129.
THE ENGLISH BRIDE
THE
ENGLISH BRIDE, playing in the tiny Theatre C at 59E59, could as easily be
called BETRAYAL as the Pinter play now on Broadway. Its story, of course,
is completely different but it similarly deals in lies and deception, and in a
betrayal that goes way beyond the philandering shenanigans of Pinter’s people.
Based on an actual incident that occurred in London in 1986, this award-winning
work tells of Eileen Finney (Amy Griffin), a homely, 40ish, working-class British
woman from Leeds who is falls in love with a nice-looking young
Palestinian refugee named Ali Said (Michael Gabriel Goodfriend). Ali promises
to marry the considerably older, love-starved Eileen, whom he prepares to accompany to Israel
where he will introduce her to his parents prior to their marriage. But Ali is
actually an incipient terrorist: an El Al plane with 300 people on board and a suitcase carrying explosives will soon enter the picture.
Amy Griffin and Michael Gabriel Goodfriend. Photo: Bob Eberle.
Seventy-eight-year-old playwright Lucile Lichtblau examines the background to Ali's potentially horrendous plot by
having him and Eileen interrogated by Dov (Ezra Barnes), an Israeli agent of
Mossad. We watch as Dov questions both Ali and Eileen, although never together,
and also see the relationship between the lovers enacted as physical
expressions of the testimony they provide. The dramaturgy mixes
straightforward dramatic scenes with considerable direct address.
As the interrogation proceeds, the web of truths, half-truths, and outright
lies revealed, not only by the suspects but by the agent, grows increasingly
complex, and at the end, while we think we know precisely what happened, and
who these people are, we cannot be completely sure of anything. At the end, Dov
wraps everything up, saying that, in his business, he’s used to never knowing
exactly what transpired. “Truth mixed in with lies, love with hate. Fear and
shame often conquering our noblest ideals. Nothing is plain and simple.
Everything is ambiguous. . . . I must remember that most of what people say is
untrue.” At this point, he closes out the play with a salient piece of information
that reveals how something crucial we may have accepted in the play as true
is not.
As Dov, Ezra Barnes has the difficult
task of playing the friendly questioner who casually gains his detainees’ trust
while simultaneously keeping them off balance by toying with veracity. No
matter how honest or sincere the answers he gets seem to be, there’s always
some lurking falsity in them, and he must use all his skills to dig out the
truth by combining acceptance with suspicion; almost always,
however, his inquiry is supported by his knowledge of much more than he lets on. My theatre companion didn’t think he pulled
it off, but I was more approving. I liked Mr. Barnes's soft-voiced ability to seem friendly and
caring while always maintaining an undercurrent of the power at his disposal.
I wish Mr. Barnes had a more
convincing Hebrew accent, just as I wish Mr. Goodfriend’s Arabic accent as Ali
Said was better. Despite a name that seems anything but Middle Eastern, this
actor looks passably enough like the character he plays, and gives a reasonably acceptable
performance of this Arab terrorist, whom Ms. Lichtblau is at pains to humanize in an effort to clarify
what drove him not only to attempt the bombing but to behave in such a
Machiavellian way toward Eileen. His ultimate motives for becoming a terrorist, however, are left vague.
As Eileen, Ms. Griffin gives what is
the most conspicuous performance in this three-person drama. Even though she’s
ostensibly been duped, Eileen is deft at hiding behind a wall of deceit. While
not really homely, as called for by the stage directions, Ms. Griffin’s face has a certain comical aspect that allows
us to imagine her being more plain than pretty, and she uses every weapon in
her arsenal to play the role with a kind of girlish, even childlike, quality;
sometimes impish, sometimes snide, sometimes clownish, and always vulnerable, she
uses her pliable features to create a panoply of eye-rolling, head shaking
expressions that create a convincing image of someone naïve and desperate
enough to bite at Ali’s bait. Eventually, the character, with her physical and
facial tics, and her sometimes overly thick (but credible) working-class
accent, grows a bit tiresome, but we do feel a pang of regret when she ultimately
realizes what a fool she’s been.
Carl Wallnau, who originally staged
this play at Hackettstown, New Jersey’s Centenary Stage Company, capably
handles the limited space in Theatre C, placing the action in one corner of the
black box room, with the audience facing the stage in two sections set at right
angles. Set designer Bob Phillips has covered the stage floor, with its one and
two step platforming, in marbled black tile, and the action is surrounded
throughout by a modest, translucent drape that allows backlight to glow through
it. Chairs and a bench suffice for furniture.
Most compelling of the episodic play’s
multiple scenes are those of the interrogation, while the flashback scenes that
examine the budding relationship of the lovers, while absolutely necessary to
our understanding of who these people are, gradually lose interest, possibly
because there’s a bit too much dependence on expository narrative later in the play. Still, this is a thoughtful and well-executed work
and its truths (and falsehoods) make for an interesting dramatic event.
