Theater Review
La Mirada Theatre
Friday, Oct. 22
By Claire Hellar
Oct. 26, 2010 2:32 a.m.
Correction: The original version of this published on Oct. 26 article contained an error. The screening of Phèdre occurred on Friday, Oct. 22.
“I have abdicated the throne of my own being,” an aging, beautiful queen mourns, her agony portrayed in high definition on the screen. A stage performance from across the world leaps into full-bodied life in the cinema.
La Mirada Theatre, touted by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the best Broadway-style houses in Southern California,” screened “Phèdre” on Friday.
An encore screening from the first season of the groundbreaking National Theatre Live, “Phèdre” aired as part of an initiative to bring live British theatre to cinemas worldwide. A Greek tragedy written by Jean Racine and translated into free verse by Ted Hughes, it initially aired in the U.S. in 2009, when England’s National Theatre decided to broadcast some of its plays to cinemas around the world.
Touted as the “best of British theatre,” the selected performances are filmed in high-definition and broadcast via satellite to over 22 countries (most live, a few time-delayed).
“Phèdre” returns for the Theatre’s second season (the only encore offering; all others are live) and aired to a crowded theater.
“Phèdre” is the dramatic tale of a woman in love with her stepson. When the king of Athens is rumored to have been killed on a journey, his wife Phèdre, unable to hold back her passion for his son Hippolytus any longer, confesses her love. When the king returns unexpectedly, the queen panics and accuses Hippolytus of raping her.
“Phèdre” is a wildly melodramatic play, with few moments of silence or contemplation. It is perhaps just as well then that its staging is simple: a large, almost cavernous room with a stone roof opens on the right side toward the sky and sea. Few chairs are arranged around it, with a fountain in the wall on one side.
Into this bare, majestic chamber, with its stripped set (no rearranging of props occurs), the main characters enter and exit, enacting their roles and then disappearing again.
Helen Mirren, probably best known to American audience for her Academy Award-winning performance in “The Queen,” plays a queen again, but a very different kind of royal figure.
Mirren has portrayed a woman in love with a younger man before in the course of her long stage career ““ Natalya Petrovna in Yvonne Arnaud Theatre’s 1994 production of “A Month in the Country.” As Phèdre, she is by turns petulant, suicidal, passionate and angry.
An aging woman passionately in love with her stepson could easily become a comic rather than a tragic figure. But Mirren plays her character with a straightforward obsession that prevents this for the most part ““ Phèdre never sees the comic ridiculousness of her position, even in her most humiliating moments.
Her dialogue does occasionally slip (hilariously) toward bathos ““ of her incestuous love, she cries, “Prudence and restraint are out of date!”
But Mirren also gives Phèdre a bitter grandeur. Her occasional moments of self-awareness are heart-breaking, as she breaks free from her manic thoughts and actions to cry with bewildered horror, “What am I doing? What am I saying?”
Comedy is far from absent, however ““ in fact, for a Greek tragedy, “Phèdre” is surprisingly funny. Phèdre’s nurse Oenone, possessed of a dry wit, often throws Phèdre’s obsessions into hilarious relief with her matter-of-fact advice.
The rest of the cast is as uniformly brilliant as Mirren, particularly Dominic Cooper as Hippolytus, who delivers such a charismatic performance that he almost steals the show from the more experienced Mirren. Pitch-perfect acting delivers in this stark, riveting tragedy.
