Morgan Davis, Jim Matthews, Jeremiah Ripley, Bruce McGlumphy
This season’s presentation of Bernard Pomerance’s THE ELEPHANT MAN is quite probably the most accomplished production to appear on the Wallman Theatre stage in the past two or three years. Much of the credit for this success must go to the impromptu team of lighting designer and visiting artist Todd Wren and FSU’s own set designer and technical director Troy Snyder. Together they have captured and brought to life a corner of late-Victorian London and the inner recesses of the old London Hospital.
Troy Snyder’s impressive stage-set of substantial brick edifices is transformed by Todd Wren’s magical lighting into a vibrant parallel world ranging from heightened moments of visual drama to deeply atmospheric tableaux of moonlight and shadow. At times, through veiled interspersions of soft-hued light, the brick facades fall into decrepitude as we watch— shadows spread out like moss and decay, and the tenor of the entire theatre deepens.
Into this late-Victorian Londonscape strides – or rather hobbles – one John Merrick, aka The Elephant Man (played by Bruce McGlumphy), a specimen of such pitiable and horrific appearance due to a rare skin and bone disease, that, whenever he has the misfortune of having to show himself in public, he is either pointedly shunned, or jeered and beaten by hostile crowds.
Abandoned by his father as a child after his mother died, John Merrick spent his earlier years amid the horrors of a London workhouse, followed by several years on the carnival freakshow circuit. Finally, in his mid-twenties, Merrick was rescued by an eminent young surgeon from the London Hospital, Frederick Treves (Jeremiah Ripley), who introduced Merrick to the London medical community and a select circle of British aristocracy. It is this circle of wealthy and influential individuals who provided the means for a comfortable apartment to be furnished for Merrick in the basement of the hospital for the remainder of his life.
Jeremiah Ripley and Jim Matthews
Pommerance’s play is an exploration into the contradictions of Treves as both savior and jailer to Merrick, with the rest of the cast falling to one end or the other of that contradiction, from the cynical s
windler/showman Ross (played with delicious color and swagger by Samantha Huffman) to the compassionate Mrs. Kendall (played with sparkling assurance by Lillian Gaylord), a professional actress who more than anyone sees beneath Merrick’s horrific mask to the perceptive and acutely sensitive man beneath.
Merrick is one of those uncommon individuals who, by their mere appearance in society, shatter the carefully self-constructed public mask of everyone they encounter. Merrick is profoundly disarming: it is impossible to maintain any pretense in his presence, and all are stripped bare before him—a fact which perhaps only Mrs Kendall truly understands, as she is the only one in Merrick’s life, (apart from his mother whom we never meet), who seems genuinely unabashed by him. Both Merrick and Mrs Kendall live out their lives behind masks, after all, so who better to comprehend the rickety scaffoldings of persona?
But if Merrick and Mrs Kendall discover to their mutual surprise an essential affinity, Merrick and Treves, notwithstanding a deep mutual loyalty, never quite manage to bridge a fundamental estrangement. Treves, when all is said and done, is a proper Victorian gentleman, an adherer to strict standards, and remains, for all his scientific detachment, fundamentally repulsed by Merrick. It is a repulsion not so much physical as intellectual: Merrick’s appalling deformities undermine Treves’s comfortable Victorian cosmology where all things are reasonably ordered, everything is in its proper place, and Man is at the apex of the chain of being.
Treves cannot bring himself to look too closely at the subversive implications of Merrick’s existence. Moreover, he comes to doubt the nature of his own influence on Merrick’s life. On the one hand he has been Merrick’s protector and provider, shielding him from abusive exploitation, and providing him with the first real sense of security and home that he has known. On the other hand, Treves has become a kind of tyrant in Merrick’s life, imposing a restrictive Victorian ethos on him precisely at those moments when Merrick is on the verge of transcending his limitations. Most damningly of all, Treves comes to realize that he and all of Merrrick’s benefactors, no less than the freakshow hucksters themselves, have exploited Merrick, benefiting financially and otherwise from their association with the Elephant Man.
But the transformation of Treves, from complacent Victorian success story to self-doubting Hamlet second-guessing himself to the point of nervous breakdown, is problematic. The progressive stages in Treves’s crises of confidence are never convincingly drawn out, or even clearly identified– which is not the fault of the actor or director, but of the playwright. It is a flaw in the fabric of the play itself.
In Pomerance’s handling, Treves is an embodiment of British imperialism in all its unshakable moral certitude and racial superiority, and just as the Empire was shaken and finally undermined by its encounter with the “inferior” races of India and Africa, so too is Treves shaken to the core by his encounter with the Caliban-like “creature” of Merrick.
But this breakdown of Treves– with all the ideological weight it must carry– seems more a forced imposition by the playwright than the inevitable result of Treves’s own nature. This, of course, places an impossible burden on the actor. Jeremiah Ripley is a performer of considerable sensitivity and skill, with an instinctive elegance, and his portrayal of the earlier, confident Treves captures perfectly the erect, military bearing of the proper Victorian gentleman. If his portrayal of Treves’s subsequent descent into self-doubt comes across as somewhat abrupt and brittle, it is a flaw in the play and no fault of Mr. Ripley’s.
Bruce McGlumphy’s performance as Merrick, the Elephant Man, by a combination of bodily contortion, twisted facial expression, labored breathing, inflection of voice and, above all, of pacing and timing, is both uncanny and unerring. Somehow, through Jeffrey Ingman’s directorial alchemy and Mr. McGlumphy’s very considerable talent– this impossible admixture of impediments, tics and contortions comes across as entirely unforced and believable. Mr. McGlumphy works very near to the heart of his character– some sort of essential transference seems to have taken place– so that what he brings to the audience is genuine, and moving.
There is much more in this production worthy of comment: the choreography of the ensemble cast, for instance, which is a constant source of pleasure– or the part of Carr Gomm, hospital administrator, portrayed by Jim Matthews with precision, poise and the merest tincture of devilry– or the arrestingly beautiful death scene apotheosis near the end of the play– but there are limits to what can be covered in a brief review.
The Elephant Man must surely rank as one of Mr. Ingman’s finest directorial achievements. Viewing it provides a rich experience on multiple levels. It is quite simply not to be missed.
