THE BIG KNIFE Theater: Lillian Theatre |
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About the author :
THE BIG KNIFE Theater: Lillian Theatre |
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About the author :
Clifford Odets (1906-1963) has emerged over the last few years as one of the most popular playwrights in L.A. (after Shakespeare, Neil Simon, Sam Shepard and Tennessee Williams). Much of his work deals with the examination of social issues from a leftist perspective (“Waiting For Lefty,” “Awake And Sing!,” “Golden Boy”). He escaped the Hollywood Blacklist though interrogated by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, continuing to write a film for Elvis Presley (“Wild In The Country”), serving as executive story editor for television’s first and only repertory company (“The Richard Boone Show”) and contributing to the script of the Broadway musical version of “Golden Boy” at the time of his death. Time and again, he wrote about show business in moral tales that showed people paying a price for the fame, material success, drugs and easy sex proffered by the capitalist system. These works include the film “The Sweet Smell Of Success” and the plays “The Country Girl” and the less-often-produced “The Big Knife.”
About the play :
In “The Big Knife,” Charlie Castle is an actor who has emerged from the theater to become a movie star. Acclaimed as an artist early in his career, he’s been reduced to doing schlock that makes a lot of money for the studio. His career and his marital indiscretions have taken a toll on his family life. His long-suffering wife Marion will forgive him everything if he only declines to sign a 14-year contract that will make him significantly wealthy. He’s inclined to refuse for the sake of his wife and child, but the studio boss plans to force him to sign by blackmailing him with a terrible secret. Complicating things further for both Charlie and Marion are prospective lovers elsewhere. Charlie is called upon to be the man of honor that he once was….to be honorable to his wife and son, to his friends and associates, and to his craft. Can he succeed?
My Review :
Review is perhaps a big word, but as I had the opportunity to see the play last week, just before its closing, I would like to make some comments. Family matters had brought my daughter and me to California during those days before Christmas, and as we were curious to see Robert performing on stage, we talked about trying to get tickets for "The Big Knife".
No sooner said than done. I ordered tickets just before leaving France, and it wasn't any problem to get two for Friday, December 12th. When we arrived at the Lillian Theatre in Los Angeles, we realized that only about 50 to 60 spectators had come to see the play this evening. The Lillian Theatre couldn't actually be called a "real" theatre, as the ones we usually frequent in London. It seemed to be a former warehouse now transformed in a small theatre. Inconspicuous, almost unfriendly, with a small entrance door. The modest poster next to the door was the only hint that "The Big Knife" was performed right here. But the interior was an agreeable surprise. The intimate two-sided playing space has been fitted perfectly in the left back-corner and took almost about half of the rectangular room. The auditorium (99 places) was composed of only three or four rows, forming a right angle and descending slowly from the two remaining walls, so close to the stage that the spectators in the first row could almost reach the actors with their hands. The set design was just marvelous. Cozy and unobtrusively elegant, it was showing the playroom of Charlie Castle's Beverly Hills mansion and was decorated in the style of the late nineteen forties. The whole arrangement made the audience immediately feel to be part of the play.
The first act opened with classic music, and when the lights went on, Robert Beltran and two other actors appeared on stage. I will give here a very brief summary of the story, but I think that most of Robert's fans are now familiar with the play. It's the story of Charlie Castle, a Hollywood star who earned his celebrity status with trash movies. Reaching a point in his career where he is supposed to sign a new 14-year contract with the studio, he's pondering about the sense of his life full of parties, alcohol, easy sex and mindlessness. His wife Marion can't stand it anymore and threatens to leave him if he signs the new contract. She implores him to leave Hollywood behind, to be the Charlie again she once married, a sensible artist and idealistic human being. But it's too late for Charlie. He had killed a child in a car accident while he was drunk, and his friend Buddy had gone to prison for him. The studio boss knows the truth and blackmails Charlie to sign the contract. When another crime - a murder - is planned to silence the starlet who was in Charlie's car the night of the deadly accident, Charlie looses any hope to get out of this situation. He commits suicide by opening his veins in the bathtub. The studio people try to hush up the suicide, calling it death by heart attack. But Charlie's friend from better days in his life, a playwright, tells the world the truth about Charlie Castle's tragic ending. He has become a victim of the Hollywood machinery, only interested in earning money and exploiting the artists.
It's a play in three acts and all take place in Charlie's playroom. Like the set design, the costumes, hairstyles and the make up are in the style of Odets' timeline. The acting is intense and homogeneous. All actors, not only Robert Beltran, play very well. Not really astonishing; their biographies in the program reveal that most of them are classical trained stage actors, some had already been in Robert's production of Hamlet. This staging of "The Big Knife" may not have the world class quality of British stage productions with Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Ian McKellen, Ralph Fiennes etc. - which always draw me back to London's theatre scene. But, as I said, the actors were all very convincing in their roles, and this tiny theatre in Hollywood produced more quality than a lot of the movies made there nowadays.
Robert played Charlie Castle with such a burning anger, that it reminds me of Jimmy Porter in "Look Back in Anger". Sometimes, in my opinion, Charlie's weakness of character and his despair which leads to his suicide weren't emphasized enough. I have always perceived Charlie as a more weak than angry man, lulled by his comfortable life and the money he earns in Hollywood. A man who just can't make up his mind and doesn't have the willpower to get out. But I think it was Robert's deliberate choice to attach the importance in his acting to Charlie's anger, and he is more than convincing in doing it. Is Charlie's anger probably a bit of Robert's anger against the star system as well? A system that restrains him as an actor from expressing his art as he wishes to do? Isn't Charlie's rebellion against this 14-year contract in a certain way similar to Robert's discontent (at least at the end) with his own 7-year contract that tied him to Paramount and the Star Trek Voyager series? Robert has chosen this play because he wanted to show the flaws in our society, resp. the American society. It has a political message, of course, but for me it also has a very personal message concerning Robert. I'm under the impression that he acts his whole frustration against Hollywood off his chest, as a kind of therapy to liberate himself.
I really liked this play, and I think it has served its purpose of thought-provoking far beyond the 3 hours of great theatre. "We hope the metaphor continues to live in your imagination long after you leave the theatre" as Tony Melendez says so eloquently in his Director's Note.
© Bettina
Marseillan,
December 2003
(please don't publish on other sites without permission)
Published
Reviews
:
(excerpts concerning
Robert's performance)
......Beltran is
well cast although, on opening night, it took a while for him to get his sea
legs. This was probably due in part to the Lillian’s intimate two-sided playing space, made even more open by Scott Siedman’s heavily art deco set,
which initially evokes the mood of a dinner theater production of Private Lives.
In the early quiet moments dealing with Marion and Charlie’s cartoon-like team
of predatory handlers, Beltran is not yet comfortable with the character’s
sensitive side, but the minute he erupts into his first rage, he is instantly
comfortable and continues to steadily pick up momentum as the play progresses.
When not wrinkling his brow and “acting” rather than just talking, Beltran
is impressive as Charlie......
reviewed
by
Travis
Michael Holder,
Entertainment Today
......Exuding a
winning, masculine charm, Beltran works hard to make Castle sympathetic,
although the character deserves to be held accountable for his self-destructive
actions. Odets also makes Beltran's task more arduous by overburdening the role
with such simpering, painfully self-conscious musings as "yearning for a
world with people to bring out the best in me." To his credit, Beltran
doesn't back away from Odets' dialogue, giving an impressive veracity to
Castle's interplay with the other characters and making plausible the film
star's eventual cathartic decision about himself......
reviewed
by
Julio Martinez, Nov. 9, Daily Variety
......Beltran's Castle is tortured and unredeemable. He is
the epitome of a Hollywood sell-out and a man lacking the courage and integrity
to face responsibilities of his actions. Marion, his wife, and friend, Hank,
represent Charlie's moral core. The further he is from it, the more he self
destructs, turning to alcohol to mask his pain and disillusionment. Beltran's
performance is flawless as he commands the stage for nearly three hours......
reviewed
by
Tamara,
Nov. 11, Treknation.com
......This
staging of Odets' masterwork is held beautifully in its proper period, and the
performances, under Tonyo Melendez's skillful and dedicated direction, are
exactly on target for its time, the mood of the inhabitants of this world, and
their colorful texture. First is the rich, detailed performance of Robert
Beltran as Charlie, a vivid portrait of a man not bright but trying very hard to
make his life, and his marriage, work. Beltran's subtext is telling and
colorful. Beltran is surrounded by cast members so rich in shading and period
detail that one frequently forgets they're acting......
reviewed
by T.H. McCulloh, Nov. 19, Backstage.com
......And, for the most part,
director Tonyo Melendez’s revival of Odets’ still timely allegory is a
sterling endeavor. But lead Robert Beltran’s melodramatically exaggerated turn
as Charlie Castle, a once-idealistic-actor-turned-sell-out-movie-star who now
can’t abide “acute attacks of integrity,” offers more artifice than
authenticity......
reviewed by Martín
Hernández, Nov. 20,
LA Weekly
......Ever
mindful of the period, beautifully evoked by Scott Siedman's tacky-lush set,
Melendez calibrates the distance between emotional truth and histrionics, seldom
tumbling into the gap between. Reminiscent of John Garfield in his prime,
Beltran is righteously passionate as a conscientious artist forced into an
unholy compromise — Odets' prescient nod to escalating McCarthyism......
Robert Beltran about Odets and the signification of "The Big Knife" :
"The Big Knife... the things it says are the truth; it’s how I see things. Odets foresaw perceptively and intelligently the trend that was happening in the United States after World War II. He saw it firmly taking root and he was perceptive enough a thinker and writer to write something that would resonate for the next 50, now almost 60 years. That’s why it’s still valid, even more so today than back in its time.”
“There’s nothing easy about this play. It has a lot to say about our society, which is very similar to the society Clifford Odets was talking about. It’s a play Americans especially should see, and one that should be done more often. As much as I love the play on artistic terms, on sociological terms I felt it’s my duty as an American to wake people up.”
“The play is not about Hollywood. It’s about America. It’s about a major force working against the individual.”
"The play is about what happens to artists who have ideals, who are trying to accomplish something in this country, organizing people, who are trying to open minds of a very narrow-minded society. What happens to them when they’re beaten down, when they are not allowed to grow, when the artist wants to push the boundaries, when the artist is trying to deepen and broaden himself as an artist. There seems to be great resistance from audiences and critics. That’s particulary what this play is about."
"For
an actor – and I can relate to this – being confronted with this reality of
what Hollywood actually does to an idealistic actor, it does beat you up. And
it’s hard work to say “no” to the money. To say: No, I don’t want the
money, I want to work on a piece of art.” .
"The
whole series of events leads to Charlie committing
suicide at the end of the play. And as his best friend, a writer,
explains it to the people who don’t understand why he did that, he says:
That’s the only way he could live, that’s the only way he could redeem
himself. It was the last act of faith.
"The
play is about The Powers That Be manipulating the little man. Charlie has that
speech just before he goes upstairs and commits suicide. He says: It’s too late
for my point of view. I can’t go on covering one crime with another. That’s
Macbeth. Macbeth is an allegory. One by one he kills his better selves. And then
he says: Why am I surprised by them (studio bosses)? Isn’t any human being a
mechanism to them? Don’t they slowly inch by inch murder everyone they use?
Don’t they murder the highest dreams and hopes of a whole great people with
the movies they make? This whole movie thing is a murder of the people. Only we
hit them on the heads, under the hair. Nobody sees the marks."
"Clifford Odets was a tortured soul. He was constantly tortured by knowing his ideal of what he always hoped to be as an artist and what Hollywood finally made him, which was a compromised human being… for the money and the ease of living that comes with that."
"I think our culture has become a pop culture and there’s nothing lasting
about it. It’s not art. There’s very little in our culture that is not pop,
that’s not momentary; nothing that will feed souls for the next 200 years like
Beethoven did. We’re in a bad state, and television and movies have
contributed to that.”
“Classical theater teaches the story of human nature. It’s
about the way we perceive ourselves as human beings. People learn to understand
what it’s like to be a human being, what happens when we act like animals.
That’s what a great classical dramatic piece offers people. Human beings are
capable of so much, yet we hardly ever reach the potential we have.”
Director's Note :
The Big Knife is a cautionary tale written as a deeply felt reaction to the political and social trends of America immediately after Word War II. Clifford Odets senses a cataclysmic paradigm shift that profoundly disturbs him. Today, more than half a century later, his vision of America seems prophetic. At the very moment America is at its mightiest. Odets points to its flaws. Not a popular view then or now. When we look in the mirror we hope to see the beauty not the blemish. His is a lonely voice.
A masterwork, The Big Knife prods, stirs, and provokes us. It tugs at our hearts and minds. It demands our attention. It slaps us awake. This is a play that says, among many other things: "We are the world's happiest, earth's best..." Odets dares us to ask ourselves: are we the world's best? And if so, are we living up to the billing? Do the gifted have a responsibility to use their gifts wisely? Are we squandering our talents?
A great dramatist, Odets frames all these questions within the context of an American film star's fall from possible greatness. He skillfully weaves a Hollywood web of deception and despair that has become all too familiar to modern audiences. An American playwright at the height of his power, Odets educates, enlightens and entertains. Could we ask more? We hope the metaphor continues to live in your imagination long after you leave the theatre.
- Tonyo Melendez
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