73. ICEBOUND
If you
look at the list of Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas since the award was first
given to a playwright in 1917 you’ll find a few plays you probably never heard
of or, even if you’re a theatre professor, never read or saw on stage. How
about the very first, WHY MARRY? It’s likely that the 1923 winner, ICEBOUND, by
the prolific Owen Davis, may also be unfamiliar to you, but you now have an
opportunity to see it if you scoot on down to E. 4th Street in
Alphabet City, where the diminutive Metropolitan Playhouse has thawed it out
and attempted to give it new life, as they have with so many other forgotten
plays over the years. The production itself is imperfect, but not so much that
you can’t get a clear idea of Davis’s intentions. Davis, by the way, was
previously the author of dozens of popular melodramas, such as BERTHA THE
SEWING MACHINE and NELLIE THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK MODEL. His turn toward serious
drama suggests the influence of Eugene O’Neill, especially in ICEBOUND, set as
it is in a repressed New England environment.
Robert Ames as Ben, Edna May Oliver as Hannah, Phyllis Povah as Jane in the original production of ICEBOUND. |
Olivia Killingsworth, Quinlan Corbett. Photo: Jacob J. Goldberg. |
ICEBOUND, which
a contemporary critic called a “vivid and biting study of a New England
family,” is described in my Encyclopedia
of the New York Stage, 1920-1930 as being about “the waiting of a family
of greedy, selfish survivors for the offstage death of tightfisted old Grandma
Jordan, so that they may learn what she has left for them in her will.” Mrs.
Jordan, anticipating their greedy response, leaves her entire estate (apart
from token bequests) to a distant cousin, 24-year-old Jane Crosby (Olivia
Killingsworth), who nursed her for eight years in the small town Maine home in
which the action is set.
Jane has been requested in the will to use the money to regenerate the old lady’s wastrel grandson Ben (Quinlan Corbett), a fugitive accused of setting fire to someone’s barn, and who Mrs. Jordan thinks Jane can tame and marry. Ben, who shows up unexpectedly to be there when his grandmother passes, goes to work for Jane on the farm in return for her signing his bail bond, an act overseen by Judge Bradford (Rob Skolits), who’s in love with Jane but agrees to use his influence to have Ben’s indictment squashed. However, when she discovers Nettie (Michelle Geisler), the impetuous teenage stepdaughter of Ben’s older brother, Henry (Kelly King), in Ben’s arms, Jane declares she’ll hand over the property to him and leave. Ben, who’s matured under her guidance, realizes how blind he’s been to her love, and decides to marry her, as his late grandmother had predicted.
Jane has been requested in the will to use the money to regenerate the old lady’s wastrel grandson Ben (Quinlan Corbett), a fugitive accused of setting fire to someone’s barn, and who Mrs. Jordan thinks Jane can tame and marry. Ben, who shows up unexpectedly to be there when his grandmother passes, goes to work for Jane on the farm in return for her signing his bail bond, an act overseen by Judge Bradford (Rob Skolits), who’s in love with Jane but agrees to use his influence to have Ben’s indictment squashed. However, when she discovers Nettie (Michelle Geisler), the impetuous teenage stepdaughter of Ben’s older brother, Henry (Kelly King), in Ben’s arms, Jane declares she’ll hand over the property to him and leave. Ben, who’s matured under her guidance, realizes how blind he’s been to her love, and decides to marry her, as his late grandmother had predicted.
The other family members are Henry’s
second wife, Emma (Maria Silverman); the old-maid sister Ella (Anne Bates); the
busybody Sadie (Alyssa Simon); and Sadie’s child, Orin (Connor Barth), whose
mother is constantly reprimanding him. This bunch, whom Ben calls “crow
buzzards,” are now beholden to him. There’s also a wise old family maid, Hannah
(Sidney Fortner), who actually gets to deliver the tag line. ICEBOUND’s title
refers to the icebound nature of the family’s hearts and souls, which are like
the frozen world of a Maine winter.
Alex Roe, the Metropolitan’s hardworking
artistic director, staged and designed the production. He’s combined Acts 1 and
2 into a single act, followed by a 15-minute break before Act 3 begins. The Jordan
house’s two rooms, a parlor in the first and third acts, and a sitting room in
the second, are indicated by simply having the actors move the same furniture
into different positions, a common practice at this low-budget theatre. The
audience of around 50 surrounds three sides of the set, with the upstage wall
covered by an abstract painting of a bleak landscape.
This is all well and
good, but because Mr. Roe apparently wants to further emphasize the close bond
between the dreary, unadorned interior and the natural environment of the farm
on which the household is situated, he creates a visual metaphor by putting two
trees at either upstage corner, right inside the house, and covers the floor
with wood chips. The odd result makes it look like the characters are living in
a stable (there’s one outside).
Moreover, the dialogue says that it’s
beginning to snow during the first act, so Mr. Roe actually has snow
falling inside the parlor, the phony flakes falling on furniture and actors
alike (rogue flakes have been falling from the start and continue to do so
throughout the evening, even when the season turns to spring). These are
unnecessarily distracting choices, as is Mr. Roe’s decision to have several
characters read the playwright’s scene-setting descriptions at the start of
Acts 1 and 3, much as a Pearl Theatre production did last year for a program of
J.M. Barrie plays, in which an actor playing Barrie spoke them.
The actors
offer competent performances, some more acceptable than others. Kelly King is
fine as the selfish older brother, who needs to keep borrowing money from Ben
to resolve his business problems; Anne Bates gives Ella, who wants money to
begin a dress-making business, a semblance of truth; and Rob Skolits does well
by Judge Bradford, making him both stern and reasonable. Ms. Killingsworth’s
Jane is far too wishy-washy and lightweight to represent a woman who
must have a spine of steel to handle her mean-spirited relatives and run a farm
efficiently. Mr. Corbett simply lacks the charisma and three-dimensionality to
be acceptable as both the black sheep son and the reformed lover.
The play
seeks to reproduce the speech and manners of these mostly narrow-minded,
religiously conservative, and stubbornly petty characters, so Maine accents
should be an essential component of ICEBOUND’ atmosphere. A dialect
coach has worked with the cast, but her students need more coaching as the mélange
of accents—some close, some distant, and some in no man’s land—could use a dialect
GPS to guide them back to the northeastern United States.
ICEBOUND deals grimly with grim small town
folk, and it has some interest as a naturalistic period piece. There’s a tiny bit of
humor, and the everyday dialogue sounds authentic enough. The highlight comes when
the judge reprimands the blinkered Ben about how much Jane has done for him. I’m
not sure Davis intended the audience to laugh as I did, but the moment underlined
a problem in Ben’s character by emphasizing his utter naiveté, not a proper virtue in a romantic leading man.
ICEBOUND is
the second Davis drama produced by the Metropolitan, which did his first serious
play, DETOUR (1921), a couple of years ago. Now it might be fun to dig out one
of his old mellers. I’ve always wanted to see BERTHA THE SEWING MACHINE GIRL.