| Harry Haun,
American Playbill, 1998 |
In a mesmerizing performance - part unspeakable anguish, part
murderous rage - Zoë Wanamaker breathes fire into Sophocles'
Electra. |
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Yet
another thing we can thank the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s
for is Zoë Wanamaker's stunningly versatile stage career, which
has occurred almost completely outside our purview - a whole
ocean away - on the various theatrical venues of England.
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Born
in New York City, the second of three daughters of
actor-director Sam Wanamaker and radio soap star Charlotte
Holland, Wanamaker was three when she was rudely uprooted by the
notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (then zealously
dedicated to driving believed Communists from the entertainment
workplace) and transplanted on British soil.
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Her
father was directing Madelaine Carroll on Broadway in Goodbye,
My Fancy when he was labelled as a "pinko" by New York
Daily News columnist, Ed Sullivan.
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"Dad
wrote a letter back, which was foolish, and that's when the
committee started to get interested in him," Wanamaker
remembers. "He was filming in England when he got
subpoenaed to go before the committee, and he
refused." That refusal cost Wanamaker a career in
America, but he made a very nice one for himself in England
where he and his family eventually chose to live. |
Against
the advice of both parents, Zoe Wanamaker took up the
greasepaint a good 30 years ago and has since married into it
(British character actor Gawn Grainger). She now bites her words
like a born Brit, but a hint of natural Americanism still
persists. "I was brought up in Britain; I was trained
there - but I keep my US passport close to my heart because I
enjoy working in America and want to keep that option." |
It's
an option she has exercised twice: she played half-sister to
Jane Lapotaire's Tony-award winning Piaf in 1981, and she joined
Alec Baldwin and Joseph Maher in a 1986 retooling of Loot.
Both times she made the Tony running, and both times she lost to
Swoosie Kurtz. The bright sprites Zoë Wanamaker advanced
in those plays do not begin to prepare you for her
fire-and-light show as Electra at the Ethel Barrymore
Theatre. Clearly, this is the deep end of the drama pool,
and she splashes about spectacularly in a performance which had
already won the Olivier award and seems destined for a Tony. |
How
Wanamaker and her director, David Leveaux, happened to alight on
Electra is, she allows, "a silly story; we were going to do
Suddenly, Last Summer. Then, at lunch, he said,
"Have you ever thought of doing Electra? I think it's
about time you had a good scream." No doubt about it,
Wanamaker becomes Electra. As Agamemnon's vengeance-driven
daughter, she rips into the role with unbridled savagery,
stalking about the stage in the outsized overcoat of her
murdered father, goading her brother Orestes into avenging that
killing with more killing - namely, the culprits responsible:
their mother, Clytemnestra and the mother's lover
Aegisthus. The sound and fury were there from the outset,
apparently. |
As
a London critic noted, Wanamaker "heaves her heart into her
mouth with every line." Electra first struck Leveaux
when he was watching a documentary film about Sarajevo.
One scene in particular - a young girl putting toys and
chocolate on the grave of her brother - echoed the grave gifts
of Electra, and he suddenly saw a way to shave away 2,000 years
and make Sophocles' work relevant to our times. A spare,
accessible new adaptation by Frank (Someone Who'll Watch Over
Me) McGuinness, who streamlined A Doll's House for Janet
McTeer's award-winning revival, seconded this modern
sensibility. |
All
these elements came together in August 1997, when Leveaux
launched his Wanamaker haymaker at Chichester's Minerva Theatre;
then he moved it on to London's Donmar Warehouse for more
acclaim. That one-two punch was followed last Fall with a
McCarter Theatre production (Princeton, NJ) in which he
surrounded his star with a class cast that includes Claire Bloom
(Clytemnestra), Michael Cumpsty (Orestes), Pat Carroll (Chorus
of Mycenae), Stephen Spinella (Servant to Orestes), Marin Hinkle
(Chrysothemis), and Daniel Oreskes (Aegisthus). The
triumphantly cheered results begged for Broadway - and got it! |
The
stage sandpile in which this bloody tragedy is played out is the
rubble directly outside the palace, but Johan Engel's set and
costume designs deliberately blur the dimensions of time and
space. "It could be Sarajevo, or Northern Ireland,
anywhere, really," Wanamaker contends. "What
David is saying - what we as a company are saying - is:
what happens to the children of war? These people are the
result of war, continuous war. What will happen to the
children of Northern Ireland? Will they grow up to be
terrorists and monsters? War perpetuates something.
Sometimes, you even forget why it started in the first place,
what the actual argument was about. What do these people
become? How do they grow up? How do they go through
life as normal human beings after what they've been
through?" |
The
role leaves Wanamaker predictably drained, and time is required
in the decompression chamber after every performance, before she
can rejoin the living. "It's very demanding because
of the nature of the piece. I mean, I can't go
partying. I have to live like a monk. I have to
preserve my voice and my energy because, although it's only 90
minutes, it's an intense 90 minutes. There is always ten
percent that I try and hold back, but the rest of it is all out
there." |
And
the effects linger on. "I didn't imagine that I was
taking the part home with me, but when we finished Electra
the first time, my back went out; I got the flu; I slept for
five days non-stop. This part is a killer, but she's also
a meteoric soul, a luminous heroine." |
On
Wanamaker's dressing room table is an arcane photograph from the
turn of the century, a gift from the show's designer.
Peering out from it is an infant girl wearing a flowing gown and
a fixed expression. "Johan gave me this picture at
Princeton. He says it's the little Electra, so I keep her
in the dressing room. She doesn't come out. That's
how I keep my sanity." |
Thanks to Kerrie. |
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