By Kevin Hylton
April 22, 2003
HOW TO SUCCEED ON BROADWAY WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
A Review of VINCENT IN BRIXTON
Aside from dedication and hard work, it’s nearly impossible to answer the question, “What makes a successful play?” This is a loaded question, in itself, because it requires one to try and create some sort of equation that will tell us precisely what is a “successful play.” And yet it’s a question that is repeatedly asked of playwrights and producers every time they are interviewed (including in my own interviews with theatrical professionals). It seems that if you ask a playwright and a Broadway producer to come up with a definition for what a successful play is, and you lock them in a room together, one of two things will happen. Either there would be no common response or one of the two will not walk out of the room alive. I think that if you polled many Broadway producers today on this one, there is an easy answer. A successful play pays its bills (which all but never happens). It creates a buzz whether the buzz is warranted or not and it sells tickets.
You ask two critics what a successful play is and even two critics will staunchly debate this issue. I don’t have an answer. I do know that the same critics who are seduced into giving away good reviews by free tickets have themselves produced some financially and artistically successful pieces of theatre. I am not referring to the ripple effect of the critics’ reviews. I am speaking now of the plays written by former theatre critics. Take for example Tom Stoppard. The Czech playwright spent years, as a theatre reviewer before writing ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. And this extends to film as well. Paul Schrader was a reviewer before his success with TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL and continues today to produce thoughtful works about other’s artistic endeavors.
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On March 4th, a successful play opened at Broadway’s Golden Theatre. Nicholas Wright’s play, VINCENT IN BRIXTON, has not been quite the financial success that its producers had hoped for when it arrived from a highly lauded run at London’s National and Wyndham Theatres. In fact, the show seems to have averaged attendance levels in the sixty percent range since opening (according to Playbill’s Broadway gross statistics). By no means has this show been a financial juggernaut. The show does, however, succeed on several levels.
VINCENT IN BRIXTON follows the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh over the course of four years when he made London, England his home. At this time, Van Gogh was not interested in creating art but rather occupied his time as an art dealer for the firm Goupil and Company. Van Gogh was stationed in London at Goupil’s British gallery seemingly following in the footsteps of three of his uncles. Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, became a dealer as well. Much of the play is based on a series of letters written between the two brothers while Vincent lived in London and on a book written by Martin Bailey entitled, YOUNG VINCENT. Wright, the playwright, was forced to play connect the dots when writing this play. Pieces of information could be extracted from the letters between the brothers and facts about Vincent’s time in London are known. But many of the relationships and the interactions appear to have been created by the author himself.
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The play is set in a kitchen in south London in the Brixton area at 87 Hackford Road. Vincent is a 20-year-old man who recently moved from Holland and is looking to rent a room in the home of URSULA LOYER (played by Clare Higgins).
It is a confirmed fact that Vincent lived with the Loyers’ at this address and a plaque today in Brixton marks the home. Over the course of the two-and-a-half hour play, we are introduced to Loyer, her daughter EUGEINE, another boarder and artist, SAM PLOWMAN (Pete Starrett), and Vincent’s sister ANNA. Higgins won an Olivier Award (the British equivalent of our Tony award) for best performance by an actress and for good reason many have praised her performance. By no means, however, is this a one-person show.
Jochum Ten Haaf is equally brilliant in his portrayal of the young Vincent. Haaf, a young Dutch actor who was nominated for an Evening Standard Award for this roll, plays Vincent beautifully. Haaf’s Vincent is confused by women and relationships, is intelligent, well raised, and yet throughout the performance there lies a layer of uncertainty about Vincent. With all of the kindness and gentleness that lies in the character, Haaf simultaneously exposes a somewhat creepy, neurotic, competitive person who will eventually go insane and end his own life. They say that a writer must always know the end of his story before he can begin to recount the tale. Many playwrights, including John Donne, have proved this statement to be false. But in the case of Wright’s play it seems the author looked past the end of the painter’s life in London, to the end of Vincent’s life, when he shaped his character. All of the sorrow and misjudgment that must have inhibited Van Gogh are within the playwright’s protagonist.
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Aside from Vincent, all of the other characters are very well developed and, considering the limited information that Wright possessed about these people, they are remarkably real and multidimensional. No doubt both Wright and his director, Richard Eyre (Oliver Award Winner) are to be praised for the way the characters evolve over the course of the play. Eyre has worked on productions directing talents such as Daniel Day Lewis (HAMLET), Ina McKellen (RICHARD III), and on pieces by David Mamet, David Hare, and Tom Stoppard.
Tim Hatley, who won a 2002 Tony Award for his work on the sets and costumes of Noel Coward’s, PRIVATE LIVES, has created a rather Spartan set which is dark, gray, and simple. When you look at some of Vincent’s paintings it is difficult to see how the vibrant colors and landscapes he painted could come out of years living in such a dreary existence. Nevertheless, combined with the lighting and screened images of Brixton during the mid-1870s, we get a good look at what Vincent’s London was like at the end of the nineteenth century.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of this play was to learn that Van Gogh was himself a critic in a sense. Vincent spent about five years selling the artwork of many professional painters before he ever began his own creative career. This show looks at this fact and considers, to a certain extent, the critical eye that this job may have created for Vincent. Is the playwright suggesting that Vincent was shaped by his work selling art and studying the masters? Perhaps Van Gogh would have been Van Gogh without critiquing the works of other painters. It may be that Vincent became Van Gogh because of his experiences living in Brixton rather than the time he spent studying in the British archives. I guess in the end it all boils down to what makes a successful piece of art.
Tickets to VINCENT IN BRIXTON can be obtained through Telecharge at 800-432-7250. Act fast since the show is closing in New York on May 4, 2003. There is talk that it will return to London for a run at another theatre in the West End.
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