Ny Times the Old Man and the Sea Review

Theater Review

A Playful Elderly Fellow Who Bonds With a Fish

• April xvi, 2009

No affair what some of united states think of Ernest Hemingway — his all too imitable blunt-understatement mode, his unfashionably macho fascination with expiry and killing — we accept to acknowledge that the ability of his linguistic communication has aged remarkably well in the 48 years since his death. And the vigorous, absorbing production of "The Old Man and the Sea, " adapted by Eric Ting and Craig Siebels, is smart plenty to use it in large doses. The play, which is at present having its world-premiere run at Long Wharf Theater, may non evangelize the series of 1-two punches of Hemingway's novella, but it has definite emotional resonance of its own.

However, what could they take been thinking? This story of a worn-out, elderly Cuban fisherman alone in his pocket-sized boat battling with a particularly hard-to-land fish and talking only to himself or the unseen fish ("Are y'all gear up? Take you been long enough at table?"), with whom he feels a brotherly bond, is an unlikely candidate for the stage. Even the 1958 film version with Spencer Tracy, which at least used existent fish and put the star in a gigantic studio tank to create the illusion of existence at body of water, was a disappointment to many. It's best remembered now for Dimitri Tiomkin'south Oscar-winning score.

Long Wharf's is a offset-form production with strong performances and dynamic staging, only it solves the problem of depicting the most crucial event (what happens after the human catches a large fish) by but skipping information technology, which is a great loss. In Deed II, the event is announced in the past tense. Then this adaptation fills out the 2nd act, which has little relation to the volume'southward denouement, past making the Quondam Man delusional, reliving the experience in the condom of his tiny cabin.

That cabin looks a lot comfier than the one in the book. The set design, washed by Mr. Siebels, is clever and effective in Act I, just when the action moves to the cabin, what should be the "place on the dirt flooring to cook with charcoal," equally Hemingway described it, is represented by the stage itself, giving the impression that this humble domicile has gleaming hardwood floors. And there's a radio, an object that the Old Human being refers to elsewhere as something that only rich people take.

Equally the Former Human (Santiago), Mateo Gómez is more robust than the frail protagonist that Hemingway described. Just he seems accurately weary, amiable and alternately discouraged and adamant. Mr. Ting, who also directed, makes him a playful old fellow. After all, this is a homo whose greatest interests, beyond fishing, are beer and American baseball game, particularly the New York Yankees and the bully Joe DiMaggio.

Rey Lucas is mannerly equally the Boy (Manolin) and doubles as the narrator, who is a much-needed figure. That's true from a literary bespeak of view, but also for practical reasons in cases when it might be faintly ridiculous to have the Old Man speak the words himself. "The dark h2o of the gulf is the greatest healer that there is," the Boy says when the Old Human injures himself. "If you cut your manus, bleed it clean and permit the table salt water heal it."

The two men are joined by Leajato Robinson as a seemingly uninterested and deliberately disinterested third party. His character, Cienfuegos, stars in the Casablanca arm-wrestling scene from the book and punctuates the action with pretty Castilian folk songs past John Gromada, accompanying himself on guitar.

"The Sometime Human being and the Bounding main" comments with great nobility on a kettle-total of homo emotions and experiences: regret; rationalization; pride and humiliation; and the struggle to stay live, safe and solvent (the Quondam Man hasn't caught a single fish in 84 days). It is also virtually the horror of watching everything yous have worked then hard for fall apart, faster than yous could have ever imagined. Or maybe that attribute of the story rings so truthful, loud and clear correct now because of these terrifying financial times.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/nyregion/connecticut/19theaterct.html

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