A Review

Having A Bad Day, In Point of Fact

By R. J. Donovan

As the program notes point out, Ben Butley is a middle-aged trainwreck of an English professor at a College of London University. Brilliant but self-destructive, he prefers nursery rhymes and T. S. Elliot to the stuffy, canonical poetry of Byron. And he is about to lose his wife and his male lover -- both within the same extraordinarily bad day. Adding insult to injury, both wife and lover admit they are moving on to men they don't especially love -- just to get away from him.

Simon Gray's dark comedy "Butley" is not a play that's done often.

The language here is exact and the caustic cuts are often as cruel as the humor. As the play unfolds, Butley manipulates the people in his life around an emotional chess board that leaves even the winner pondering what it is he's won.

The challenge is in creating a main character who's not only biting and funny and wicked, but who exudes the kind of blinding passion that draws others too close to the flame.

As directed by Artistic Director Nicholas Martin, the current production at The Huntington is bright and very funny. And starring as Butley, Nathan Lane (left) is delightful as he trounces his opponents with panache. One can almost see the wheels in his head churning as he stages his own personal cat and mouse game with whoever crosses his path.

So devoted is he to the game of bullying that it occupies more time and attention than his teaching, an activity that seems more of an annoyance than a profession. While he regularly finds excuses to avoid students and his obligatory tutorials, he is always ready to sharpen his teeth on the frailties of his charges or his fellow professors.

What's not so evident is that overpowering charisma. Butley's seductive calling card is not pronounced enough to make a solid case for the doomed souls around him to have been duped into entering the lion's den in the first place. We know the fatal lure had to have been there. Otherwise his attentions would not have been coveted by those who now seem so desperate to escape.

The snag is that without that passionate undercurrent to balance the picture, Butley comes off as funny, but too mean, too selfish and too much the unlikeable tormenter.

The fact that Nathan Lane is on stage is reason enough to attend. One of those exceptional artists who can take an innocuous line and give it tremendous color, he's perfect here letting the zingers fly -- and making them his own. The role also allows him to show off his adroit talent with accents, giving the professor a well-bred British veneer that adds both an effective contrast to the vile insults as well as an uppity conceit to such lines as "You now how it exhausts me to teach books I haven't read." His conjured-up Scottish accent is also wonderful.

Beyond the humor, Lane switches gears with unnerving skill on two occasions to take a tender memory and sacrifice the heart of it in order to cripple his opponent.

Playing opposite Lane is Benedick Bates (left with Lane) as Joey Keyston, Butley's lover and colleague. A former protégé, he now shares both Butley's office and home. (Bates is the son of Alan Bates, who originated the role of Butley on Broadway in the early seventies.). Although tall, sturdy and handsome, he's still the spineless toad who's got a few secrets of his own as the plot unfolds.

Angela Thornton is Edna Shaft, another professor in the English Department. As blasé as Butley is about his students, Edna is the opposite. Devoted to her work, the school and education, she is everything Butley is not. And as such, she, too, becomes the subject of his sarcasm.

Pamela Gray is Butley's remote wife Anne,who's divorcing her husband to marry, according to Butley, "the most boring man in London." Yet another slap in the face.

As a tenacious English student whose persistence almost matches Butley's pains to dodge her, Marguerite Stimpson (left with Lane) does a nice job as the pinchy Miss Heasman. Her spirited pairing with Lane at the top of Act Two gets the second half of the evening off to a lively start.

And as Reg Nuttall, Joey's new love, Jake Weber brings a much needed calm to the proceedings. While we hear about him from the very start of the evening, we don't get to meet him until well into the second act. And when he finally enters, he proves a solid match for Butley. Weber's steady demeanor and imposing body language is particularly effective as he cooly deals with Butley's childish antagonism.

One of the reasons "Butley" is not done more often is that the lead role requires a very special talent. Nathan Lane is more than up to the challenge. And as the run proceeds, it will be interesting to see how the production develops.

As Butley himself says, "Our beginnings never know our endings."

"Butley" is at The Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Avenue in Boston through November 30. For information, call 617-266-0800 or log onto www.huntingtontheatre.org.

Production photos by T. Charles Erickson

-- OnStage Boston

11/01/03

 

 
 
 
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