From: aku@leland.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Chia-Tso Ku)
Subject: Four Baboons Adoring the Sun
Summary: review 
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 92 10:15:41 GMT

Four Baboons Adoring the Sun

by John Guare
music by Stephen Edwards
directed by Peter Hall

sets by Tony Walton
costumes by Willa Kim
lighting by Richard Pilbrow
projections by Wendall Harrington

Eros			Eugene Perry
Penny McKenzie		Stockard Channing
Philip McKenzie		James Naughton
Wayne			Wil Horneff
Halcy			Angela Goethals
+ 7 other kids

I thought the recent Lincoln Center production of John Guare's Six
Degrees of Separation was one of the best plays that I'd ever seen (I
was already a fan of his work after seeing the House of Blue Leaves
revival on tape and Atlantic City).  It was almost inevitable then,
that 4B would be a letdown, for me at least.  This isn't to say that
Guare has been coasting: on the contrary, 4B is an ambitious work that
tackles such themes as the nature of love, freedom, and mythology.
Guare has written something darker (it ends rather despairingly) and
messier than the brilliantly crystalline 6D.  This new play left me a
little cold and at its conclusion, despite the extended applause for
the cast, there seemed to be quite a bit of head-scratching and
puzzlement in the audience (partly, I think, because it ends so
abruptly).  I admire the risk taken by Lincoln Center Theatre in
mounting such an extravagant production of a work far less commercial
than 6D.  [I was dismayed to see a closing notice in the Sunday Times;
despite its many flaws, I now feel really lucky to have seen 4B during
its brief 2 month run.]

[Incidently, I placed my order the first day tickets went on
sale and was rewarded with a super 2nd row seat dead center (which,
because of the Beaumont's steeply raked seating, put me at about eye
level with the adult actors when they were seated).  The people seated
near me were on the youngish side and I suspected that they too had
purchased their tickets far in advance, since they seemed to be
hardcore 6D/Guare fans.]

The play actually begins when you enter the Beaumont: a deep
rumbling/humming drones in the background, inspiring a gnawing feeling
of unease and impending doom.  Tony Walton's sumptuously burnished set
confers a sense of timeless majesty: it consists of circular stage
(about the size of 6D's red carpeted disk) filled with sand, with
sculptures of four baboons located just outside the disk to the rear.
At the center of the sand box is a small hole out of which smoke
(portentously) drifts.  At the rear of the stage, behind a scrim, is
what looks initally like a large gilded disk hung vertically (a sun?),
but which is later revealed to be a globe (or at least a hemisphere)
that becomes crucial in depicting later events in the play.  Well, the
show's closing in a week or two, so what the heck! [[POTENTIAL
SPOILER: To depict the climbing of a mountain, two actors climb the
rotating globe, sort of like a vertical version of the turntable used
in Les Miz; and to show a character plunging to his death, they have
him strapped down to the globe so when it turns, it looks likes he's
falling head first.]]

4B takes place in Sicily at the site of an archeological dig. It
begins with the appearance of Eros (Eugene Perry), a god of love,
emerging from the hole in the stage.  He functions as the play's
conscience , narrator, and guiding spirit, (invisible to the
characters) and addresses the audience in recitative to Stephen
Edwards' music (the Playbill lists Edwards as composer-in-residence to
the Peter Hall Company).  He introduces us to Penny and Philip
McKenzie, newlywed archeologists, awaiting the arrival of their
children.  Penny has five children from her previous marriage to a
politician while Philip has four from HIS recently failed marriage.
The couple has sent for their children in the hopes of doing some
serious bonding and creating one big happy family out of two broken
marriages.

Thankfully, the potential Brady Bunch overtones go unrealized and most
of the children function merely as a bustling, noisy chorus,
bombarding their parents with questions of marital fidelity and news
of their "other" parents' sex lives (the children, 13 years and
younger, are very much tyke versions of the snarling college kids in
6D).  The eldest two children (both 13 year olds), Halcy (Penny's) and
Wayne (Philip's) had eavesdropped on Penny and Philip's telephone
conversations when the two adults were carrying on a clandestine
affair.  Upon meeting in person, the two children fall under Eros's
spell and their relationship (perhaps in emulation of their parents)
quickly turns sexual, to Penny and Philip's horror.  Eventually,
tragedy strikes and Penny and Philip reevaluate their relationship and
what they want out of life.  The ending of the play feels attenuated,
and given that it runs only 80 minutes, this failure to explore the
tragedy and its aftereffects robs the work of a satisfying sense of
closure.

Still, there is much to respect and admire: Guare has daringly
forsaken the laff-a-minute sugar coating that made 6D so easy to
"swallow".  While 4B is chock full of keen observations about romantic
and familial relations, the truths Guare offers carry a more
astringent sting than in 6D, leaving a bitter aftertaste.  Despite the
highfalutin' special effects, (the rotating globe, an earthquake that
splits apart the stage), Peter Hall keeps the focus squarely on the
text and the personal drama.

As usual, Stockard Channing is terrific: she plumbs new depths in her
Ouisa/Penny, a woman in search of "meaning" in her life.  Channing
invests her character with a palpable yearning quality that makes her
sacrifice at the end of the play althogether reasonable and indeed,
inevitable.  James Naughton is fine as the somewhat unyielding husband,
a role he's just about perfected.  Both Wil Horneff and Angela
Goethals give clean, artless performances as the eldest children on
the brink of adult consciousness.

4B isn't the total success I hoped for, but it's nonetheless a valiant
effort by Guare and his collaborators (I almost feel guilty for not
liking it more). 

If anyone else has seen 4B, I'd be interested in discussing the play
further.  Like Guare's other work, 4B is rich in ideas and meaning and
I don't feel as if I fully "digested" the work after seeing it once
(I'm looking forward to reading the text, when it is published).

Andrew
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