CATCO opened their 2015-2016 season last week with a gorgeous, tough-minded read on Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man directed by Artistic Director Steven Anderson. I was able to see it yesterday and left slack-jawed.
The Elephant Man follows Dr. Frederick Treves (Ben Gorman) first seen in his early 30s as a London doctor getting a prime position at the London hospital, already having published two books with prospects looking bright, confused by his new boss Carr-Gomm (a marvelously scarred-by-the-world Colby Tarrh) telling him he’ll rake in 100 guinea fees by the time he’s 40 but referring to that as a “consolation.” In short order we meet the eponymous Elephant Man, John Merrick (in real life Joseph Merrick) deformed by a combination skin and bone disease so bad it’s made breathing and speech difficult. Connor McClellan plays Merrick with fascinating, deliberate purpose, his implication of the deformity without any makeup is a classic bit of stage dazzle I’ve never seen done better. The early sequence where Treves examines him and each part of the body twists in accordance with his description still made me gasp.
The play follows Merrick being displayed in sideshows through being robbed and left for dead in Brussels where he’s offset by two similarly taken-advantage of “pinhead” girls dubbed The Queens of the Congo, his return to London and care under Treves and his position as a media darling after a letter to the Times brings in donations to set him up for life, through his death. Christopher Moore Griffin turns in a pair of spellbinding performances as two symbolic representatives of the cruelty of civilization: the narcissistic, wheedling, pathetic carny Ross who we see early taking advantage of Merrick and then the well-meaning but representative of an unjust system Bishop How once Merrick’s. Sarah Dandridge is a delight as famed actress Madge Kendal (a real person but a composite in the play), the one flash of brightness and joy in Merrick’s care. This all plays out on a very effective, minimal set, courtesy of Eric Barker, with a round platform in the middle of a bare stage as Merrick’s Room with a table, two chairs, and a metal washtub, that emphasizes the isolation from the rest of the world and the feeling of being a specimen under glass. The backdrop is a disturbing patchwork of cloth in muted tones with huge “stitches” connecting them occasionally broadcasting scene titles and the mesmerizing cellist Alexa Rybinski seen in silhouette.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qj3me_fp8g
At the turning point of the play, Treves falls into a dream where it’s Merrick examining him and, as you’d expect, finding him wanting. This affecting scene, as Merrick slowly devolves back into the Elephant Man we’ve seen thus far, is played perfectly. Shortly after, Treves explodes at Carr-Gomm about how the more normal Merrick becomes the worse his condition deteriorates his body, “Is this some parable for growing up?” The scenes fall like hammers into a last confrontation with the Bishop that’s really about Treves’ loss of faith, “I conclude that we have polished him like a mirror and should hallelujah when he reflects us to the inch.”
It’s a bitter, excoriating denouement about the human propensity for self-destruction by degrees, for the way easy comfort can kill us all. The Elephant Man does the same thing the hypocritical “normal” people within the play do, showing Merrick as a symbol for the festering, bloated, lame condition the British Empire was in at the time was set and, it’s not a stretch to say, the state of the Empire when the play was written in the late 1970s. So it’s a fine, tricky line to walk that could collapse under pretension if the audience isn’t in the production’s corner, if we don’t believe that symbolism really does shine light on a greater truth. It’s to the credit of Steven Anderson’s never faltering direction and the performances of Ben Gorman, riveting and wound so tight he might snap, and Connor McClellan, trapped in his body in different ways that this scene still feels like a punch in the stomach. And it’s to the credit of everyone in this well-oiled, finely-tuned production that it’s all so moving.
The Elephant Man runs through November 8 with performances at 8:00pm Thursday-Saturday, 11:00am Wednesday, and 2:00pm Sunday. For tickets and more info, visit http://catco.org/shows/2015-2016/the-elephant-man