been gifted the plum role in Payne’s celebrated debut piece, If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, which swept London critics off their feet a few years ago. Gyllenhaal is Terry, the ne’er-do-well younger brother of George (Brían F. O’Byrne), an academic and climate Cassandra. George, who’s spent his adulthood in a state of mild shock at the apocalyptic state of the environment and the human unwillingness to respond, has lost himself in a massive project: a book that will list the carbon footprint of practically every human action. Meanwhile, his marriage to Fiona (Michelle Gomez) is failing, and his overweight teenage daughter Anna (Annie Funke) is in a personal tailspin he’s all too happy to ignore. Enter Uncle Terry, lovelorn and self-involved and borderline sociopathic, a walking avatar of human catastrophe. He shakes up the family and the play — then vanishes, as a more conventional family drama takes over. The performances are all excellent, but the story can’t find a fulcrum. (It’s Anna, on paper, but onstage, her scripted sulks and evasions ultimately make her more symbol than character.)
Young Brits are far ahead of their American counterparts when it comes to effectively synthesizing the personal, the political, the ecological, and the social. (I eagerly await a Stateside production of Mike “Cock” Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London, which plays with a somewhat similar premise.) But If There Is is a young, tender, exploratory play, and ultimately, it takes refuge in the same paralyzed bourgeois mildness its characters are smothering under. The flood comes — quite literally, thanks to some impressive, if slightly cumbersome onstage waterworks — and we still end up swaddled in cozy, prime-time-drama what-can-you-do-but-love-each-other comfort. Sorry, I’m too terrified for that. I’d rather you just abandon me on an ice floe, like the dead Eskimo I am. Even as the waters rise onstage, we’re allowed to feel that we’re watching this from far above sea level. Thanks, but I’d like to be reminded I’m already below it.
Laura Pels Theatre
111 W. 46th St., New York, NY10036
nr. Sixth Ave. See Map | Subway Directions
212-719-9393
Monika:
Yay! I'm so happy for Jake! He deserves only the best.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version