PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Journey's End — Another Beginning
By Harry Haun
23 Feb 2007
"Why do I feel you won't approve of the cuisine here tonight?" was the question greeting Jefferson Mays Feb. 22 when he entered Bond 45, fresh (relatively) from Journey's End and the World War I trenches of the Belasco. The Tony-winning star of I Am My Own Wife rose imperiously to the bait and declared, "Well, it's because I didn't cook it."
You can take the boy out of the dress, but you can't take him out of the kitchen, it seems.
In this critically cheered revival of R.C. Sherriff's largely autobiographical play of 1929, Mays putters about offstage, fastidiously whooping up exotic dishes for the tired and tarnished British brass, serving them with the elan of a five-star restaurant major-domo.
It's madness, of course, but it's well-meant. "He's trying his best with limited resources."
Fancying himself a master chef with meager means is Private Mason's method of coping
with his immediate reality: a dingy, dimly lit dugout that smells of cigarettes, whiskey,
candle-wax and morning bacon, situated close to the frontlines near St. Quentin, France.
"This is a play I've wanted to do since I was 12 years old," confessed Mays. "I saw John
McMartin and Edward Herrmann in it at Long Wharf Theatre, and it has been a
30-year-old dream of mine. I just love all the characters. It's like Chekhov, y'know — not a bad role among 'em. I wanted any role. I love this play so much. I simply told the
director, David Grindley, 'I'm at your disposal, sir. Put me where you will.' And he
did."
As fussy as Mays' Mason is about food preparation, that's how
unfussy Boyd Gaines is as Lieutenant Osborne, preparing to meet his maker in all probability with a daylight raid behind German lines. Even here, he manages a stiff upper-lip and keeps the ache at bay.
"That's David Grindley — that's really all his input," says Gaines, passing the credit along. "He is so passionate about the piece, and he found a bunch of actors who were equally
passionate about it. We all dove in head first. He knows the play intimately, backwards
and forwards. His overriding direction was 'Trust the play. The play will support you.'"
It seems only yesterday Gaines was a peach-fuzzed teen making raids on Porky's, then
you blink, and here he is the most senior officer around, a stolid sounding board for the
young soldiers. "The director said, 'He's a pipe-and-slippers man,' and I went, 'Okay. I
know what that means.' I don't leave the stage for the entire first half. My character's the
one who really listens all the time, so I get to enjoy these fantastic young actors — they're
just so good — and some great veterans as well, like John Curless and John Ahlin."
Ahlin is the portly-plus 2nd Lieutenant Trotter who provides what merriment there is on
this frayed war front (there is a surprising degree of it, by the way). "Almost the first
words out of David Grindley's mouth is that Trotter brings on this energy," recalled the actor.
"Everyone knows a Trotter, and I actually have been a Trotter most of my life. Life in the
theatre can be drudgery sometimes. It was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, 'The most
important thing is deportment, how you carry yourself.' So years ago I made up my mind,
no matter what the situation, to be positive and to push forward and to get through it.
That's what Trotter does, and I think that's why people respond to him. He likewise — like
everybody else in the trenches — is displacing what's really going on: There's this German
army 50 yards away, intent on killing them all. How do you deal with that? You think of
something else. Trotter eats and he tells stories and he cajoles. David Grindley said, 'It's
so vital that you come on with all that energy' — so that's just how I approached it."
Despite the degree of believable British that is spoken here, only one authentic
Englishman was imported for the play — Hugh Dancy as the haunted, booze-fueled
commander of the group, Captain Stanhope. Like the two young 2nd Lieuies of the cast
(Stark Sands as Raleigh and Justin Blanchard as Hibbert), it's his Broadway debut.
"I didn't have time to be intimated by that," Dancy admitted. "It was a very demanding part so I just had to get on with it and do the best I could." Stanhope happens to be the first leading role to be played by Laurence Olivier, who was 21 at the time. "I try not to think about that too much," said Dancy. "It's not helpful. It's a little crushing, in fact."
Like Olivier, Dancy has done screen time in court of Queen Elizabeth. He was Helen
Mirren's Errol Flynn (Essex in the TV movie, "Elizabeth I"), and he has no doubts that
Elizabeth II (i.e., "The Queen") will win Dame Helen the Academy Award on Sunday.
His newest movie opens here March 9 — "Beyond the Gates," about the Rwanda genocide.
"It's not an easy film to watch," he allowed. "It's a bit like this play, in a way, because it does actually repay in engaging with it. It's so much more powerful than your average film. I'm like everybody else when it comes to going to the cinema. It's easy to say, 'I'll
watch this sequel or this light comedy,' but sometimes you get something very special."
The particular role that he plays in this tragic occurrence, he said, is "an amalgam of
characters. He's the conduit through which we, as a Western audience and as people who
might imagine ourselves in that situation, learn about the events of the genocide."
After these two projects, his next career move should be toward Death Takes a Holiday.
Sands, as the youngster who allows his schoolyard hero-worship of Stanhope to lead him
into harm's way, could have been cast from his glossy. He has the unseasoned look of
wet-behind-the-ears idealism that shatters quickly in a first fierce brush with combat.
As the company malingerer, Blanchard also has some quick growing-up to do on the
battlefield. "It's not easy to bring yourself to this every night, and I don't want it to be," he admitted. "I always say I want to leave the theatre wringing wet so I put myself
through the wringer of being this man. The men we represent are owed that, I think."
Richard Poe, who is seen as the god-playing colonel of the piece, fell in love with the
play on first reading. "When they first sent it to me," he said, "I started reading it, and I could not stop. I read it in a sitting, and that's a pretty good indication the thing works." Continued...
