11 THE
LOVESONG OF ALFRED J. HITCHCOCK
Great title, right? Unfortunately,
David Rudkin’s play, being shown during the annual Brits Off Broadway Festival
at 59E59, is not equally great; although written in blank verse, with brisk, telegraphese
dialogue, it’s certainly not a theatrical equivalent to the T.S. Eliot poem
whose title it appropriates. In fact, despite its receiving a number of strong
reviews, I found it tediously undramatic, something only a devoted Hitchcockian
or cinema buff could fully appreciate.
Roberta Kerr, Martin Miller. Photo: Carol Rosegg.
The private life of Alfred
Hitchcock has become rather public recently, what with movies about him
starring Toby Jones (THE GIRL) and Anthony Hopkins (HITCHCOCK), both of whom
were far more convincing as the portly English film director than the widely
praised—and, despite padding, insufficiently portly—Martin Miller, who takes on
the role in Rudkin’s drama. Unlike most other film directors, Hitchcock’s
personality and presence are very well known because he cleverly exploited them
as a way of increasing interest in his work. One of the delights of viewing his
weekly TV series, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (1955-1965), was to see him walk
on to the screen, accompanied by Bernard Hermann’s memorable theme music, to
replace in the flesh an outline caricature of his protruding belly, drooping
jowls, and pouting lower lip. But filmgoers already were familiar with what he
looked like because of his habit of making very brief appearances in each of
his films; going to a Hitchcock film was partly about getting caught up in the
suspenseful tales he directed and partly about the game of finding Hitchcock,
just as readers of the New York Times used
to search for “Nina” in the lines of Al Hirschfeld’s caricatures.
Hitchcock’s
personal appeal was also tied to his dryly droll sense of humor, deliciously edged
in mortician’s black. This comical touch, however, is almost completely lacking
in THE LOVESONG OF ALFRED J. HITCHCOCK, which Jack McNamara has directed from a
script originally written as a “film for radio,” broadcast in 1993, and that was,
as the playwright suggests, probably the first presentation of Hitchcock as a
dramatic character. In 2012, the British company New Perspectives asked Mr.
Rudkin to adapt his script for a touring production, but, having discarded the
original script, he wrote a new version. Whereas in the first version, the only
woman shown was Hitchcock’s wife (and collaborator), Alma, he now created the
role of Emma, Hitchcock’s mother, to be played by the same actress (Roberta
Kerr, excellent), suggesting through this device the Freudian connection
between the two principal women in the director’s life.
THE
LOVESONG OF ALFRED J. HITCHCOCK is a psychological biodrama written in
nonlinear style, moving freely back and forth in time, to investigate how
Hitchcock’s personal experiences at home and in school might have influenced
the themes and subjects of his films, such as his seeming obsession with
unattainable blonde heroines whose names often begin with “M” (his mother’s
name was Emma, it might be noted) and who frequently ended up dead. There are five
actors involved, each, apart from Mr. Miller, playing more than one role. References
in the play to Hitchcock’s most famous films are allusive, forcing you to rifle
through your memories to determine which one is being talked about (VERTIGO?
NORTH BY NORTHWEST? MARNIE? THE BIRDS?); audience members with only vague, if
any, knowledge of the director’s work will be at sea for much of the time and
will wonder what all the fuss is about.
The
essentially plotless, internalized drama is like a fever dream in which we view
Hitchcock visualizing in staccato bursts the development of his representative images;
his love-hate relationship with his mother, who scared him to death as a child,
a possible motive for the horrible fates his heroines encountered; his
obsession with his weight; his sexual insecurities; his collaboration with
screenwriters; his concern about his name (during an exchange with a
screenwriter [Tom McHugh] he says “I have no cock”—his nickname was “Hitch”); his wife’s attempt
to come to terms with their relationship by writing a memoir; his struggles
with his guilty conscience, and so on.
Scenically,
the production is simple. Juliet Shillingford’s set is little more than an
off-white, upstage screen, used mainly for fuzzy shadow play images; there are some brief verbal
descriptions of moments from Hitchcock’s better-known films, but no actual
clips are shown. Azusa Ono’s lighting offers effective visual shading to the general
blandness, and Tom Lishman’s sound design provides the effects of birds, trains,
theme music, and other sounds associated with Hitchcock’s work.
Hitchcock,
of course, was famed as the great “Master of Suspense,” a notion nicely hinted
at in a scene where the young Alfred is going to be punished by a Jesuit priest
(Anthony Wise) at his school for breaking a window. The priest gives Alfred a
choice as to whether he wants his caning now or at a designated time later in
the day. Wishing to delay the pain for as long as possible, Alfred opts for the
later time, and the priest then offers a detailed explanation of the way in
which time seems to stretch as one waits for something to happen. It begins:
Look
up: toward that clock there
The
face of the clock
That
minute hand.
Look
close: its point: it’s moving.
It
overtakes the shorter hand beneath: . . .
yet
draws that after . . .
From
that 12 of noon there . . .
toward
that 1 . . .
Yet
all this while, you’re thinking:
how
is it time can pass at all?
How
can that future, other moment ever be here:
when
this second, this instant,
this
present Now . . .
is
lasting so long?
Well
before THE LOVESONG OF ALFRED J. HITCHCOCK ended, I, too, wondered, how. How
indeed? And that’s about as much suspense as the production musters.
