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 t h e a t r e

Departures: the author of "Art" on the art of life.
6 November 2000
by Nancy Franklin

I have seen Yasmina Reza's play "The Unexpected Man," now at the Promenade, described as "small," and if that's what it is, it is small in the best way. Its pleasures feel private and special -- you only want to tell certain of your friends about it. It follows by tow years the Broadway production of Reza's "Art," whose actual qualities were hard to discern amid the frenzy of attention it attracted abroad and in New York. If you read the play now, what comes to the fore is not the debate about the definition of art or the value of art but the writer's fine-tuned ear for how relationships work -- in this case, the friendship between three men arguing over a painting one of them has bought -- and how each moment of fragility or of stability also contains its opposite.
"The Unexpected Man," too, is about the art of life, and Reza has set up a rather challenging situation within which to explore the subject, both for herself as a writer and for the actors. There are just two -- they play characters called "The Man" and "The Woman" -- and they are alone together in a compartment of a train that is going from Paris to Frankfurt. They are, however, not just any two -- they are Alan Bates and Eileen Atkins, and the play's charm no doubt has something to do with its casting, particularly in the case of the magnificent Atkins, who also played the role in the recent London production. (Bates's role was played there by Michael Gambon.) He is a writer, and she, it turns out, is a faithful, avid reader of his books, and she even has his latest novel, "The Unexpected Man," in her handbag. But although she recognizes him, they don't speak to each other for almost the entire hour-and-ten-minute duration of the play -- until, some fifty minutes into the piece, he asks her permission to open the window. Instead, they do what people traveling on trains used to do before the days of the laptop computer -- they reflect on things, only here they do their reflecting out loud, in long, alternating monologues. It's one thing to write dialogue that works; Reza has managed to write thoughts that work -- the characters' streams of words share and in-and-out-of-focus quality, and yet are as crucially unalike and individual as keys that look the same but open different doors.
The play (which, like "Art," was directed by Matthew Warchus) begins with Bates speaking for almost ten minutes about himself, and the bitterness he feels about, well, pretty much everything -- his friend's choice of a girlfriend, his sex life, his career and his legacy, his daughter's marrying a much older man. "If she says he's fifty-one, he's probably twice that," he says. Though it is never exactly stated as such, age -- his own -- seems to be at the root of his discontent: why else would he be thinking about whether or not he will be the subject of a biography after he's dead? "The biography of a writer, absolutely ridiculous... Who can say anything remotely coherent about anybody else's life? Who can say anything remotely coherent about life in general?" This thought, of course, leads him right back to himself: "Did I write what I wanted to write" No, never. I wrote what I was capable of writing, not what I wanted to. All you ever do is what you're capable of." He congratulates himself on not being one of those "great providers of opinions who turn up on the book programs," but within seconds finds other reasons to relegate himself to the ranks of the damned. The combination of superheated self-regard and self-loathing we see in him is not peculiar to writers, but it is an occupational hazard, and possibly an occupational necessity; and, luckily, the aspects of talent that are grotesque in real life can be entertaining on the stage, at least for the duration of a short train ride. Bates, grayer now and more thickset than he was when he wrestled naked with Oliver Reed in "Women in Love," thirty-one years ago, radiates both the complacency and the psychic unease appropriate to a literary lion who has become the thorn in his own paw.
The writer's thoughts don't turn to the woman sitting opposite him until we are well into the journey, and it's funny that his first thought about her is so off the mark -- funny because you're not sure if his stereotypical, belated musings are due to his being a self-absorbed writer or his being a male chauvinist, or both. "Strange this woman never reads anything .... Not even a spot of Marie Claire." Little does he know that she is his ideal reader, or that since the beginning of the trip she has been conducting a one-sided conversation with him. Her thoughts about the writer emerge from and wind around her thoughts about a good friend of hers who has recently died; he, and other friends who have disappeared or changed with age and time, are her real preoccupation here. Judging the writer to be "a man with whom I'd like to discuss certain things," she reflects on a chaste but romantic friendship she had with another man during her marriage, until he himself married, at which point, she says with a controlled sense of loss "We both went on pretending we were still intimates." When she reflects on his penchant for boasting to her about his young son, Atkins is hilarious: "A man I'd known as outrageous and insolent, reduced to shreds, liquefied by paternity. And who, with no memory of himself, or me, sat there boasting of his liquefaction." The passage ends with a feeling of sadness and hurt, but Atkins, as always, both shows and hides the range of her character's emotions with perfect, masterly balance; and part of what is touching about this woman is that she has reached an age -- and she knows it -- where humor and regret become indistinguishable from each other.
When the man and the woman do finally have a conversation, they begin in coyness -- a very adult coyness, rooted in acute self-awareness on both sides. Reza doesn't freight the moment with too much meaning; it is what it is, and what it means to you depends on how you look at the world, on how you would answer the questions the writer asks himself early in the play: "What is it that counts? The long run? Or the moment? What is it that's really of value?" Reza's artful play may persuade you that there is nothing of greater value in all the world than a brief encounter between strangers on a train. |||

© 2000 by The Conde Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.

EVER SINCE Yasmina Reza's "The Unexpected Man" opened at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1998, New York theatergoers have been teased and tantalized by promises to import the two-character encounter by the creator of "Art." In every plan, Eileen Atkins was scheduled to play The Woman, a performance for which this consummate -- not to mention irresistible -- actress won the Olivier Award. But the other role, named with alarming predictability The Man, went from Michael Gambon to a dispiriting succession of lesser enticements.
By the time "The Unexpected Man" finally opened last night, the cast had been elevated to its former stature with Atkins and Alan Bates -- his first New York appearance in 27 years.
Instead of a major Broadway house for a prestige-star play by the author of one of the few quasi-serious nonmusical hits in recent memory, however, the work has been quietly booked into Off-Broadway's Promenade Theatre. Why, we wondered, were producers hedging their bets with a smaller, less risky venue? Could something be not quite right with this long-awaited enticement? If not, what took so long?
We are beyond pleased to report that, moments into the 75 heart-stopping minutes of "The Unexpected Man," such questions seem irrelevant. What an exquisite brief encounter this is. In Matthew Warchus' flinty and steadily probing production, the piece is also more challenging, more subtle and more satisfying than "Art," that crafty little dazzler, which, despite the title and same director, seemed more like theatrical brain candy from a gourmet shop.
But we do understand now the decision to go Off-Broadway. Despite the luminous performances by Atkins and Bates, "Unexpected Man" occupies more rarified air than was required by "Art." This play, produced in her native Paris in 1995 and translated with Pinteresque nuance by Christopher Hampton, is intimate yet deeply stirring, dry but surprisingly juicy, unsentimental yet ultimately so full of suspense and emotional payoff that we feel giddy from the release.
At the surface, this is a strangers-in-a-train play. Instead of chatting to one another, however, Atkins' Woman and Bates' Man spend an almost agonizing amount of the trip from Paris to Frankfurt engrossed in their own internal monologues. Although the technique and the self-consciously neutral names threaten at first to be unbearably pretentious, Reza and her cast quickly let us know that these are people whose random thoughts have the richness and unpredictability of unexpected life.
Atkins, who has been required local viewing since her one-woman Virginia Woolf evening opened here in 1989, does not speak for what feels like a long time. We are first hearing from Bates' Man, a famous novelist whose ramblings about slights against him mark him as a windbag.
He talks about his own bruised being, while we see Atkins' crisp, deceptively no-nonsense profile in the reflection of Mark Thompson's elegant, eerily dreamlike suggestion of train seats hovering above tracks. Both strangers talk silently about themselves, but The Woman is silently addressing him. By a coincidence even she acknowledges as marvelous, she happens to be seated across from the author whose work has been a part of her inner life, a man she seems to know better than her own friends. "I have spent my life with you, Mr. Parsky," she says as if the voice in her head were in his, too. "I talk to you secretly. Secretly, I tell you everything I can never tell you."
In fact, we sense that she knows him better than he knows himself, or certainly treasures a better part of him than even he remembers.
Frequently, his monologues are hinged on his vanity over having turned bitter. "The curl of my lip is bitter," he says, almost as if he wants us to reassure him that it is not. How delicious that the person who can do so with the best evidence is sitting across from him, afraid to take his latest, called "The Unexpected Man," from her handbag and begin to read.
Warchus, the Englishman who recently directed Broadway's smash "True West" and will stage the wildly anticipated revival of "Follies" this spring, knows how to wring entertainment from Reza's most oblique or blunt sentences. With .Thompson's glassy floor shimmering underfoot, the actors often sit, sometimes walk as they talk, daring each other to catch an eye or acknowledge the potential significance of the situation. The woman says that this ostensibly bitter man's joyful work has given her "a nostalgia for what's never taken place . .. a nostalgia for what might happen." We know the feeling, and rejoice with her.

NEW YORK - "Bitter" is the first word uttered in The Unexpected Man; not so much uttered, actually, as declared, like a defiant challenge to anyone or anything that isn't bitter. The challenger is a blustery fellow of a certain age, identified in the script simply as The Man, though as we will soon learn, he actually is a celebrated author whose less-than-cheery worldview has won him a devoted following.
But in this new drama by Yasmina Reza, which opened Tuesday at the Promenade Theatre off-Broadway, The Man finds that view contested by a rather unlikely source: one of his most ardent fans, identified as The Woman, who just happens to be seated across from him in the compartment of a train heading from Paris to Frankfurt.
Little of the communication between these two travelers occurs through actual speech. Most of their dialogue, if you can call it that, consists of thoughts that only the audience is intended to hear, through which both characters reveal themselves - except to each other - as stringently intelligent, perceptive and lonely creatures.
The Woman, an elegant and lively widow played by the masterful Eileen Atkins, reminisces about old friends and flirtations and wonders whether to let The Man know she is an admirer. The Man, whom Alan Bates plays with a delicious acidity, whines about his aging constitution and wonders why The Woman - who, unbeknownst to him, has a copy of his latest book tucked away in her purse -- hasn't brought along any reading material.
Reza's dense, musical script - her first since Tony Award winner Art - makes these musings anything but prosaic. The playwright toys lyrically with both the structure and substance of language, creating patterns of rhythm and tonality that can become hypnotic one moment, abrasive the next.
Some of the disruptions and non sequiturs seem gratuitously jarring, such as when The Woman's poignant account of a recently departed confidant is interrupted by The Man's grousing about laxatives. But Reza's text - supported by the actors' fine, probing performances and by Matthew Warchus' sensitive direction - is generally quite effective at conveying the superficially arbitrary but often meaningful directions our thoughts take.
Reza also makes fascinating observations about the tension between what people think and what they say, and how this tension can impede or enhance our ability to connect with others. Anyone with a modicum of social experience will empathize with the mix of hesitation and eagerness, hope and insecurity, desire and fear that informs the interaction between The Man and The Woman - and feel a vicarious thrill when they finally penetrate each other's force fields.
Mark Thompson's stark, minimalist set design and Gary Yershon's eerie incidental music reinforce the play's mysterious, often unsettling mood. But for all the challenges it poses, to its characters and the audience, The Unexpected Man is ultimately an affirming, even comforting work - one that hardly leaves a bitter taste.

THE ALCHEMY of acting is on remarkable display Off Broadway at the Promenade Theater, where Eileen Atkins and Alan Bates are deftly and unobtrusively turning Yasmina Reza's compact, cool and clever play "The Unexpected Man" into an evening of unlimited pleasure. It's the first real gem of the new season, and it will be glittering for as long as its two stars are happy to shed their complementary lights on it.
From the author of "Art," "The Unexpected Man" is about a chance meeting between two strangers on a train, and it consists primarily of the gradually converging streams of consciousness of these two characters.
Bates and Atkins sit facing each other in simple wooden chairs as the lights come up. They're sharing a compartment from Paris to Frankfurt, suggested in a stylized manner by Mark Thompson's handsome, gleaming set.
For a good three quarters of the play, which lasts less than 90 minutes, these two characters do not address each other. The tension this creates, as we eavesdrop on their thoughts and note their deep affinities, gives the play its considerable humor, heart and suspense. (The play is, in its own more cerebral way, as much a nail-biter as the famous Hitchcock film about two similarly situated strangers.)Bates plays a highbrow novelist, Paul Parsky, who happens to be the particular favorite of Atkins' Martha; indeed, she has his latest novel, which gives the play its title, in her purse, but can't quite decide if she has the nerve to bring it out.
Their interior musings, spoken aloud, revolve elliptically around similar themes, adding an aching poignance to the silence that their personalities, and a proper Parisian decorum, dictates between them. (Thompson's handsomely tailored costumes smartly suggest the inherent connections between them, with her chic purple suit reflected in his tie of the same hue.)
Disappointments color both their reflections. Parsky, naturally morose and energetically bitter, muses on various professional slights and personal calamities: sleeplessness, his daughter's engagement to an older man, old friends whose wounding words about this novel or that one he can't forgive or forget. His new novel is called, entirely aptly, "The Captain of a Lost Ship."
Martha is quietly despondent over the death of her friend Serge, and her thoughts return ineluctably to this and other faded friendships. "We keep talking about other people because we're made up of other people, don't you agree?" she says.
The play's essential theme is loneliness -- the difficulty of making deep and lasting connections to other people, and the loss we feel when something -- death or a new marriage or a cutting comment -- mysteriously and suddenly separates us from people we've cared for. It is also about the enduring companionship the works of our favorite artists can provide.
Martha hesitates to talk to Parsky for fear that the man will not live up to the image she's created in her fertile imagination. "My desires have always outstripped what actually happened," she says with more than a hint of sadness.
Parsky muses on the life of the attractive woman before him and laments that his work has been unappreciated. "Is there today one single person in the whole world who might know how to read that book?" he asks with hurt pride, referring unwittingly to the very volume being read with such intense sympathy by Martha.
Director Matthew Warchus appears to have a particular genius for such chamber pieces -- whether they are similarly flavored, like "Art," or scabrous, like last season's searing "True West." (Warchus is also entrusted this season with the much-anticipated revival of "Follies," and it will be exciting to see how his pointillist touch shapes that legendary, large-cast musical.)
Aided by the smooth, artful translation of Christopher Hampton -- itself a significant achievement -- Warchus and his two actors glide effortlessly among the probing currents of the play, searching out and examining each philosophical reflection with intelligence and feeling, zinging out each shard of wry humor with impeccable finesse.
Bates, who returns to the New York stage after an absence of almost three decades (he was last seen on Broadway in 1973's "Butley"), is welcome indeed. His great gruff voice fairly drips the bitterness and sarcasm that spice all Parsky's thoughts, but he also has the ability to make the character's pride, melancholy and insecurity appealing -- both to us and to Martha, who admits a deep attraction to people "who are tormented by nonstop suffering." Bates makes the torment amusing and touching, as it should be.
Early on, the witty, elegant, intelligent Martha says, "I am not a woman who invites comparisons," and the line lingers in the mind because the actress who says it is herself incomparable: entirely the witty, elegant and intelligent embodiment of the character she's playing.
Ever since she won acclaim (and an Olivier Award) for her performance in the play in London, Atkins has been trying, with various producers, to bring it to New York. As Gotham theatergoers can at last see, Atkins' perseverance was not just a canny career move; it was also an act of generosity -- a performance as wonderful as this feels like a gift from a good friend.Atkins' acting is so thoughtful, so rich and so sharply focused that she invests each pause, each crossing of her legs, each placing of a hand on the hip, with volumes of meaning.
Sitting silently in repose, she's captivating. And the range of emotion she brings to a single line of dialogue, indeed just two words -- "Serge, dead" -- takes the breath away. The mystery of death, the surprise of life going on, resignation and ruefulness, the sense of a smart woman grappling casually, as we all must, with the great questions of life: All these and more are captured and gently offered to the audience in those two softly spoken words.
The play's tension rests, of course, on the question of whether these two self-sufficient, unsentimental but deep-feeling characters will find their way into each other's lives. The opportunity is there, a gift given by fate, but will it be grasped?
As we watch and listen and wait, it seems that much more than the futures of these two prickly people hangs in the balance; our own hopes for sympathetic companionship and regrets for lost chances shimmer in the eloquent shadows of Hugh Vanstone's lighting.
At one point Parsky muses on the artist's ability to turn "a single moment into an eternity, which is the mark of a poet." Time and again, "The Unexpected Man" does just that, as does the particular poetry of Atkins' unforgettable performance.

October 15, 2000 In the dialogue below, Eileen Atkins and Alan Bates discuss how actors develop from the moment they realize there is no other suitable profession.
Mr. Bates and Ms. Atkins are starring in "The Unexpected Man" by Yasmina Reza, the author of "Art." Now in previews at the Promenade Theater, the play opens on Oct. 24 and, like "Art," has been translated from the French by Christopher Hampton and directed by Matthew Warchus.
Ms. Atkins won an Olivier Award for her performance in the original 1998 London production of "The Unexpected Man," opposite Michael Gambon. Mr. Bates has not appeared on a New York stage since Simon Gray's "Butley" in 1973, for which he won a Tony Award.
Unlike "Art," "The Unexpected Man," which is set on a train, does not allow its two characters to speak directly to each other until the final moments. With that in mind, The New York Times invited the two stars to talk, over lunch in London late last month, about their lives as actors. They were joined by Matt Wolf, the London theater critic for Variety. Following are excerpts from the taped conversation:

ALAN BATES We've never worked together, although we've always wanted to, from the days when it was just remotely possible for us to play Romeo and Juliet. We talked about it for years, and then we began to laugh because we realized we weren't going to get the offer. Now we're actually doing it.

EILEEN ATKINS And we don't have to worry about Mercutio.

BATES [Laughs] No.

MATT WOLF But why be an actor? And what is it about Britain that breeds so many?

BATES It has nothing to do with being in this country. You want to be an actor because you want to be an actor. You suddenly realize that's what you want to do. In my case, when I was 11.

ATKINS You have to be an actor - in my case, when I was 12 - there's no choice.

BATES People say, "What made you want to be an actor?" and you don't know, there isn't an answer. But you can guess at a few things. I never expressed myself. I was quite shy, though I was also quite happy; I wasn't miserable. I think through acting you find you can say things through other people's words and other characters.

ATKINS As for actually choosing to be an actor - we both get this now - we get young people wanting advice. But if anybody comes to me and says, "Should I become an actor?" I say: "Well, no. If you've got to ask me, no."

WOLF Because?

ATKINS It's very, very rigorous.

BATES You can't just say, "It's something to do because I can't think of anything else." There used to be people at RADA [the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London] like that who would say, "I couldn't think of what to do, so I'm here."

ATKINS Half my year at drama school was like that; they didn't last very long.

BATES They're out in a term. They either can't do it or perhaps they realize they don't want to, which is fair dues. But the profession, too, has changed. When we started, once you were lucky with something, or hit a nerve in audiences, more or less from then on you were in demand. People wanted us the minute we had made a mark. Now, for the most part, there isn't the same hunger. You can do something and then have six months out of work, whereas we got offers and got work and kept going and got used to the fact that we were always working. This generation can't rely on that at all - with very few exceptions.
I've always felt a huge need to do the theater, and it's never left me. People say "Well, it's where your heart is." And it is there: it is in the doing of it at the same time with the audience present and being in charge of it, unless you've been thrown off course by a director, which can happen, and then you have a miserable time because you can't get back to your own instinct. With television and film, there are other things that are intriguing: acting in the actual location somewhere, acting sometimes very intimately and sometimes with the camera miles away. But there's nothing as big or as complete or as satisfying as the theater.

ATKINS I would hate to give the impression, and it's not true, that you don't have to be a very very good actor on screen as well. It is just that there is more freedom for you as an actor in the theater. But you have to be careful not to give in to the theater audience too much. It's very easy to do because you're seducing them, basically. I think there are actors who go out there just determined to seduce.

BATES I remember someone coming backstage to me one night after "Butley" in London and saying to me, "You have to be careful that you're leading the audience and that the audience isn't leading you, which of course was what was happening to you tonight." I didn't know how to interpret this, so I just said, "Good night and thank you very much." I realize that what he was saying might have even been true. You have to stay in charge; you've got to keep the lead.

WOLF Do American audiences differ from British ones?

ATKINS I much prefer Americans.

BATES This is rather awful about the rest of the audiences, but the first audiences you get in New York - and it can last for the better part of six months - are the best you ever get. They have an enthusiasm, an observation, a concentration. It has been a long time since I've been on the stage there, but I'm told this hasn't changed: you feel the audience participation. They don't feel they're at all above it. They're letting it be what it is, and they like it or they don't.

ATKINS It's that enthusiasm, which is that thing about America. They are naturally on the whole - because we're only speaking in generalizations - a more enthusiastic race and they show it. They also show it when they don't like it. I quite like the definiteness of that.

BATES I don't mind being sent back on the boat. You know where you are, and you can get on with the next job. You don't go dribbling on.

WOLF What about different kinds of acting? In films, audiences frequently pay to see a star play versions of himself or herself; it's performance as personality.

BATES If you believe what you see, then it's good acting.

ATKINS Believability is the whole thing.

BATES If the acting is true, if an understanding of character is within you, whether you have to go outside your own shape or vocal range to achieve what you want, it doesn't matter, as long as you understand it and believe it yourself.

ATKINS I don't think there are any rules, Alan, do you? It's like Beryl [Beryl Reid, Ms. Atkins's co-star in "The Killing of Sister George" 34 years ago] used to say, "I've got the shoes; now I've got the part."

BATES I love those stories. I don't disbelieve them at all. When I did the film "An Englishman Abroad," I watched a run of it with a friend, and he said, "Where did you get that funny little walk?" - a kind of drunken shuffle, really. And I didn't know I was doing it. You don't think, "I'll do a funny walk," or whatever.

ATKINS They're the best things: when you don't know you're doing them. I had a tiny part in the film of "The Dresser," and an American said, "The way you marched across the bridge at the railway station - it was so funny: go on, do that walk," and I said, like you, Alan, "I was just walking." But the point is that it is coming from how you're feeling, so I had found this terribly sort of bustly brisk walk with a much bigger length of stride. And this man said I had busy legs.

WOLF Have you changed over time as performers?

BATES You're bound to have, but you don't always know how. Life just happens to you, and it's bound to influence you. You probably have more insight as you grow older, though that's not to say that you always see that you're any different. You just hope you're a bit more economical.
I think you change because you must. You must develop -become more philosophical, more wise, more witty, less witty, more showoffy, whatever. But you can't really talk about it because as an actor you're not supposed to be watching yourself. You're supposed to have a sense of yourself, but not actually stand outside and analyze yourself. I think you would lose an awful lot of your mystery or your spontaneity or your natural instincts if you did. In some ways, you don't change a lot and the reason is because acting is instinctive, and your instincts, hopefully, were always there. You understand more. Maybe that's what changes.

ATKINS If you think of yourself as an instrument that you use, the instrument is the same but maybe - you hope - it has all got a bit more finely tuned. But if you began thinking about it, you'd be a dead duck. The famous one is when you think, "I really do know how to time things now."

BATES [Laughs] That's hell. And that's when you go out and fall flat on your face because you meet a different audience; you don't meet the audience that you have planned to meet.

ATKINS [Laughs] I love that, Alan. That should be the title of your autobiography: "I didn't meet the audience I planned to meet."

WOLF Do you get braver?

BATES Yes. You think, "I can do it."

ATKINS The older you get, I find, the more you think, "I can't do it at all" and that everybody else is much cleverer. I got into a habit about 20 years ago of suggesting another actress for every part. I remember once, before I did John Schlesinger's production of "Heartbreak House," with Colin Blakely and Kate Nelligan, telling John I couldn't do it. And then I heard he had asked another actress who was even more neurotic and thin and nonmaternal for Hesione Hushabye than I am, so I played it. But mostly, I do tend to think, "Now I wonder if I can play it." It's got worse as I'v older, although I won't say the nerves have got worse because I've always had horrifying nerves.

BATES [In mock alarm] Oh, thank you very much.

ATKINS But it is always frightening, isn't it?

BATES It's always frightening, yes. And the thing is, the opposite to what you've described also happens. Sometimes you think: "I could do that role. Why have they asked him?" And then you think to yourself, "Oh, perhaps I am 20 years older or too old for the part." You always stay about 40.

ATKINS [Laughs] What do you mean, 40? Twenty-three! You certainly say you're at least 20 years younger than you actually are.

BATES The point is, acting is mysterious in the sense that you can't really talk about it. You end up down a blind alley: a dead-end script.

ATKINS And you can't learn it. You can learn to be better and improve your technique, but you can't learn the basic talent.

BATES No, I don't think you can. Sometimes, when you see a film with nonactors, they can do it once but they don't know what they're doing and they couldn't do it twice; they couldn't do the run of a play. It's there once because they happen to be right for it. It is a craft, but it's a craft that's no good if you're not absolutely born to it in the first place. It can't stand alone as a craft. If you haven't got an actor's own instincts, you've got nothing.|||