Judgement
In his preface to Judgement, British playwright Barry Col-lins cites Franz Kafka: “Only a party to a case can really judge, but, being a party, it cannot judge. Hence, there is no possibility of judgement in the world but only the glimmer of a possibility.” Audiences are used to judging the characters they see–or rather, they’re used to having the playwrights serve up a verdict. But Collins’s play and Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women defy such expectations. Their protagonists–gaunt, hollow-eyed, croaky-voiced, weakened by terrible circumstances of body and soul, yet indomitable and intimidating–come before us to explain themselves, not to seek our mercy.
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A pair of exacting showcases for the actors’ technical and emotional resources, Judgement and Three Tall Women are studies in the will to survive, the capacity for endurance, and the imperative for change. Neither Vukhov, the Russian army officer who is Judgement’s sole character, nor A, the 92-year-old widow who stands over her own comatose body in Three Tall Women, would put himself or herself forward as a role model. When C, A’s 26-year-old alter ego, looks at the bedridden old woman she will be and asks in dismay, “How did I change? What happened to me?” A is more bemused than offended. And Vukhov says right up front that he’s guilty of cannibalism, the most hideous of taboo acts; he denies feeling shame, yet acknowledges his actions’ obscenity. By the end of both plays we recognize that we are the ones being judged: both our ability to understand others and, more to the point, our capacity for becoming like the people who disgust us.
to envision the dungeon Vukhov describes–Neumann gives a performance of steely control; under Gary Zabinski’s direction, he is never less than superb and sometimes is unforgettably gripping, his ascetic thinness accentuated by a skull-like haircut and a hospital nightshirt and slippers. Neumann sticks with riveting focus to his all-important task: to make us understand him and his actions not by beating us over the head with how he feels but by articulating as precisely as possible what he did.
Nan Martin, a 45-year veteran of Broadway and regional theater, brings this feisty, difficult, unapologetic creature to vivid life–offering the kind of performance that, like Neumann’s in Judgement, reaffirms the power, the electricity, the liveness of theater. If the highly competent Kathleen Butler as B and Tracy Sallows as C don’t register with the same impact, that’s partly because their roles are written in less depth–but also because Lawrence Sacharow, Albee’s longtime colleague, has directed the three women with more attention to their individual dramatic beats than to their interactions. Perhaps after months of playing the roles together at Houston’s Alley Theatre, the trio have grown too comfortable; or perhaps they were holding back in anticipation of a second show a couple of hours later. In any case, Three Tall Women is one interesting script and Martin’s is one magnificent performance.
