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Madame Melville |
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Author: Richard Nelson
Reviewer: Michael Bracken for Theatre Reviews Limited |
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If the idea of watching a thirtyish high school literature teacher seduce her fifteen year old male student offends you, I suggest you stay away from “Madame Melville.” But if you have the constitution to watch an entertaining and surprisingly perceptive character study, whether its central event offends you or not, you might be in for an understated treat at the Promenade Theatre.
  
“Madame Melville” is an intimate play in more ways than its sexual subject matter. With its small cast, low key lighting, and single set consisting of Claudie Melville’s modest, book-lined apartment, it allows us access to the churning emotions of an insecure fifteen year old schoolboy named Carl, as well as those of his less straightforward literature teacher. It is a memory play, so we see everything through Carl’s eyes today at age fifty, looking back at himself in 1966. Macaulay Culkin plays Carl, who is American but attends school in Paris, where his businessman father is stationed. Joely Richardson is his teacher, Madame Melville, who has organized evenings for a few students to come to her apartment to discuss literature and films. On this particular night, Carl has retreated to the bathroom when the others leave so that he can stay behind and share a poem with his teacher. Her seduction of him is predictable from the moment the lights go up, but the subtleties of both of their characters as the play unfolds is what gives the evening poignancy.
Carl is all awkwardness and shyness. He is probably no less secure than most of his peers, but he has no apparent defense mechanisms, like bravado or aggressiveness, to hide behind. Macaulay Culkin is touching in this role. He gives Carl an embarrassed stiffness at the same time that he contorts his body in anguished exhilaration at the attention he gets from Madame Melville. He gains self-confidence as the play progresses but never loses his adolescent self-consciousness. His performance is nothing less than mesmerizing. My only complaint is that when he plays his fifty year old self he doesn’t seem very different from the fifteen year old.
As Claudie Melville, Joely Richardson is a little harder to put your finger on. Her performance seems almost distracted at first. She’s romantic and intelligent, effusing about art and music and literature, and almost always tying them to sex somehow. Her French accent varies in intensity and one occasionally doubts its authenticity. At times she seems downright flaky; at others razor sharp. But as the play progresses her early vagueness seems more and more calculated and her character more and more calculating. She is a user. We learn that she had a fight with her married lover, who happens to be Carl’s mathematics teacher. One gathers that the night she seduces Carl she is lonely and hurt, and figures any port in a storm, regardless of the consequences and with no apparent concern about him.
It is, I think, the spuriousness of Madame Melville that makes this play fresh and not just another older woman helps younger boy through sex melodrama. It’s an interesting dynamic, because the play is really Carl’s: he’s the character that evolves and grows, both in confidence from his sexual encounter and in depth from his experience of the pain Madame Melville ultimately inflicts. Claudie Melville doesn’t change. She is the same when the play starts as when it ends, but our perception of her evolves slowly and steadily. It’s not too long into the play that we see her self-centered sexuality, but we think there is also some real, if misguided, affection for Carl and perhaps a desire to help him. Our opinion of her slowly slips downward right through to the last scene as we see how selfish and cold she really is. She thinks she’s a romantic, and perhaps we believe her for a while, but in the end she’s really nothing more than a shallow egoist.
The counterpoint of these two characters, one of whom slowly and steadily develops while the other is slowly revealed for her true self makes for an interesting and intelligent play. Claudie also has a next-door neighbor, a young American named Ruth, who gives the play a nice jolt of humor as she comes over to talk about her own romantic exploits. Robin Weigert is like a breath of fresh air as the down to earth Ruth, who left her ex-husband in New Jersey so she could study music and life in Paris. This is not to say that the two leads are stuffy; they just don’t have her earthy exuberance.
Richard Nelson wrote and directed “Madame Melville” and on both counts gets an A for execution. This intermissionless production has a delightfully disarming quality. Ms. Richardson’s and Mr. McCaulkin’s performances seem a little rough around the edges at times, but this ultimately works in their favor. “Madame Melville” in its nuanced intimacy proves that bigger is not always better.
© 2001, Michael Bracken
Reviewed on Tuesday March 20, 2001
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Written and directed by Richard Nelson; set by Thomas Lynch; costumes by Susan Hilferty; lighting by Jennifer Tipton; produced by Madame Melville Producing Partners in association with Sonny Everett, Ted Tulchin, and Darren Bagert and Aaron Levy; at the Promenade Theatre, Broadway and 76th Street.
WITH: Macaulay Culkin (Carl), Joely Richardson (Claudie Melville), and Robin Weigert (Ruth).
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