{"id":190,"date":"2014-03-05T18:13:08","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T02:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/?p=190"},"modified":"2014-03-05T19:54:48","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T03:54:48","slug":"review-%e2%80%a2-barrymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"Review \u2022\u00a0Barrymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This review was cut by nearly half for the March 6, 2014 issue<\/a> of the <\/em>Inlander. Once again, for the sake of archival completeness, I’m publishing it here in full.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Reviewing Albert Lewin\u2019s cinematic adaptation of Oscar Wilde\u2019s The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em> in 1945, James Agee felt that Hurd Hatfield has been miscast in the title role. \u201c[T]he only proper actor I can think of,\u201d he wrote<\/a>, \u201cis John Barrymore in his early twenties.\u201d<\/p>\n

By then Barrymore had been dead nearly three years, and Agee \u2014 along with anyone else who had even a passing knowledge of stage and screen \u2014\u00a0knew it wasn\u2019t just the late actor\u2019s skill that would have made him ideal for the part. Barrymore\u2019s hedonism was legendary. By age 15, he\u2019d lost his virginity to his father\u2019s paramour. At 16, he was expelled from prep school for visiting a brothel. Two years later, he was cavorting with a showgirl in ways that needed no sensationalizing when it came time to write the headlines.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the next four decades, he was married and divorced four times, palled around with the likes of W.C. Fields and Errol Flynn, and brawled and womanized in the interstitial periods between acting and passing out.<\/p>\n

Without a supernatural portrait to assume the abuse to which he subjected himself in body and mind, Barrymore was forced to live out his indignities. An unabashed alcoholic (his second wife once caught him trying to drink her perfume), he had his lines spoonfed to him via cue cards when he reached the point where he could no longer commit them to memory. He collapsed during a radio broadcast and soon died, aged 60, from cirrhosis of the liver and complications of pneumonia. Dorian Gray, eat your wretched heart out.<\/p>\n

\"barrymore\"<\/a>

Patrick Treadway in William Luce’s\u00a0Barrymore<\/em>. Click here<\/a> for a preview video.<\/p><\/div>\n

And yet Barrymore \u2014 brother of Ethel and Lionel, paternal grandfather of Drew \u2014\u00a0was an actor\u2019s actor who metamorphosed with an effortless genius into characters like George Simon (in 1933\u2019s Counsellor at Law<\/em>) and, more famously, Richard III. While other actors struggled to make the leap from Broadway to Hollywood, or silent films to talkies, Barrymore glided between these worlds with a grace and assuredness that suggested he belonged there by birthright. Given his long acting pedigree, that might not have been wrong.<\/p>\n

When the curtain rises on William Luce\u2019s 1996 play, directed here by Mary Starkey, it isn\u2019t John Barrymore in his early twenties we encounter, but rather a late-days Barrymore who wheels in a drinks cart, reciting saucy limericks. He\u2019s supposed to be preparing for a last-ditch theatrical revival of Richard III<\/em>. But his inability to remember his lines or plug the stream of anecdotes (or indeed the jug) \u2014 despite the best efforts of his disembodied prompter, Frank (Todd Kehne) \u2014 is working against him.<\/p>\n

Patrick Treadway as Barrymore is a supporting actor playing a leading man. Intentionally or inherently, he presents us with someone less commanding than we might expect. Behind the dapper mustache a man without his character\u2019s natural swagger is occasionally perceptible, creating a thin gap between the actor and his performance. That makes the sad, shallow arc of Barrymore all the more bittersweet. What good is a character who ruefully describes himself as a \u201ccounterfeit of a man\u201d if there\u2019s no sincerity in the line?<\/p>\n

The real-life Barrymore said, \u201cA man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams,\u201d\u00a0a line Luce doesn\u2019t let go to waste. In the brief second act, Treadway\u2019s Barrymore is sometimes obscured by his Richard III costume; but on the whole his internalization of the material \u2014\u00a0the Lionel Barrymore and W.C. Fields impressions, and the particularly moving recollections of his doting Mum Mum \u2014 combat the play\u2019s sense of running (or stumbling) in place to depict this once-great actor\u2019s reluctant transition into the quiet despair of regret.<\/p>\n

Barrymore<\/em> \u2022\u00a0Through Mar. 15: Wed-Sat, 7:30 pm; Sun, 2 pm \u2022 $28 ($22 senior\/military, $12 student) \u2022 Interplayers \u2022 174 S. Howard St. \u2022 455-7529 \u2022 interplayerstheatre.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another extended theater review \u2014 this one of Interplayers’ Barrymore<\/em> \u2014 preciously saved from the savagery of a cursor moving in reverse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-theater","has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/files\/2014\/03\/barrymore.jpg?fit=1907%2C1070&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2GDPS-34","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":263,"url":"https:\/\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/?p=263","url_meta":{"origin":190,"position":0},"title":"Review \u2022 Rock of Ages","author":"E.J.","date":"September 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A review of Rock of Ages at The Modern Theater - Coeur d'Alene.","rel":"","context":"In "Review"","block_context":{"text":"Review","link":"https:\/\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/?cat=5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/files\/2015\/09\/Rock-of-Ages-Modern-Media-danscape-373-of-586.jpeg?fit=791%2C527&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/files\/2015\/09\/Rock-of-Ages-Modern-Media-danscape-373-of-586.jpeg?fit=791%2C527&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/files\/2015\/09\/Rock-of-Ages-Modern-Media-danscape-373-of-586.jpeg?fit=791%2C527&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/files\/2015\/09\/Rock-of-Ages-Modern-Media-danscape-373-of-586.jpeg?fit=791%2C527&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":68,"url":"https:\/\/www.iannelli.us\/diderot\/?p=68","url_meta":{"origin":190,"position":1},"title":"A Dandy Time","author":"E.J.","date":"September 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The JACC in Post Falls, ID has branched out to include live in-house theater. 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