Review a word or two

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It would be nearly impossible to define a legendary career that has spanned over six decades in just a few words. But Christopher Plummer does that and more in A Word or Two, his one-man show exploring life through literature. The octogenarian Oscar and Tony winner’s show, now playing at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre through Feb. 9, was first performed in the summer of 2012 at the Stratford Festival in his native Canada.

As an actor, Plummer is a master of written and spoken text. Arranging material from some of the best and most influential authors in his life, he is able to show his true passion and appreciation for them all. Characters and stories seamlessly come to life, from childhood tales of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland to the dark kingdoms created by his “bro Bill” Shakespeare. In the 80-minute, intermissionless piece, he forgoes stories from the set of The Sound of Music or his Tony-winning turn in Barrymore for more universal accounts of puberty, middle age, and death. He doesn’t just talk about his childhood, but what it?s like to be a child and learn what a powerful tool the imagination can be.

Now 84, Plummer looks as nimble as he did when he played Hamlet back in 1957 and called himself the ?cat?s meow.? He shows that he’s till on top of things, joking that he could one day play Chris Christie or voicing his embarrassment over fellow countryman Justin Beiber. Under Des McAnuff’s fluid direction, he also shows moments of pure elegance and ease. His commanding stage presence makes you want to watch. But in A Word or Two, he also makes you want to listen. A

Christopher Plummer’s virtuosity and ability to command a stage have never seemed more secure in “A Word or Two,” his current one-man show at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Expanded considerably from a fundraising speech he gave for a Connecticut library more than 30 years ago, “A Word or Two” is one of the smoothest, most substantial autobiographical monologues to grace a stage. The current version has a fair share of Canadian references that one imagines could be trimmed for audiences in the U.S., for the show seems surely bound that way.

Plummer’s thesis is that the books he has read have helped to shape his life, and he goes on to prove it. It’s not just a collection of “and then I played,” although one or two of his greatest perfs (Hamlet, Cyrano) are here. He’s also just as riveting when it comes to the passages from parts he never played, such as Othello, or when he turns a piece of poetry like Robert Frost’s “Birches” into a full dramatic monologue with a muscular vitality all its own.

The basic form is chronological, and Plummer is especially charming as he recalls his early years as “that dreaded monster, the only child” in a house full of doting women just outside of Montreal. He’s both debauched and debonair recalling his first real bender in the bustling nightlife of that city, and heartbreaking as he recalls his final memories of his beloved mother.

But those looking for a point-to-point saga will be disappointed, because Plummer jumps from romantic excess (making the Song of Solomon sound positively X-rated) to idiosyncratic characterization (turning W.H. Auden’s Herod into a Truman Capote wannabe).

One of his sharper turns comes when he recites alternating speeches by Don Juan and the Devil from Shaw’s “Man and Superman” in rapid succession, displaying his versatility while letting us see that he never really was on the side of the angels. The show’s final section about death is moving without turning maudlin, capped with a bravura bilingual turn as Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac.

Des McAnuff has directed works like this before (notably Billy Crystal’s “700 Sundays”), and he remains a master of knowing how to present a complete package without seeming too controlling. From set designer Robert Brill’s vertiginous tower of books through to Michael Walton’s tastefully understated lighting, this is a class act of a production, giving us Plummer in full classical battle cry without requiring the extravagance of the average period production.

Few enticements can feel as comforting as an invitation into the inner life of the protean Christopher Plummer. Through the blandishments of his seductive voice, he shares a lifetime of escape into the world of literature. As a solitary and painfully shy boy, books provided a world in which he could safely seek adventure and find guidance for living.

With his quicksilver ability to express the essence of the wisdom and wit of dozens of writers with formidable economy of intonation and gesture, Plummer embodies those ineluctable ecstasies of losing oneself in engrossed transport. Together we partake of remembering how our mindful encounters with fantasy make reality more comprehensible. We may be sitting in the vast expanses of the Ahmanson, yet Plummer conveys the sensation of wearing slippers and dressing gown in one’s home library, possibly while sipping port. It’s tactile, and it doesn’t feel like a Kindle.

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Plummer remains unabashedly a man loyal to his own era. Many of the authors he recites were mainstays of youthful reading in the 1930s to 1950s, though now obscure and out of favor: Archibald MacLeish, Algernon Swinburne (always alluded to by surname only), professors Stephen Leacock andIrwin Corey, S.J. Perelman, Ogden Nash, even Robert Frost’s “Birches.” He begins and ends with the Lewis Carroll “I’ll Tell Thee Everything I Can” with its seminal illustration of an old man sitting on a gate that first captivated him as a tot and now brings him full circle to a contemplation of mortality. Above all, Plummer testifies to the enduring power of families reading together, in a childhood before the intrusions of television preempted so much of the unfettered exploration of the imagination.

Plummer can brandish a bon mot like a rapier, as with a quotation ascribed to Napoleon: “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” Or he can be moony with love lyrics or sentimental with Shakespeare or Marlowe. His easy intimacy with audience reminds of his Iago without the least insinuation of malice. Many of the parts he plays in brief he has done before in his storied career: Vladimir Nabokov, Cyrano, Kipling. Above all, Plummer, who has always worked without cessation, stands as testimony to unstinting labor at craft: he keeps on getting better, reminding of Pablo Casals’ reply when asked why he still practiced the cello for hours daily at 93: “I believe I am starting to improve.”

Of course, the real secret to the pleasure of this performance lies in the masterful illusion that because Plummer is confiding in us about his life and family, his dreams and delusions, even some secrets, he is merely being himself, whereas instead he gives us something far better. That is, a genuine characterization of subtle detail and assured masquerade inspired by the experience of one Christopher Plummer. He cannot help but ply his art, especially when he wants to achieve the ineffable effect of artlessness. He never gives us less. 

Venue: Ahmanson Theatre, downtown (through Feb. 9, 2014)

Cast: Christopher Plummer

Director: Des McAnuff

Writer: Christopher Plummer

Set Designer: Robert Brill

Lighting Designer: Michael Walton

Composer: Michael Roth

Sound Designer: Peter McBoyle

Presented by Center Teatre Group in association with the Stratford Festival of Canada 

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WHEN A WORD OR TWO WILL NOT DO

A Word or Two is an apt title for Christopher Plummer’s solo show about Christopher Plummer and Christopher Plummer’s love of language. He wants to celebrate language in all of its “infinite variety, majesty, and beauty.” His love of language gave him an escape early in life, he tells us, and certainly attracted him to the theater. But his road to acting is paved with gaping holes: We learn that his mother, a WWI nurse, saved him from some drunken escapade, and the next thing we know he’s saying, “The first time I did Hamlet…” With a seven-decade career, the Canadian thespian’s life is no doubt chockablock with vivid accounts of life upon the wicked stage, but he chooses to skirt around his life with surfacy anecdotes, tidbits, and literature delivered with glibness, flair, and gorgeous intonation.

The little we learn about this monumental presence is sandwiched between quips both familiar and lesser known from Shakespeare, Wilde, Levant, Auden, Nash, Milne, et al. But we get neither page nor paragraph from the man so identified as Captain von Trapp. Instead, this outing supplies a word or two over and over and over to the point of arousing my ambivalence, making the snippet-filled 80-minutes one-note, especially under Des McAnuff’s banal direction, which has the Plummer walk around aimlessly except to find his light and some props, the latter being unnecessary had he supplied emotion.

We get all the mannerisms of a grand seigneur of the theater, which fills the Ahmanson nicely and keeps this trifle from being boring, but little soul-baring, which keeps us disconnected. Had he expounded on the story which had him listening to Dylan Thomas jabbering at the White Horse Tavern in the West Village, perhaps the Welsh poet recitation would not have been draggy. Other times, his irreverent air inadvertently deprecates the literature he loves.

There are fiendishly funny aspects, but the devilish limericks, and modern vernacular with Valley Girl articulation (“It was totally gross”), don’t stick because of the show’s contextual flaws. Plummer’s writing elicits cheap chuckles until we realize his metaphor-rich wordplay is incongruous with the linguistic masters so often spouted. Illuminating his Sagittarian nature to forge ahead, he claims: “I paced the halls of my mother’s womb waiting for the light to turn green.”

Robert Brill’s gorgeous set has as its centerpiece a spiraling staircase of books worthy to be on permanent display at a museum. Michael Walton’s lights shimmer beautifully throughout, but Sean Nieuwenhuis’ multi-media (words, weather) are projected onto a papyrus-like backdrop late in the show for no reason, and Michael Roth’s music is equally higgledy-piggledy (a few times, I thought a cell phone was playing tinkling compositions). Where was McAnuff?

Patrons may give a standing ovation to acknowledge the great actor’s career and lucid energy at 84, and philologists may have a field day at this event, but without insight A Word or Two is just a lot of words.

photos by Craig Schwartz

A Word or Two
Center Theatre Group
in association with
the Stratford Festival of Canada
Ahmanson Theatre
scheduled to end on February 9, 2014
for tickets, call 213.972.4400
or visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org