bond of age
by Douglas Messerli
J. M. Barrie "Barrie: Back to Back," Rosalind and The Old Lady Shows Her Medals / Los Angeles, Pacific Resident
Theatre (the production I saw was on Sunday, August 28, 2011)
If Barrie's Peter Pan can be described as the refusal of youth to become old, a
play about the attempt of the young to remain that way forever, the two short
plays I saw this past Sunday— although still very much centered on the issues
of young and old—might be said to hint at strange bonds between the two. One
might almost be tempted to take that further and suggest a "bondage."
After all, if Wendy and her brothers had not been surrounded by loving, if
sometimes disapproving adults, there would have been no need to seek another
world. Indeed, in Barrie's works, the desire for new adventures is not at all
like Dickens' world, peopled with tortured children and waifs who must escape
simply to survive. In Barrie's child-like fables, the figures reach out to
other worlds simply for solace and psychological needs. As in our own
youth-obsessed culture, so Barrie's adults and children simply prefer to stay
young.
It is that relationship between the young and the old that is the focus
of these two slightly sentimental, but still entertaining short plays. In
"Rosalind," a middle-aged woman (Mrs. Page) sits in a country home
which she has rented with her slightly older landlady (Dame Quickly) in
attendance as they gossip—Mrs. Page greedily eating bon-bons or nuts while they
speak. The conversation mostly centers on Mrs. Page's satisfaction about being
middle-aged, her feeling that it is wonderful to be aging and much more
enjoyable than the activities of her actor-daughter who, at the moment, so we
hear, is in Monte Carlo. The somewhat disheveled, graying Mrs. Page is
obviously proud of her daughter, Beatrice—she has her photograph prominently
displayed—but she is not at all distressed that she seldom gets the opportunity
to see her, and, she later admits, has never seen the girl upon stage.
Into this quaint tea-time setting stumbles a young man, Charles Roche,
seeking, improbably, a short respite from the rain before his train returns to
the city. At first he is refused by the landlady, as Mrs. Page pretends to
sleep, but gradually he wiggles his way to the warm hearth, intending to read
and leave the tenant to herself. But all that changes when he spots Beatrice's
photograph! The actress is at the center of his attentions, and, we soon
discover, he has met her and dined with her, unable to comprehend, accordingly,
why her photograph should appear on the mantel of the "far from
London" setting. Gradually he awakens the sleeping Mrs. Page, and, little
by little, discovers that the woman he has just met is the actresses' mother.
So obsessed with Beatrice is Charles that he feels equally strong
attachments to her mother, and opens his heart to her, telling the older woman
how much he is in love with her daughter. Surprisingly Mrs. Page puts these
sentiments and the trinkets that go with them (a photograph he keeps in his
wallet across from the picture of his sister) into perspective, even mocking
them. And in a quick dismissal of his emotions, Mrs. Page rips up the cherished
photograph.
He is horrified, shocked by her behavior. But gradually discovers,
through her knowledge of him and growing revelations (dear reader, go no
further if you will not have the plot revealed) that the middle-aged woman
before him and his beloved Beatrice are one and the same. Beatrice, it appears
is not at all in Monte Carlo, but has escaped as Mrs. Page to be able for one
of the few times in her life to discover herself at her true age instead of the
eternally young figure she must play upon the stage.
Charles is stunned, disheartened, even perhaps horrified. How could such
a beauty have been transformed into the woman standing before his eyes? Yet, as
she reveals her's—and every young star's dilemma—he gallantly offers her
marriage—in order to protect her in her old age! The gesture may be gallant
but, of course, is ridiculous! It is also, perhaps, somewhat obscene. It is
quite impossible that the young, handsome boy come out of the rain, can sit for
the rest of his life gossiping with his aging wife.
Barrie, fortunately, has another surprise up his sleeve, as
Beatrice/Mrs. Page is called back to London to play Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It. Suddenly the actress is
in a flurry, running to pack, to change clothes and accompany her potential
"lover" back to the city. Her entry after dressing says it all: she
is now young again, not a real human being plagued with age, but something of
the stage, a made-up simulacrum of a young beauty for all her audience to love.
In a sense, Mrs. Page has become her own Peter Pan, a reimagining of her own
being.
The
actor playing Kenneth Dowey (Joe McGovern) has the Scottish brogue down rather
well, and is stunningly handsome enough that, despite his overly self-confident
sense of being, his presence almost does take away the breath. Certainly, his
appearance seems to have startled his mother. Rightfully so, for as we soon
discover, although they share last names, they are no relation to one another.
Mrs. Dowey has "stolen" his name and address from the local paper,
and having herself no son or even previous husband, has felt so alien from the
"war effort," and so excluded from her friends, all of whom have boys
in service, that she has "made him up," so to speak, sending him
cakes and other treats under a different name, and following his wartime
adventures through the papers. The stack of letters she has shown her friends
that he has written her are all blank.
At first the soldier is justifiably angry with the lying woman, but
gradually, as he discovers the extent with which she had deceived everyone,
including himself, and her explanations for her acts, he grows more tolerant.
He, we soon discover, is himself an orphan, and her desperate interest in his
being suits his high impression of himself. When she offers him a bed and clean
sheets he cannot resist.
A few nights later, we discover, they have dined out each evening, he
buying her a astrakhan, she serving as a doting and somewhat gay confidant for
a lonely man in the city. By the end of the play, Kenneth kneels before her, as
if about to propose, and does so: will she accept the role of his mother? It is
a beautifully conceived, if sentimental, gesture. But it is also so revealing
of the author's strange entanglements of youth and age. As in "Rosalind,"
youth bows to age always, although it understands itself as the superior. But
it is just its own shining being that so attracts the old to it. There is a
whiff here almost of "pedophilia," and given Barrie's own
relationship with his mother—for whom he often played his preferred dead brother—and
his deep (and apparently detrimental) involvement with the boys of the Davies
family, there is certainly much more to be said about this "bond between
the ages."
As Kenneth tearfully leaves, however, we are awarded the delightful
sight of the old woman opening the package of trinkets, a hat, medals, etc.,
which he has awarded her. And we feel, despite her lies and, now, perhaps his
self-deceptions, this bonding of the two has been nearly inevitable, and is
surely a good thing.
Los Angeles, August 31, 2011
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (August 2011).
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