Review: 'THE ELEPHANT MAN' COMES IN FROM THE COLD AT NEW REP

Written by Bernard Pomerance; directed by Jim Petosa; scenic designer, Jon Savage; costume designer, Molly Trainer; lighting designer, Daniel MacLean Wagner; sound designer, David Reiffel; production stage manager, Kevin Schlagle

Cast in alphabetical order:

Esme Allen, Pinhead, Miss Sandwich, Princess Alexandra; Joel Colodner, Ross, Bishop Walsham How, Snork; Russell Garrett, Carr Gomm, Conductor; Michael Kaye, Frederick Treves, Belgian Policeman; Valerie Leonard, Mrs. Kendal, Pinhead; Ross MacDonald, Pinhead Manager, London Policeman, Will, Lord John; Tim Spears, John Merrick; Louis Toth, Oboist

Performances and Tickets:

Now through September 29, New Repertory Theatre, Arsenal Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal Street, Watertown, Mass.; tickets available online at www.newrep.org or by calling the Box Office at 617-923-8487

It's a cold, dark world that New Repertory Theatre artistic director Jim Petosa and company have created for The Elephant Man, Bernard Pomerance's Tony Award-winning play based on the true-life story of London's most famous sideshow freak, the horribly deformed John (Joseph) Merrick. From the seedy streets and workhouses of Dickensian London to the antiseptic halls of the London Hospital wherein Merrick found refuge for a few short years, the austerity is unrelenting.

The set is severe and painted pitch black. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed in lead and stained in soot slide in and out like the doors of a prison cell. The most prominent - and ever present - piece of furniture is a rough-hewn black box that looks eerily like a coffin.

While this imposing tone is effective in establishing the abusive conditions in which the orphaned Merrick grew up, it remains a bit too oppressive once Merrick finds a home at The London. A real bed, a few pillows, a blanket, and some personal belongings would go a long way toward suggesting the modest comfort he now enjoys, even if it is in a hospital garret.

That comfort comes primarily through the grace of Dr. Frederick Treves (Michael Kaye), a young rising star in the medical field who discovers Merrick (Tim Spears) on display in a nearby sideshow. Fascinated by his deformities, Treves brings Merrick to the hospital to examine and photograph him, and to use him as the subject of a lecture for medical students. Later, when Merrick is beaten, robbed and abandoned in Brussels by his touring manager Ross (Joel Colodner), police discover him and, failing to understand what he is saying, return him to The London because they find Treves' business card in his coat pocket.

Initially Treves maintains a clinical distance from Merrick, considering him a patient and a subject for study. As he comes to know the beauty within the beast, however, he realizes that Merrick is sensitive, intelligent, artistic, and inquisitive. Soon he seeks companionship for Merrick and enlists the renowned actress Mrs. Kendal (Valerie Leonard) to bring him news of the outside world and engage him in social conversation. She becomes captivated by him and immediately proceeds to round up an entourage of ladies and gentlemen from London's high society, including Alexandra, Princess of Wales, to become his visitors and benefactors. They effusively bestow upon Merrick many gifts and much kindness. Yet, their somewhat self-serving magnanimity is not unlike the cruel curiosity of his former sideshow gawkers. Their charity, although merciful, ultimately makes them feel better about themselves.

As Merrick, Tim Spears (so brilliant is last season's Amadeus) has the daunting task of expressing "The Elephant Man's" kind heart and quick wit through a cloak of constant pain caused by the debilitating effects of his severe physical deformities. Spears does so magnificently, contorting his face, neck, back, right arm, right hand, legs, and hips to suggest the crushing weight of his overgrown flesh and bones. He also speaks laboriously, fitting barely intelligible words and phrases between rasping gasps for breath. Despite his staccato monotone and garbled pronunciation, Spears somehow manages to make every word land. He also tinges his speech with emotions that he is incapable of showing on his face, and when words aren't enough he swings his hips, flails his good left arm and slaps furniture for emphasis with his hand. Miraculously he is able to convey innocence, tenderness, frustration and humor without ever romanticizing Merrick or his condition. He (and director Petosa) never let us forget that Merrick is in constant pain. A degree of warmth in his performance may be lost as a result, but the visceral impact of Merrick's physical condition on the audience makes his gentleness of spirit that much more remarkable.

Pain of another sort haunts the young Dr. Frederick Treves, an emotionally repressed super achiever who is very much the product of his Victorian times. He is strictly mannered and prudish, and he worships science instead of God. Treves has risen meteorically to early success in the field of medical research, so much so that his failure to find a cure for Merrick has shaken his beliefs to their very core. Worse yet, he has come to feel for Merrick, a condition that makes it impossible for him ever to see patients merely as subjects again.

As Treves, Michael Kaye is quite simply stunning. His ramrod stiff posture guards determinedly against the growing sympathy and love he is developing for Merrick, yet as his charge moves closer and closer to death, his mounting grief and anger erupt in a cauldron of seething disillusionment. While Spears' performance is gut-wrenching on a physical level, Kaye's is gut-wrenching on an emotional one.

Also giving a finely etched performance is Valerie Leonard as Mrs. Kendal. She is the actress whose conversations about theater and Shakespeare spark Merrick's literary interests and free him to give voice to dreams he hardly dared think prior to meeting her. Upon Mrs. Kendal's first meeting with the grotesquely disfigured Merrick, Leonard uses every ounce of her actress's stage skills to mask her revulsion at his appearance. With a stiff smile and an unflinching gaze, she extends every social courtesy and grace in greeting him. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, as Merrick's artistic nature connects with hers, she no longer sees his body but looks only at his soul. In a scene where Merrick demonstrates astonishing insights into the selfish romance of Romeo and Juliet, Leonard is stunned silent, her theatrical affect unselfconsciously dissolving. In that moment she is no longer an actress playing a role. She has become a friend with no script or pretentions coming between them.

An able supporting cast takes on multiple roles from commoners to the Victorian elite. They morph from Pinheads to administrators to clerics to policemen to street barkers to aristocracy to royals. While spot-on (as are the period costumes by Molly Trainer), only Ross MacDonald as the spying hospital orderly Will, and later the foppish and fraudulent embezzler Lord John, stands out. Oboist Louis Toth adds haunting musical interludes between scenes.

The Elephant Man raises penetrating questions about truth versus illusion, and the power of compassion to help illuminate the difference. If we love enough, can we see through the masks, manners, pretenses and tricks to find the beauty and the life within? In this New Rep production, it takes a bit of work to get past the austerity and atmospheric coldness, but once you do, the effort is well worth the result.

PHOTOS BY ANDREW BRILLIANT: Tim Spears as John Merrick; Tim Spears and Michael Kaye as Dr. Treves; Tim Spears and Michael Kaye; Tim Spears and Valerie Leonard as Mrs. Kendal

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