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Stones In His Pockets |
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Author: Marie Jones
Reviewer: Michael Bracken for Theatre Reviews Limited |
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The acting teacher Herbert Berghof used to say that he'd rather watch two good actors act than a great and a poor one. He likened acting to a tennis game, where each player needed to be able to return the other's shot. The great actor's greatness would be wasted because the poor actor could never return serve.
  
One need not worry about unreturned serves when it comes to Sean Campion and Conleth Hill in "Stones in his Pockets." And I am not necessarily suggesting that these actors are anything less than great. But what is so truly amazing about the feat they perform at the Golden Theatre in Marie Jones's comedy is not the individual virtuosity of either of them. It is rather the precision and equilibrium of their performance, emphasis on the singular, performance. For Messrs. Campion and Hill are so in tune and in step with each other that the use of the plural would be misleading. Theirs is one seamless performance. Now, being joined at the hip is not necessarily a good thing, but I have concluded from watching them that being joined at the mind and the heart is something quite wonderful.
Campion and Hill perform nothing less than magic onstage. They play, respectively, Jake Quinn and Charlie Conlon, two Irish blokes earning good money as extras in a big budget Hollywood film shooting on location in County Kerry. Jake is from Kerry, and Charlie is from the north. But Campion and Hill don't stop there. They play everyone that Jake and Charlie encounter in the course of a few days' shooting, including the sympathetic but spoiled actress Caroline Giovanni and the film's director, as well as various locals and other members of the production crew. Their characterizations are funny and sometimes a little broad, while at the same time being uncompromisingly specific and true. And they never lose their intense connection with each other. Their antennae are always up, and their focus on each other, sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious, never wavers.
I believe it is their mutual focus that allows them to switch so smoothly from one character to the next. They are dancers- God are they dancers- who lead and follow each other in a beautiful flow, using each other as pivots as they do their hairpin turns from one persona to the next. (At one point they literally dance, an energetic and hilarious Irish jig.) Together they play a total of fifteen characters without any changes in costume or makeup and without missing a beat. Along the way, each of them plays one woman and does so marvelously. Campion plays Ashleen, a production assistant, with splendid accuracy as he nails her tightly wound, self-important essence. But I am sure it is Hill's rendition of the more complex Caroline Giovanni that won him the Olivier Award for Best Actor over his colleague. To see this pudgy, fortyish man in work clothes evoke the coquettish, powerful, self-involved, generous, sexy, sometimes insecure movie star with complete believability and humor is something not to be missed. While I continue to maintain he could not have done it without the complete trust and complicity of his stage-mate, it is nonetheless the most striking characterization of the evening. He says a worldful with the simple gesture of Caroline's playing with her hair.
If I have gone on and on about these two wonderful actors, it is because when it comes to "Stones in His Pockets," the play is not the thing. It's not a bad play - how could it be when it makes possible such an entertaining evening - but I'm afraid there's not much there. In the course of the play, Caroline Giovanni makes a play for Jake so that she can improve her accent, and he feels used. Jake's cousin dies of a drug overdose and everyone goes to the funeral. And the cameras roll on as Charlie observes and befriends Jake and the other locals. But nothing registers dramatically. Even the death of Jake's cousin seems little more than a detail. A lot of the play's humor comes from the contrast between the life of the movies, which the play lampoons, and life in rural Ireland. While the humor is there, I question how funny "Stones" would have been with a cast of fifteen instead of two.
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with that. If playwright Marie Jones had the vision to see that two actors could have so much fun playing fifteen characters, and she chose to capitalize on it, who am I to fault her? It seems a little gimmicky to me, but in a sense all of theatre is a gimmick. I just can't help wondering how much more wonderful the evening might have been if the actors had a play to serve. That is the usual order of things: actors exist to illuminate the plays they are in. Here the order is reversed. The play seems to exist only to showcase its actors. The result is a wonderful acting experience and a wonderful performance, but not a wonderful play.
But if Ms. Jones had not written the work at all, we wouldn't be blessed by the delightful entertainment that is now at the Golden Theatre. We have to thank her for that. We also have to give great credit to director Ian McElhinney. These actors may be marvelous dancers, but a dance this detailed and exact could not be executed without the hand of a skilled choreographer guiding its steps. His work is masterful and the result is nothing short of elegant. And a very good time. Would that it were more substantial.
© 2001, Michael Bracken
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By Marie Jones; directed by Ian McElhinney; design by Jack Kirwan; lighting design by James McFetridge; produced by Paul Elliot, Adam Kenwright, Pat Moylan, Ed and David Mirvish, and Azenberg/Pittleman; at the Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th Street
WITH: Conleth Hill (Charlie Conlon) and Sean Campion (Jake Quinn)
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