Review: Magis Theatre Company’s “The Alcestiad”

**Originally published in the Thornton Wilder Journal, Vol. 2 - No. 2, 2021; Pennsylvania State University Press**

the cover of Thornton Wilder Journal, Volume 2, Number 2. The title of the journal is written in yellow in a black strip at the top; volume and publisher information is in a red strip in white text below that; then a photo of T. Wilder below

Directed by George Drance

Magis Theatre Company

Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park New York, New York

18 June 2021 – 20 June 2021

Reviewed by Haas Regen

How and why did Thornton Wilder’s Our Town become more cherished in the hearts of theatergoers than his Alcestiad? The former is part of the standard repertory for actors young and old; the latter is nothing if not unjustly neglected. Our Town had its premiere in 1938; Wilder could have begun work on The Alcestiad as early as 1939, but he did not finish it until 1955. Both plays tackle the theme of human mortality in a sincere and affecting manner; both call for relatively large casts that can and should be diverse and nonconforming; both plays adhere to Aristotle’s unities of place and action while emphatically rejecting the unity of time. Most significantly, their central female protagonists, Emily and Alcestis, are spiritual kinfolk.

Perhaps the success of Our Town can be attributed to its use of straightforward, colloquial speech rather than heightened rhetoric. In order to realize the literary devices employed in The Alcestiad persuasively, actors should have training in the art of speaking Elizabethan verse and prose. They must have a vocal technique that allows for crystal-clear diction and deeply resonant chest and head registers. They must also be able to indicate rapid changes of thought with pitch, not speed. While there is no specific meter or rhythm to

Wilder’s words, he uses punctuation to establish rhythm and pitch. As with the plays of Albee and Williams, ellipses or dashes function as a form of musical notation, cueing actors to change direction vocally and often physically. A great actor embodies and personalizes this theatrical language, and that language contains its own music.

It is not surprising that Wilder turned The Alcestiad into a libretto for composer Louise Talma’s operatic adaptation. There were several important revivals of Gluck's opera Alceste in the mid-1950s to early 1960s, albeit with different versions of the score: Vittorio Gui conducted it at Glyndebourne in 1953, with Magda László; Maria Callas starred in another version, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, at La Scala, Milan, in 1954; and Eileen Farrell sang the role for her Metropolitan Opera debut, under Erich Leinsdorf, in 1960. Whether Wilder attended or was inspired by these performances is irrelevant. Apollo—the God of music, songs, dance, and poetry—dominates Wilder’s play and its characters.

Like O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, Wilder’s The Alcestiad is a retelling of a Greek myth, not an adaptation of a classical Greek play. O’Neill’s work, however, is a modernization of the Electra myth. It is set in New England immediately following the American Civil War; the characters’ names reflect that milieu. Wilder’s play is set in Thessaly in ancient Greece; the names Alcestis, Admetus, and Heracles (Hercules), among others, are the same as in Euripides’s tragedy. Characters in The Alcestiad regularly apostrophize in the tradition of classical Greek performance. Per Wilder’s stage directions, they also use gestures to signify the “sources of life—earth, air, fire, and water” (Collected Plays 374). Audience members recognize this behavior as an ancient ritual, yet we need not quibble over its genuine Greekness. There are no masks in Wilder’s world, nor are there other Greek conventions such as the chorus or devices like the ekkyklema. When we witness a performance of The Alcestiad, we are in the present time and place, watching actors perform in the language of the audience.

Recently, New York’s Magis Theatre Company made a compelling case for The Alcestiad to be performed in a style leaning toward the metatheatre of Our Town. Directed by George Drance, the open-air production was mainly bare and utilized only essential properties. The most effective costumes were simple scarves and shawls draped over plain pedestrian clothing. The snake Pytho—who, for Wilder, is “not seen, only assumed” (371)—was a giant hand puppet. In this regard, Magis Theatre’s Alcestiad was successful in its children’s theater approach. A good production of Our Town should be equally accessible.

The First Watchman’s monologues, delivered with humor and pathos by Jacqueline Lucid, underscored the basic rules of Wilder’s metatheatrical style. In the first and second acts, the Watchman spoke directly to the audience, rooting us firmly in the present tense: “Oh, my friends, take an old watchman’s advice” and “Look friends, do you see this cave under the vines?” (374). (There was, of course, no cave, but it is there because the Watchman says so.) At the top of the second act, the Watchman reexamines what happened twelve years ago (“You remember all that?” [390]) and explains the current situation (“You see?” [391]), all the while offering omniscient observations into the characters’ thoughts and feelings, as the Stage Manager in Our Town does.

Although Wilder’s script does not require actors to double roles, Drance’s casting was inventive: Tony Macht played King Admetus in act 1 and his son Epimenes in act 3; Mae Roney, who portrayed Alcestis in act 1, was again paired with Macht as Epimenes’s friend Cheriander in act 3, and so tenderly delivered the line, “You are the sign! You are message and sign, Queen Alcestis!” (427). Drance himself doubled as Apollo and Tiresias. He was much better as Apollo; his Tiresias had a strong Brooklyn dialect that came across as anachronistic. (It is worth noting that Tiresias’s lines could be heard and understood without effort.)

Figure 1 George Drance as Apollo. Photo Credit: Irina Island Images, Magis Theatre Company.

Drance further departed from Wilder’s original conception by casting four different actors to represent Admetus and Alcestis. This choice emphasized numerous details in the play’s first act. When we meet Admetus, he is still a young man; therefore, Aglaia’s fealty to him was not out of servility or submissiveness; she was, by choice, his loving protector. Her decision to confront Alcestis—in Wilder’s words, “firmly but affectionately...prattling in maternal fashion”—reinforced her status as caretaker and defender. Likewise, Alcestis’s reluctance to marry Admetus came across as unfledged insecurity rather than distrust or skepticism. Her passionate devotion to Apollo could easily be ascribed to youthful ardor. On the other hand, the four actors were deprived of the opportunity to chart their characters’ journeys comprehensively.

Nevertheless, as Alcestis in acts 2 and 3, Margi Sharp Douglas was the show’s star. Her characterization was bold, dignified, and intelligent. More so than any other actor in the company, she had fully mastered the subtle and elusive art of “cheating out,” and her stage presence had an air of dancerly grace. Another standout was Diego Andrés Tapia, who doubled as the First Herdsman and King Agis. His scenes with Sharp Douglas as Alcestis were the highlights of the evening. In particular, his second-act monologue in which he begs Alcestis to let him die in Admetus’s stead—“For I have always seen that there are two kinds of death: one which is an end; and one which is a going forward, which is big with what follows after it”—was expressed with heartbreaking intensity.

Unfortunately, the soundscape of Drance’s production was one of the most disappointing aspects of this Alcestiad. The issues were directorial rather than design-oriented. Sara Galassini’s music befitted the mood and atmosphere and was appropriately reminiscent of the folk music in Miklós’s Szerelmem, Elektra (Electra, My Love). This music was prerecorded and amplified through speakers placed on the house left side of the audience. Additional music was played live by cast members. As Alcestis in act 1, Mae Roney entered playing the violin, presumably because she could, and summarily handed the instrument off to the Watchman and never held it again, nor did the violin factor into Sharp Douglas’s portrayal of the character in the subsequent acts. At one point, another actor played violin under the plum trees that border the upstage playing space. That music, which accompanied the dialogue between Alcestis and Admetus that concludes the first act, would have been more impressive had the sound world of the production been more consistent. Moreover, there were critical sound effects that should have been more carefully considered. For the shrieking of the slaughtered animals, an actor from the company contrived a feeble bleat. The impact should have been unsettling, if not chilling; instead, the effect was absurd.

The staging was similarly haphazard. Because the actors could not agree on a center stage mark, the unencumbered alfresco arena at Four Freedoms State Park overwhelmed them. They were frequently circling one another and turning their backs to the audience. The core of the playing space should have been tighter horizontally, with a focus on placing action as far downstage as possible. Luckily, Gabriel Portuondo, as Hercules, was a notable exception. Following a satisfying entrance in act 2, he traversed the downstage area with aplomb. As Aglaia, Rachel Benbow Murdy, along with Lucid as the First Watchman and Russ Cusick as Admetus, ably supported Hercules’s comic turn as it rapidly became tragic. (Benbow Murdy also knew how to use pitch to her best advantage.) By contrast, the third-act confrontation between Epimenes and Agis’s guards was clumsy when it should have been climactic. Keep in mind that Magis Theatre Company’s production admirably rebounded at a time when other theatrical projects seem to be in perpetual limbo, and actors are rarely to blame for staging problems. The cast and crew’s indomitable spirit is commendable.

During the performance, the ruins of Renwick’s Smallpox Hospital loomed ominously in the background. The building, constructed in 1856, was still in use as a nursing school at the time of Wilder’s birth. The training school did not close its doors until 1957, after the premiere of The Alcestiad. Remarkably, Magis Theatre had intended to produce Wilder’s work in 2020, before the pandemic shutdown occurred. The play’s third act concerns a mysterious plague, a “curse on Thessaly” (413). The dialogue between Alcestis and Agis—“What is the last bitterness of death, King Agis? . . . It is the despair that one has not lived. It is the despair that one’s life has been without meaning” (428)—reverberated long after the actors had taken their bows.

Figure 2 Gabriel Portuondo as Hercules and Russ Cusick as Admetus. Photo Credit: Irina Island Images, Magis Theatre Company.

Wilder’s original subtitle for The Alcestiad was A Play of Questions (Foreward xvii). Sharp Douglas’s most poignant moment came when she asks four final questions of Apollo as she moves toward her “grove” (not her grave). The image of Alcestis ascending the park’s steps and gazing out over the southernmost tip of Roosevelt Island will not soon be forgotten.

The satyr play The Drunken Sisters was not presented on this occasion. Given that it was not written until after Tyrone Guthrie’s production of The Alcestiad at Edinburgh, one cannot accuse Magis’s production of being inauthentic in the least. We were fortunate enough to experience this rare, underappreciated gem. As I walked back to the F Train, Wilder’s words turned over in my mind. What a glorious thing to hear a play as well as see it.

HAAS REGEN studied Theatre at Vanderbilt University and received his MFA in Acting from Brown University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Works Cited

Wilder, Thornton. Collected Plays & Writings on Theater. Ed. J. D. McClatchy. New York: Library of America, 2007. Print.

———.The Collected Plays of Thornton Wilder: Volume 2. Ed. Donald Gallup and A. Tappan Wilder. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1997. Print.