THEATER REVIEW
A Hostage Who Turns Into a Dad
‘Orphans,’ With Alec Baldwin, at the Schoenfeld Theater
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Orphans Alec Baldwin stars in a revival of Lyle Kessler’s play, directed by Daniel Sullivan, at the Gerald Schoenfeld
Theater.
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: April 18, 2013
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A deceptive blast of primal energy begins the limp revival of Lyle Kessler’s “Orphans,” which
opened on Thursday night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. The chemistry of this
introductory salvo comes from crude but effective elements: an overamplified run of
screaming notes from an electric guitar; a ravaged, abandoned-looking room shrouded in
sinister lighting.
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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Tom Sturridge, left, and Ben Foster as brothers who first hold a gangster, played by Alec Baldwin, captive in “Orphans,” at
the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.
And, oh yeah, let’s not forget that feral young man who makes his entrance tearing across
the set like a rabid flying squirrel. This kid (played by the British actor Tom Sturridge) can
climb walls better than Spider-Man, and he looks like the kind of person who eats insects for
breakfast. Get ready, you tell yourself happily, for a tail-kicking night of tearing down the
house.
That, more or less, was how “Orphans” was described the first time it visited New York in
1985, in an Off Broadway production from the two-fisted Steppenwolf Theater Company of
Chicago. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich called it a work in which “actors
rip themselves apart with a raw ferocity.”
There was reason to hope — or dread, depending on how nice a person you are — that this
latest incarnation of “Orphans,” directed by Daniel Sullivan, with a three-member cast led
by Alec Baldwin, might raise the ferocity quotient even higher. In February, during early
rehearsals, the production made headlines when one of its actors, Shia LaBeouf, made
public some e-mails that vividly described disagreements within the company.
Mr. LaBeouf was replaced by another film actor, Ben Foster, but further stoked the fires of
speculation by discussing the play with David Letterman and by appearing, very visibly, at
an early preview of “Orphans.” What effect might such behavior have on a cast that seemed
especially susceptible to violent forms of catharsis?
Mr. Baldwin, as any reader of tabloids knows, is widely perceived as a highly combustible
being. As for the others, well, Mr. Foster was pretty scary as the sadistic outlaw in the
remake of “3:10 to Yuma,” and Mr. Sturridge made his name as a London stage actor
playing a homicidal high school student in Simon Stephens’s “Punk Rock.” The combination
of cast and circumstance sounded like a promising recipe for a Molotov cocktail.
Now comes the deflating part, and I suggest you stop reading if you’re easily scarred by
disappointment. Perhaps the participants in this revival felt that they had had enough of
fireworks for a while, so they decided to make nice, tread gently and, in the case of Mr.
Baldwin, keep a respectful distance from the proceedings.
In “Orphans,” knives, guns, fists, rope and duct tape are all deployed to violent ends. Yet
this version somehow plays like a sentimental sitcom, perhaps a low-rent “Modern Family.”
The crowd with which I saw “Orphans” chuckled contentedly through most of the show
(1:45, with intermission), except at the end, when one of the characters snuggled up to a
corpse. Then everybody went, “Awww,” the way audiences do at the current revival of
“Annie” whenever the dog shows up.
“Orphans” definitely does not benefit from a soft touch. Many of those who acclaimed the
1985 production suspected that the script needed all the visceral juicing-up it could get. (Mr.
Rich tactfully described it as “theater for the senses and the emotions, not the mind.”) As
was widely observed at the time, the setup of “Orphans” recalls that of Harold Pinter’s
groundbreaking “Caretaker” (1960), not a work, you would think, that a lesser play would
ever want to stand next to.
Like “The Caretaker,” “Orphans” is a tale of two brothers — one a vicious thug and one with
developmental problems — and an older man who winds up in the siblings’ squalid digs. Mr.
Kessler varied the formula by making the interloper a rich gangster instead of a shabby
homeless man. But the dynamic of both dramas comes — or should come — from the
shifting and blurring of power within a triangle.
The first problem with Mr. Sullivan’s production is that nobody exudes a sense of, or even a
sense of hunger for, power. The arguable exception is Mr. Sturridge, who portrays Phillip,
the agoraphobic, seemingly autistic brother who stays at home while the older Treat (Mr.
Foster) earns his living by mugging the citizens of Philadelphia at knife point. (It would
appear that Mom and Dad disappeared when the boys were tots.)
Mr. Sturridge is playing the sort of role that comes with “Tony nominee” tattooed on its
forehead, that of a mentally challenged, education-deprived person who learns to assert
himself. But the physicality with which he inhabits his part is something else. He occupies
John Lee Beatty’s vast, derelict set (lighted by Pat Collins) with an obsessive knowledge of
its every crevice, moving as if he suspected it were rigged with land mines.
Enter Treat, back from a day of thieving and knifing, percolating with both intimidating rage
and fraternal protectiveness. At least, that’s what we’re supposed to infer. Mr. Foster doesn’t
do intimidating rage so well. His performance feels so inwardly concentrated that Treat
seems like a danger only to himself.
One night Treat brings home the drunken, nattily dressed Harold (Mr. Baldwin), who keeps
mumbling treacly stuff about little “Dead End Kids,” in reference to the street urchins of the
Depression-era movies. Harold, it turns out, grew up in an orphanage and has a tender spot
for other motherless boys. And he morphs from the brothers’ hostage into their mentor and
employer.
I assume that Harold was written as a slippery character, but Mr. Baldwin’s performance
eludes the possibility of our getting any kind of grip on it at all. He keeps trying on different
voices that variously evoke an Irish blarney-spinner, the spielmeister Harold Hill from “The
Music Man” and the unctuous Jack Donaghy, the egomaniacal producer Mr. Baldwin played
so delectably on “30 Rock.” It’s a mutating cartoon of a performance, with only hints of the
requisite menace.
This leaves the field open for Mr. Sturridge’s Phillip, who, in addition to being dazzlingly
acrobatic, does nifty imitations of the game show hosts and movie stars he sees on
television. But with Phillip in charge of our attention, “Orphans” starts to seem like an allmale version of Garson Kanin’s comedy “Born Yesterday,” in which a bimbo whom nobody
takes seriously stands up for herself by reciting from the Declaration of Independence.
(And, yes, Phillip really does the same thing.)
Mr. Sturridge, by the way, handles footwear as stylishly as anyone in the new musical
“Kinky Boots.” I particularly enjoyed watching Phillip wax poetic over a lone red high heel,
and he wears both grimy untied sneakers and yellow loafers with aplomb. That’s about it for
kicks of color in this dispiritingly pallid show.
Orphans
By Lyle Kessler; directed by Daniel Sullivan; sets by John Lee Beatty; costumes by Jess
Goldstein; lighting by Pat Collins; sound by Peter Fitzgerald; music by Tom Kitt; fight
director, Thomas Schall; production manager, Aurora Productions; dialect coach, Deborah
Hecht; production stage manager, Roy Harris; company manager, Bruce Klinger; general
manager, Lisa M. Poyer. Presented by Frederick Zollo, Robert Cole, the Shubert
Organization, Orin Wolf, Lucky VIII, Scott M. Delman, James P. MacGilvray and StylesFour
Productions. At the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, 236 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200,
telecharge.com. Through June 30. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.
WITH: Alec Baldwin (Harold), Ben Foster (Treat) and Tom Sturridge (Phillip).