Word: stoppard
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...simply because of the funny accents. A tale of modern-day British life frequently must convey a sense of national loss and social stagnation that is foreign to audiences and--much more damaging--all too often unexpressed by the actors. In the current Winthrop House production of Tom Stoppard's Enter a Free Man, this failure mars an otherwise enjoyable evening of theater...
Written soon after the masterful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Enter a Free Man shows us a different Tom Stoppard, a playwright who has curbed (somewhat unwillingly) his absurdist humor and created a sensitive portrait of a man waging a rather pathetic battle with society. The result, an uneasy balance of typical Stoppardesque repartee ("Look at the Japanese! The Japanese inventors are small...") and more down-to-earth pathos, neverthless works as a unit. Enter a Free man may not rank with Stoppard's prize-winning comedies, but it remains a warm and amusing play...
...Stoppard's protagonist George Riley is a middleaged inventor whose inventions, like a tape recorder thay plays "Rule Britannia" when the clock strikes twelve, never seem to grab the public's fancy. As a result, he lives off ten shillings a week provided by his rambunctious 18-year old daughter Linda, who works in Fancy Goods at Woolworth's. He refuses to collect unemployment compensation; that is for the masses, not for an inventor. With a new ten-bob note every "Meatless Saturday," George heads for the pub, where the locals indulge his fantasies. He is a man lost...
...wonderfully dilapidated one, designed by Derek McLane), from disturbing reality to comic illusion, occur smoothly under Maddy DeLone's crisp direction. DeLone makes full use of the intimate confines of the Winthrop House JCR, organizing the human traffic with all the aplomb of a Back Bay traffic cop. A Stoppard play needs technical gadgetry: for true comic effect, Enter a Free Man should have a "Rule Britannia" clock, a few portraits of the Queen, BBC radio droning in the background, and "indoor rain." The Winthrop production manages well without them, but the loss of these elements cannot help but detract...
...PLAY SAGS during the home scenes at the beginning of the second act, however. Part of the blame must go to Stoppard, who is clearly more at home with the frothy pub banter than with the unfolding human drama. But there's not enough oppressiveness here, not enough love wrestling with the frustration. We have no sense of a 25-year relationship between husband and wife, or of what must have been deep affection between father and daughter. As a result, much of the poignancy of George Riley's plight goes by the wayside. It is an unfortunate letdown...