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A CurtainUp Review
The Rainmaker
By Elyse Sommer
The Rainmaker Returns to Broadway I wasn't lying. I was dreaming -- Starbuck There are all kinds of dreams, Mr. Starbuck. Mine are small — - Lizzie When I saw the Williamstown Theatre Festival revival of The Rainmaker two summers ago, nature imitated stagecraft by sending a shower of rain on the intermission crowds on the Adams Memorial lawn. (A review of the Williamstown production follows these comments). No such coincidence when I saw The Rainmaker this time around at the Brooks Atkinson. The really major difference between that brief resuscitation of N. Richard Nash's farm style Cinderella story and this Broadway production is the casting of the title character. The director's decision to give us a big dreamer inside an ordinary man instead of an irresistibly romantic scoundrel still holds. This time around, however, because Starbuck-nee-Smith is played by high voltage small and big screen personality Woody Harrelson there's an added spark of electricity. Like so many screen actors who have lately tested their skills on the stage Harrelson delivers the goods. He is a persuasive and satisfying Starbuck with a remarkable athleticism that makes his big second act scene with the still wonderful Jayne Atkinson an even more rewarding experience. His physicality (there's even a handstand!) adds new resonance to her quiet excitement. Good as Harrelson is (and the fans mobbing the stage entrance each night obviously think he is better than good), the true star turn of this production still belongs to Atkinson. Everything else I said about this production in 1998 applies to this one. (see the earlier review at the end of this one) The supporting cast maintains the high standards established in the Berkshires. James Noone's set has transferred well to this stage, as has Louis Rosen's lovely incidental music. The overlong first act hasn't been trimmed by so much as a minute. The fact that the last revival at the Atkinson, The Iceman Cometh was a Twentieth Century classic (also star powered by a film actor) further underscores my original comment that "classic" label can hardly be applied to The Rainmaker. With the dirth of tuneful musicals, I would have preferred my second take on its fairy tale plot to be via its musical version, 110 In the Shade. Who knows, such a revival may well be under consideration as I write this -- but then I'd have to gear myself up to this "old maid" tale yet another time. -- Elyse Sommer. Broadway Production Notes THE RAINMAKER By N. Richard Nash Directed by Scott Ellis With: Jayne Atkinson, David Aaron Baker, Jerry Hardin, Woody Harrelson, John Bedford Lloyd, Bernie McInerney, Randle Mell With: Eric Axen, Scott McTyer Cowart, David Harbour, Brian Ibsen, Rey Lucas, Donavan McGrath, Dustin Turcker, Jason Winther Sets: James Noone Costumes: Jess Goldstein Lights: Peter Kaczorowski Sound: Bria Ronan Composer: Louis Rosen Roundabout Production Brooks Atkinson, 256 W. 47th St., (Broadway/8th Av), 307-4100 11/21/99-2/06/2000; opening 11/11/99 Woody Harrelson's starpower notwithstanding, the show closed almost a month ahead of schedule Reviewed by Elyse Sommer based on 11/13 performance |
The Rainmaker reviewed at Williamstown . . .
The rain that pours down onto the Main Stage of the Williamstown Theatre provides the exactly right kind of grand splashy finale for the powerful second act of the beautifully staged revival of The Rainmaker. This miracle of modern stage craft also symbolizes the end of two droughts -- the real drought that threatens the livelihood of an unnamed farm community in the Dust Bowl during the Depression of the 1930s and the spiritual drought that envelops the people at the center of N. Richard Nash's forty-six-year-old comedy drama.
With its obvious metaphors and hokey humor this play hardly warrants the "classic" label that has attached itself to it through the years. And yet, it's the sort of funny/sad romantic story about characters who mirror our dreams of miracles that never quite die. This undoubtedly accounts for its having seeded countless revivals, two movies (the most famous being the 1956 version starring Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn) and a musical (110 In The Shade). For at least one person it led to a real life romance (see Jeannie Callahan's story linked at the end).
In the WTF's current revival Scott Ellis has given a sensitively rendered interpretation to the Curry family's struggle with nature and a world in which smart women are asked to make demeaning choices to avoid becoming dried up "old maids."" Like Bill Starbuck, the mysterious stranger who promise to conjure up rain if the Currys will suspend credulity long enough to part with a hundred dollars they can ill afford, Ellis has in fact proved himself something of a magician in his own right.
By the time you leave the theater, the director and his actors have almost convinced you that the overly long first act (ninety minutes!) was necessary to give you the sense of being part of that arid world of people as unable to communicate with each other as they are to wrest rain from the skies. And by the time some real heat is generated in a sizzler of a scene between the two pivotal characters, Lizzie Curry (Jayne Atkinson) and Bill Starbuck (Christopher Meloni), Ellis may even have you convinced that this almost prosaic Starbuck is the product of deliberate casting and directing choices rather than the lack of charisma of the one character whose role is synonymous with that term..
It is that scene specifically (and the second act generally) that lifts this production above its potboiler romance roots. It potently exposes the raw vulnerability not just in Lizzie but beneath the surface of the con-man whose personality has the force to change the troubled emotional climate in the Curry household. It is when he lays bare the real Starbuck -- an ordinary guy born with the ordinary name of Smith -- that Meloni comes closest to matching Jayne Atkinson's eloquence. In short, we are given, and finally accept, a Starbuck who is electrifying more in his honesty than as the sort of magical personality reminiscent of men who in recent years became gurus heading various and sundry human potential movements.
Since I dislike reviews that put a current actor, especially one who is not a big star, up against the ghost of previously praised performances, I'd be happy to report that Mr. Meloni fully persuaded me that this Bill Smith-Starbuck is the best of all possible Starbucks. As long as people hanker after ROMANCE in big capital letters, however, a play like The Rainmaker will be most persuasive when performed by an actor whose charismamatic personality is as evident as his achingly exposed lost soul. As it is, Mr. Ellis' magic trick takes too long to work as it does in the second act. As if to underscore this, there's Jayne Atkinson's wonderful portrayal of Lizzie which easily withstands comparisons by those so inclined, to the two most famous Lizzies: Geraldine Page of the 1954 Broadway production and Katherine Hepburn of the 1956 movie. Ms. Atkinson is absolutely wonderful as the plain and plainly smarter than anyone else around her "Old Maid" who yearns for a man-- not one who'll be keeled over by a kittenishly pretty flirt but who'll "stand up straight."
The Curry men are equally up to the comic and emotional nuances of their roles. Jerry Hardin is likeable and convincing as the shrewd and loving father. John Bedford Lloyd, whose interesting born-again kind of farmer in an Off-Broadway play called Good Will still sticks in my mind, is compelling as the super-sensible and super-honest Noah. And David Aaron Baker radiates charm as the not too smart but also not too dumb to know true love Jim.
Randle Mell plays the important family outsider, the deputy Sheriff whose inability to speak from his heart almost costs him a second chance at love. He is more persuasive in showing the comic side of his character than letting the deep hurt inside of him show through.
No review of this production would be complete without giving a big thumbs up to the talented and versatile James Noone. He has filled the generous Williamstown stage with a single set that encompasses the sheriff's office, the authentically furnished Curry home and the parched landscape beyond its banging wood framed screen door. Of the three sets I've seen him create in these parts this summer, (High Spirits and The Matchmaker), this most successfully captures the play's very essence. It is a true star feature, with and without rain, and greatly abetted by Peter Kaczorowski's gorgeous lighting and Louis Rosen's scene setting music. Jess Goldstein's costumes add to the visual pleasures and period accuracy.
Unlike the other parts of the country, where the drought depicted in this play are all too timely, the Berkshire area has had more than its share of rain. Thus, not surprisingly and most appropriately, on the opening day afternoon performance I attended, it rained throughout the intermission.
Jeannie Callahan's adventure with this play began with the 1982 cable TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones (The Rainmaker actually began life as a television drama in 1952 and like numerous other plays of that golden era of television moved to Broadway two years later). Jeannie started a web page which included movie reviews and a tribute to Jones in the form of her own 'Rainmaker' story. A man from Atlanta who remembered the movie wrote to her and something about their correspondence clicked. In his third letter he referred to himself completely in the third person, as Bill Starbuck talking to his Lizzie (actually, Jeanie). Eighty letter later they were married and a final Lizzie and Bill story is really about them and not about the fictional couple who got them together. Jeanie has graciously allowed us to post her story at CurtainUp. To read it Go here
| THE RAINMAKER By N. Richard Nash Directed by Scott Ellis Starring: Jayne Atkinson, David Aaron Baker, Jerry Hardin, John Bedford Lloyd, Christopher Meloni, Bernie McInerney, Randle Mell Sets: James Noone Costumes: Jess Goldstein Lights: Peter Kaczorowski Sound: Matthew Spiro Composer: Louis Rosen Williamstown Theatre Festival-- Adams Memorial Theatre . 1000 Main Street, Williamstown, MA (413/597-3400) web address 7/22/98-8/02/98-7/05/98 opening 7/723/98 Reviewed by Elyse Sommer |
Easy-on-the budget super gift for yourself and your musical loving friends. Tons of gorgeous pictures.
Leonard Maltin's 2007 Movie Guide
At This Theater
Leonard Maltin's 2005 Movie Guide
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