Rocco Sisto, Aya Cash & Erik Lochtefeld                              photos by Joan Marcus

 

 

                                             By Eugene Paul

 

Irony of ironies. Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen and Oliver Butler are play crafters. The three of them generate ideas for a play, Bos and Thureen write, Butler steers the writing as much as the two authors and when they have erected a composite which seems congruent to all three, Butler directs the devised dramatic work.  Their construction  -- they’ve been inspired by a colossal failure of that fascinating, forgotten great man of the American Theater, Steele Mackaye – has been lovingly elaborated all over the Playwrights Horizon’s main stage by designer Laura Jellinek in telling a double story, its elements set forty years apart. Spellbinder Rocco Sisto, as Steele Mackaye, is our master of ceremonies. The ironies reach us to our very foundations. Literally. We are sitting on a Steele Mackaye invention, the folding theatre seat.

 

Steele Mackaye, 1842-1894, actor, artist, painter, teacher, lecturer, playwright, director, manager, designer, inventor, crammed ten life times into his fifty-two years. He was the first American to play Hamlet in London, brought the Delsarte system of acting to the United States from France, founded the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, built the St. James Theatre, the Lyceum, the Madison Square, invented stage lighting – he dreamed up, developed  100 theatrical patents –and was constructing the largest theatre in the world, his Spectatorium, for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, his ultimate dream theatre, seating 12,000, twenty-five stages, designed to flood its stages so that three ships could sail in directly from Lake Michigan.

 

Brian Lee Huynh & Erik Lochtefeld

 

 Here, at Playwrights Horizons, we see a harried corner of the vast enterprise under construction, with intense, overwhelmed Hillary (excellent Erik Lochtefeld) head electrician for the Spectatorium, trying to keep up with the demands of wiring the thousands of incandescent bulbs  required to dazzle and amaze expected crowds. His adored bride, Adeline (delightful Aya Cash) invades the dangerous premises –  that new miracle,  electricity is  full of unexpected mysteries, ready to kill with the slightest mishandling – agog at  the workings of the new world. Everything is wonderful to her, the great World’s Fair, her wonderful husband, the sun, the air, youth, life, the amazing Mr.Mackaye – who actually comes to dinner!  In costume! Briefly shedding his worries about lack of financing for his expensive, complicated, unfinished masterpiece as he entertains Adeline.

 

Adeline’s enthusiasms take her again to the wonders of the unfinished Spectatorium and its lurking electricity.  It is her last careless moment on earth. She is shocked to death. Overcome with grief, Hillary retreats to the attic of his house and never comes out. The Spectatorium is never finished. Six months later, Mackaye is dead.

 

Brian Lee Huynh & Graydon Peter Yosowitz

 

Forty years later, 1933, the playwrights have taken us to a new Chicago World’s Fair and linked us through another Mackaye invention, to the past, to the Chicago Fair of 1893.  In the present of 1933, we are back in Hillary’s and Adeline’s old apartment, completely refurbished over the years by Hong (remarkable Brian Lee Huynh) Hillary’s trusted assistant on the workings of the long gone Spectatorium, who grows old before our eyes as he lives there. He rents it to a young family, Ruth (Aya Cash) whose resemblance to Adeline transfixes him, her husband, Lou (fine Ken Barnett) and their son, Charlie (appealing Graydon Peter Yosowitz). Lou creates jingles, enthusiastically. Doesn’t seem to sell them, though.  Ruth admires the jingles as she must.  She can’t find a job. They’re victims of the deep, ongoing  Great Depression. Charlie is enamored of that great invention, the Zeppelin. Little do they know that they are being watched through the cracks in the ceiling by Hillary, up above.

 

If it weren’t for director Oliver Butler’s inspiring his splendid cast to find wonder in every minute of their performances, we would be confoundedly nit picking our way through the barely tenuous logic of the play crafters.  Rocco Sisto, as the indefatigable Mackaye, is splendidly bravura, winning empathy and admiration with every flourish, hardly letting us see the worries underneath. Russell H. Champa, whose lighting is a dazzle of old dangers, charges every effect with current zeal, antique relish, adding charm and luster to the proceedings and depth to the title. Michael Krass’s costumes work, and so does Lee Kinney’s sound. So why do I feel so sad? Blandishments aside, failures of one kind and another are part of the fabric.  Get over it. Never have we needed to understand that more.

                                                         

The Light Years. At Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42^nd Street.  Tickets: $49-$69. 212-279-4200. 105 min. Thru Apr 2.