STAGE REVIEW : ‘Nightingale’ Trips Over Its Content

Beware of the trappings. They may garnish but don’t constitute Greek or any other tragedy. When a play makes more of an impression for its ambience than its content, something is rotten with the state of playwriting.

Timberlake Wertenbaker’s “The Love of a Nightingale,” which opened over the weekend in an L.A. Theatre Works at Edgemar production (in association with Peg Yorkin), is dedicated to manipulating Greek myth to teach us a lesson--the very same that was harshly taught to Procne and Philomele, two of Athenian King Pandion’s three daughters.

In the myth, Procne is given in marriage to Tereus, King of Thrace, as a reward for his help to Pandion in battling King Labdacus of Thebes. After the marriage, however, Tereus falls in love with sister-in-law Philomele, rapes her and cuts out her tongue so she won’t accuse him. But Philomele finds a way to do that anyway and the sisters get vengeance. Of a sort.

The unmerciful gods change these players into birds and fishes: Procne into a swallow, Philomele a nightingale (hence the play’s title), Tereus a prehistoric hoopoe and little Itys, Procne’s and Tereus’ young son, into a goldfish. Wertenbaker doesn’t alter this story but uses the power of its sexual politics to range freely through compelling issues of rape, conspiracy, censorship (symbolized here by inflicted physical silence), chauvinism, war, slavery and revenge.

Heady stuff.

To do this the playwright digresses only cosmetically from the original. Her Tereus (Robert Foxworth) is a handsome Thracian boor, a numbing jock. Her Philomele (Brenda Varda) is a delicate reed--impressionable, eager, spirited, bendable but not breakable, despite the violence that befalls her. She endlessly plays out her anguish with anatomically correct dolls. When the lonely and repudiated Procne (Carolyn Seymour) finds her, vengeance erupts--bloody and unstoppable, as much victory as defeat.

It is a potent story that would better have served the playwright if she had resisted her own didacticism. Wertenbaker is very Royal Court, not just because she is largely a product of that London theater, but because she is so typical of it: highly imaginative but self-indulgent, with a tendency to proselytize and a habit of going unchecked.

“We begin here because no life has ever been untouched by war,” is the play’s opening line. A good place to start. But the promise of that beginning and of the wittily modern exchanges that follow between King Pandion (Basil Langton) and his self-centered Queen (Carol Kiernan) is not fulfilled. “He wants to stay, I knew it,” says she of Tereus, with unconcealed annoyance; nobody wants a guest who doesn’t leave. “I’ll send you some of our tutors,” offers the King as an inducement. “Our philosophers, I’m afraid, are rather independent.” It’s a relief when all Tereus asks is to marry their daughter.

But this lightness of touch gets a lot heavier. The play soon begins to strike poses and broadcast its intentions (much like “Our Country’s Good” by the same author). The dark “forebodings” of Procne’s ladies-in-waiting become pronouncements. Shadowy half-statements become posturings. When Procne sends Tereus to fetch her sister in Athens, we see the whole thing coming. Philomele’s casual hand on Tereus thigh marshals his attention and from that moment all is lost. When we get to real rain on stage, watch out.

By play’s end, Wertenbaker has fallen into most of her own traps, including blatant preaching. She returns briefly at the close to the humor of the beginning, with Philomele stating flatly that she doesn’t like birds or being one, and a final image that ends on a child’s unanswered question. But it’s too late. A lot of pretentiousness has floated past by then.

The production, directed by Peter Mark Schifter, is as uneven as the play, sometimes even within individual performances affected by the ups and downs in the writing. Varda achieves the most modulated and unself-pitying consistency as Philomele. But Seymour, in the least defined of Wertenbaker’s characters, stumbles into sing-song now and then, providing a Procne who ranges from affecting to phony. Much the same applies to Foxworth’s laconic Tereus who, as written, lacks breadth as well as depth. This is a criticism of the author’s flawed creations, not of these actors’ undisputed talents.

A good word here for Roger Guenveur Smith as a sea captain who catches Philomele’s eye and for Lyvingston Holmes as Philomele’s servant Niobe. The balance of the company varies as greatly as the script and the real stars are the production values: the distinguished multi-venued set (forgetting rain) by Victoria Petrovich which ranges from deserted beaches to Victorian theaters, lighting by Michael Gilliam, no-period costumes by Catherine Meacham and original music by Thomas Pasatieri. They create more mood than Wertenbaker dreamed of. It is not their fault if they overshadow her play.

At the Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2425 Main St. in Santa Monica, Thursdays through Saturdays 8 p.m. Sundays 4:30 and 8 p.m., until Aug. 5. $18-$22; (213) 827-0808.