Exploring the Artistic Psyche: NUREYEV's EYES at the Good Theater

In the 1970s when legendary dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, and famed scion of the Wyeth dynasty, Jamie Wyeth, came together to engage in a series of portrait sittings that would extend over the next two decades, they ignited a volatile, probing, and passionate friendship that was to last until Nureyev's death in 1993. The interaction of these two artistic geniuses, their sparring, their seeking answers to the mystery of artistic creation is told with penetrating honesty and sharp wit by playwright David Rush in his 2014 work, NUREYEV'S EYES, which Portland's Good Theater brings the tale to life in a perfectly calibrated production, directed by James Noel Hoban.

Rush's 110-minute script is masterfully written, capturing the essence of these icons with all their inner angst and desperate seeking for artistic truth. His narrative is briskly plotted, laced with wit and pathos. He explores the quest which binds these two giants together: finding and embracing the deepest truth in one's work - a challenge that is often fraught with danger and disappointment. Wyeth's search to find the truth in Nureyev's eyes and to render that on canvas becomes a shared search to find his own parallel truth, one that he discovers mirrored in his own eyes and deep in his soul. The play is filled with sharp and brilliant repartee, bold egos colliding with brilliant fireworks, and also with a poignant vulnerability and tenderness.

Hoban's direction is seamless and fluid. Though the two characters engage in the confines of a small set (also designed by Hoban), they move about their world with a kinetic grace and energy. The pacing is brisk; the rapid alternation of mood stimulating; laughter and pain effectively layered.

Hoban's decor includes three upstage muslin panels, suggesting canvasses, on which projections can change the locale , and simple props (Annon Bill) to suggest Wyeth's studio or Nureyev's dressing room. Iain Odlin lights the performance with a naturalness that brings the memories to life. Michelle Handley creates the simple costumes to conjure up the artist's and dancer's lives. Technical Director Craig Robinson and Stage Manager Michael Lynch round out the excellent production team.

The two-person cast plays off each other with perfect chemistry. As Jamie Wyeth, Joe Bearor demonstrates a touching vulnerability, as he reveals his insecurities, accumulated over years of living as the son of a famous father and grandfather and as he learns over the course of the friendship with Nureyev to embrace the dark. He is, by turns, gentle and tough, boyish and profound, finding the inner humanity of the character. Michael Grew, as Nureyev, overcomes the fact that he does not at all resemble the exotic Russian dancer, nor is he a dancer himself. But he manages slowly, slyly to inhabit the role so perfectly that in a very short time all you see before you is the dashing superstar of ballet. Both physically and emotionally, he projects the dancer's ego that masks his own fears (which sometimes border on paranoia), his regrets, his wily manipulativeness, his love of a good battle with a worthy opponent.

The dance these two become entangled in a high-stakes psychological pas de deux in search of the answer to an unanswerable mystery: what drives the artistic soul to create?

In the Good Theater's new production, NUREYEV'S EYES is a mini masterpiece of perfect theatre: complex, thought-provoking, emotionally satisfying - a little piece of contemporary history that is, in fact, a metaphor for the universal artistic journey.

Photos courtesy of the Good Theater

NUREYEV's EYES runs at the Good Theater from February 22 - March 12, 2023, at the St. Lawrence Center for the Arts, 76 Congress St., Portland, ME 207-835-0895 www.goodtheater.com

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