Without Walls
(Photo © Craig Schwartz)
Alfred Uhry’s new drama Without Walls, which is receiving its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, not only concerns a student production of the classic drama The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, it thematically follows that play’s framework. In doing so, Uhry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Driving Miss Daisy and The Last Night of Ballyhoo, once again shows how humans can recognize the foibles of others and are yet incapable of learning from their mistakes, no matter how glaring. Christopher Ashley’s production, however, is just as dichotomous as the human conditions epitomized in the play. It’s elevated by a stellar performance by Laurence Fishburne and almost sabotaged by a histrionic one by Matt Lanter.
Set in the mid-1970s, Without Walls focuses on Morocco, a gay theater teacher (Fishburne) who is preparing his class at a prestigious Manhattan high school for their production of Brodie. Slyly matching up the ingénue, Lexy (Amanda MacDonald), with Anton, a rebellious rich kid with no parental figures (Lanter), Morocco pulls the strings that bring these two kids together. These actions mirror their characters in Brodie with major consequences.
Fortunately, Uhry recognizes that some audience members may be unfamiliar with that play and gives us enough of the original’s text to follow the play. But his main goal in using Brodie as the play’s basis is to comment on how theater shapes and reflects us, but cannot protect us from our own inevitable downfalls. For example, Lexy initially doesn’t understand her character Susan’s final villainy, but she later follows the same path she found so distasteful in the play. In another scene, the girl playing Jean tells Morocco that she considers her character to be full of pretensions. But Morocco, who Uhry clearly has modeled on Jean Brodie, finds a way to use the play’s text to discredit the girl’s negative assessments, unconsciously afraid that he too suffers from the same flaws.
In a touching and tragic performance, Fishburne brings genuine pathos to the role of a haughty man in over his head. He finds the humor in Morocco’s pretentiousness and delusions without ever mocking this pitiful character, who has nothing but his temporary children in his life. With his theatrical voice and his hands gliding out like Frankenstein’s monster, Morocco is the epitome of the stereotypical gay high school teacher. However, he’s an honorable man who never considers doing anything lascivious towards his students. Instead, he just uses them as an evasion from forming adult attachments.
Unfortunately, the crux of Without Walls hinges on the talented but wayward Anton. The character is supposed to be an acting prodigy, but there’s little evidence of that as Lanter fumbles around, talking with his hands and enunciating loudly as if he’s playing to the last row of the Hollywood Bowl. The performance not only disrupts the play, but if the audience takes Anton’s performances at face value, then Morocco has no ear for talent, which I’m sure is not the playwright’s intentions. On the plus side, MacDonald has a tough task and handles it brilliantly; her scenes as Lexy rehearsing as Susan are hilarious.
Ashley keeps the scenes flowing, but one wishes he had spent more time and effort on Lanter’s work. David C. Woolard perfectly time-warps us back to the 1970s with the costumes, which include butterscotch parkas and purple caftans with gold trim. Thomas Lynch and Charlie Corcoran’s rotating sets combine a high school classroom and a dingy apartment in the same space.
Without Walls presents a world without boundaries and without limitations, while showing us why boundaries and limitations have been devised, particularly within the context of adults dealing with teenagers. More importantly, it reminds us what a great stage actor Laurence Fishburne truly is.
