Financial Times Europe - 26.10.2019 - 27.10.2019

26 October/27 October 2019 ★ FT Weekend 15

Arts

R

ichard Nelson’s new playThe

Michaelsis about modern

dance. Yet its roots lie in an

effort to renew political thea-

tre in the US. A decade ago,

Oskar Eustis, artistic director of New

York’s Public Theater, asked the sea-

soned director-playwright to write a

play about the war in Afghanistan. Eus-

tis felt that US theatre was failing to keep

up with Britishtheatre instagingbig

works about contemporary history such

asStuff Happens, David Hare’s 2004

dramatisation of the diplomatic wran-

gling that preceded the Iraq war.

Nelson was the man for the job, Eustis

believed, because he had ritten large-w

scale historical plays for the Royal

Shakespeare Company such as 1990’s

Two Shakespearean Actors which has(

over 25 parts) about the 1849 Astor Place

riots in New York, sparked by rivalry

between two leading actors.

Nelson himself had other ideas that

wereleaning towards a more austere,

Chekhovianvision. “I was moving in the

opposite direction,” he says. “I thought:

how about a play about a family sitting

round the table, talking and making din-

ner in Rhinebeck?” He has since written

and directed eight plays, split into three

cycles, each centred on a different fic-

tional family, all set in the same leafy

town in upstate New York where the 69-

year-old Chicago-born playwright has

lived for the past 36 years. And though

hisRhinebeck Panoramastrays far from

Eustis’s initial concept, each of those

plays has debuted at the Public, where,

says Nelson, “Oskar has always given me

an opening night before one word was

written. That’s unheard of.”

The plays have been shaped by several

other striking departures from theatri-

cal convention. Nelson’s actorsspeak in

an ordinary conversational tone, neces-

sitating a complex system of amplifica-

tion that Nelson continually tweaks dur-

ing previews to find the right balance

Slow-cooked, for flavour

Theatre Richard Nelson tells|

Max McGuinness hy his neww

play goes to such great lengths

to build onstage authenticity

From top: Richard Nelson

at a rehearsal of ‘Sorry’ in

2012; Maryann Plunkett in

‘The Michaels’

Sara Krulwich/Eyevine; Joan Marcus

toplaywrights such as Annie Baker and

Alexander Zeldin).

The last time theatregoers ventured

into Nelson’s Rhinebeck, there were

more momentous variables at stake

than the weather. HisWomen of a Certain

Ageopened on election night in Novem-

ber 2016 and concludes with the Gabri-

els, a family of Democrat-voting liber-

als,watching TV coverage of what they

nervously expect to be a Hillary Clinton

victory “because”, as one of them

remarks, “the other is unthinkable”.

Nelson disavows the label “political

theatre”. But allusions to topical politi-

cal events have been a consistent fea-

ture of hisRhinebeck lays — the first ofp

which,That Hopey Changey Thing, set on

the night of the 2010 midterm elections,

took its title from a put-down of Barack

Obama by Sarah Palin.

InThe Michaels, opening a new cycle

about a new fictional family, those politi-

cal echoes have grown fainter. Over the

course of two hours, there is only one

mention of Donald Trump. Instead, the

focus is on Rose Michael, achoreogra-

pher dying of cancer played by Brenda

Wehle, who is struggling to put together

a final composition.Unlike other plays

about dance, such as Lanford Wilson’s

recently revivedBurn This, which often

fail to include any actual dancing,The

Michaels eatures three pieces of sublimef

choreography, performed with exter-d

ity by Charlotte Bydwell (as Rose’s

daughter) and Matilda Sakamoto (as

her niece) around theonstage table.

What stirred Nelson’s interest in

dance wasits potential for comingalive

on stage. Dance, he says, is “createdon

people” and therefore fascinating to

watch as it is being devised. Unlike the

creative processbehind painting, music

or writing, that palpable dynamism

makes dance “a form that can express

creative art in a theatrical framework”.

The dances in the play are based on

choreography by Dan Wagoner,a mem-

ber of a 1980s New York dance scene that

emphasised spontaneity and playful

responses to popular music. Nelson now

worries that that body of work is being

lost, and his play is suffused with asense

“of something fading away... that’s rep-

resentative of the country today”.

The playwright is nonetheless eager

to counter stereotypical visions of US

cultural degradation that he encounters

overseas. InThe Michaels, Rose’s ex-

husband (played by Jay O Sanders, a

veteran of the entireRhinebeck Pano-

rama) laments having attended anover-

blown satire of US politics in Paris,

which, Nelsonacknowledges, is an allu-

sion to the French version ofElfriede

Jelinek’s recent Trump-bashing playAm

Königsweg. “You just feel that your coun-

try and perhaps yourself are being rep-

resented in ways that are grotesque,”

says Nelson. One of the joys, he adds, of

touring theRhinebeck lays aroundp the

world has been to encounter audience

members who tell him “we didn’t know

Americans talked like this. We expected

people to be shouting and yelling.”

In place of strident certainty or even a

defined point of view, Nelson aims, like

Chekhov, to express a sense of civilised

“confusion” — a favourite word — that

engages with the audience’s own doubts.

“What I don’t enjoy”, Nelson says, “is

theatre that tells people what they

already think.” Theatre, he concludes,

should be a “real partnership where two

groups of people are working at some-

thing together as opposed to one group

sitting back and having it given to them.

That’s slow cooking. You’ve got to take

your time and be patient and listen.”

To November 24, publictheater.org

Theatre should be a ‘real

partnership of working at

something together... You

have to take your time’

between audibility and heightened veri-

similitude. Theyprepare elaborate,

delicious-smelling meals from scratch

using an onstage oven. And each play is

set on opening night in near-real time,

which means that Nelson continues to

make changes up to the last minute. “It

looks like it’s going to rain,” he says of

this Sunday’s opening night. “If it hap-

pens, there’ll be a number of lines about

the rain in Rhinebeck.”

Such attention to seemingly hum-

drum detailallows him to craft a theatri-

cal world that feels uncannily close to

the everyday complexity of real life. If

his characters devote their evenings to

patiently cooking “slow food”,Nelson’s

own approach might be called “slow the-

atre” (a label that has also been applied

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